Today’s consumers expect clarity and convenience at every transaction, and healthcare is no exception. Unfortunately, healthcare hasn’t caught up with consumer demand.
Billing remains complex, systems are fragmented, and patients often receive healthcare bills they don’t understand or even see coming. An estimated nine in 10 patients want to know what they’ll owe up front, but only two in 10 know what they’ll owe after an appointment.1
Understanding what a patient’s financial responsibilities are after insurance adjudication is essential to the patient AR process. Adopting a proactive approach to patient pay can solidify patient billing satisfaction, leading to timely payment and a better overall patient financial experience.
No Surprises and Patient Billing Expectations
In 2021, 87% of consumers reported receiving an unexpected healthcare bill.1 To help address the complexity of patient billing, Congress passed the No Surprises Act, which went into effect in 2022.
Provisions include limiting patient responsibility for certain out-of-network costs, banning surprise bills for most emergency services and out-of-network charges for procedures performed during a patient’s visit to an in-network facility.1,2 The Act also requires that providers send patients notices about billing protections that are easy to understand.2
Understanding what’s owed at the outset is something that patients have been asking about for some time. A 2018 HIMMS survey revealed that while 87% of providers could send cost estimates, only 18% received them without asking for them; in this same survey, 46% of patients said that they’d be more inclined to pay a bigger portion of their bill up front if they got a cost estimate from their provider.3
A connected patient pay journey that begins at the outset of the patient’s journey, including a patient AR optimization platform that resolves balances after insurance and improves patient experience through real support (including a bilingual call center), can transform the patient pay process.
Proactive Patient Pay Solutions
When patients understand what they owe early in the billing process, they can act on it faster. As a patient AR optimization and resolution partner, PatientFocus brings patients into the financial conversation sooner with proactive omnichannel outreach that meets patients where they are with the same level of convenience they’ve come to expect from businesses they regularly transact with as consumers.
Branded statements with scannable QR codes, Click-to-Pay text messages, coordinated email messages, direct drop voicemail messages, a configurable online payment portal, and a bilingual domestic call center give patients easy ways to pay and connect with support whenever they have questions.
Across millions of patient engagements, PatientFocus has significantly reduced the payment cycle while elevating the patient financial experience. On average, payments are made within seven days of receiving a call, eight days after a text message, and 11 days after receiving a statement. The patient portal makes payments even easier; over 50% of payments are received through the platform, with some practices reporting as high as 57%.4
Moving Patient Pay Forward
Closing the gap between insurance, providers, and patient pay can be transformative to both the patient experience and a practice’s bottom line. Practices that make payment easier improve patient pay, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. Nearly 70% of patients surveyed would return to providers who furnish cost estimates up front, and recommend them to a friend.3
With PatientFocus, practices can meet patient expectations with patient pay solutions that always put patients first. We help keep patients in the loop with clear communications, defined expectations and always-on, multichannel support for easy assistance whenever and however it’s needed.
Want to simplify your patient pay journey? Let’s talk!
Sources
- Meyer, Melanie. A Patient’s Journey to Pay a Healthcare Bill: It’s Way Too Complicated. J Patient Exp. 2023 Jun 7;10:23743735231174759. doi:10.1177/23743735231174759
- Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. No Surprises: Understand your rights against surprise medical bills. January 2022. https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/no-surprises-understand-your-rights-against-surprise-medical-bills
- Sanborn, Beth Jones. HIMSS Analytics survey shows patients want convenient payment options. HIMSS Healthcare Finance News. June 2018. https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/himss-analytics-survey-shows-patients-want-convenient-payment-options
- Internal data on file: PatientFocus.