Choose your persona
If you are a patient please click on 'Patient Login' to access your historical statements and pay online
If you are a practice please click on 'Practice Login' to access your dashboards
Do you know that healthcare organizations experience excessive financial stress due to late payments? The Optimizing Revenue report from West states that 56% of Americans delay medical bill payments. To maintain high-quality care and professional staffing levels, healthcare organizations should pay close attention to their flow of revenue. Most healthcare organizations know that their patients often miss out on payments, not because of bad financial situations, but because they find the process very long. Sometimes, costs and details on the generated bills are not communicated to patients, and they end up not paying due to unnecessary confusion.
63% of healthcare providers say that collecting a patient's balance takes more than a month on average. Are you among those providers or hospitals that suffer financial instability due to late payments? If your financial plan for the year misses out on efficient ways to collect patient payments faster, now is the time that you revise it. We are here with five tips for you to improve your patient payment collections and boost overall revenue.
The US healthcare system has had unwanted administrative complexity in sorting out medical insurance bills. Center for American Progress estimated that health care payers and providers spend about $496 billion on billing and insurance-related (BIR) expenses. The digital payment industry is already over $4000 billion, and if you still rely on the old paper-based reimbursement model, it's time to shift to electronic payment methods.
The American healthcare system is dominated by employer-sponsored plans, a gift from World War II. Back in the time, companies suffered war consequences. In dire times, the US government introduced health insurance benefits to support the quickly diminishing labor force rather than giving salary hikes to the workers. While the system has been altered several times since then, the process is still primarily based on the same old model when it comes to payment collection. Manual paper statements take approx 30 to 40 business days or almost two months in general to clear.
With electronic payment methods streamlining operations across several industries, we must ditch the old ways and adopt digital payments. Health care companies will benefit from reducing the time spent on sending paper bills, waiting for patient checks, and getting checks cleared post-collection.
One of the most common reasons patients don't pay their medical bills is a lack of transparency and traceability of billing details. Most patients are uninformed about the high medical costs they may face. Healthcare organizations should find a way to stay upfront with all the potential costs clients will be paying. If you see patients with high-deductible plans, let them know that you may have to pay out-of-pocket and find a common platform where they can check everything included. And yes, it is possible to provide patients transparency to their medical billing with little effort. This will improve patient satisfaction and reduce negative word of mouth.
When we talk about how effectively we can collect patient balances, the first milestone on the road is reminding patients about their payments. A lot of time delays occur when patients forget to pay their bills. Payment reminders should be a part of your payment collection plan. It will accelerate the delivery of receivables and help patients keep track of their payments. Leave reminders stating why they should be paying before their due date and how much they can save with timely payments.
A unified payment portal such as AnodynePay can effectively remind patients with automated text or IVR call reminders.
Instead of relying on a traditional check system, you use simplified and faster payment collection methods. Using these methods has several benefits such as,
When it comes to manual or traditional payment methods currently in use by most healthcare providers, the unnecessary time spent on payment clearing can be utilized for providing better care. Automating the entire payment collection process would require you to find a platform to upload all the medical statements. Customers can access those e-statements anywhere and pay via several available electronic payment methods.
As simple as it may sound, automating the entire process requires a robust platform to maintain transparency between patients and healthcare organizations. Here's how you can automate the whole payment collection process in four simple steps via AnodynePay:
The problem most healthcare providers face every month is printing all the statements. What if there is a way to upload thousands of patient medical statements and convert them to e-statements.? AnodynePay cuts down on the long process of 3 to 5 days and allows you to generate several e-statements within a few minutes instead of hours.
With only 5 minutes spent on registration, patients can access their entire medical billing history via AnodynePay. Even if they don't want to register, you can deliver e-statements through email, enabling quick or one-time payments to streamline and accelerate the payment process.
Once the patient checks the statements, they are offered multiple online payment options. The transparency and ease of payment add to patient convenience and satisfaction.
The process that would have taken 30 to 40 business days is over within minutes. Your patient is left satisfied with the process while receiving your payments directly to your bank accounts.
Here we conclude on five easy tips healthcare organizations can follow for quick patient payment collection. Payment delays cause problems in the entire US healthcare industry since hospitals and providers fail to maintain the same level of care with cash flow gaps. Having AnodynePay will ensure quick and hassle-free payments while you plan to focus on patient care.
Please enter your details below and one of our team members will contact you shortly.
Febien Caltin is a dynamic professional with 20+ years of extensive experience in the healthcare RCM space. He has expertise in Consulting, and Strategic Planning on solving critical issues healthcare providers face in the RCM process. Febien is committed to the growth of healthcare providers through his immense experience.
AnodynePay is a product of Plutus Health Inc. Plutus Health Inc is a 18-year-old full cycle technology driven RCM firm specializing in medical coding, medical billing, payment posting, denial management, credentialing, prior authorizations, AR follow-up & out of network negotiations.
