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Originally Posted On: https://www.payspan.com/blog/simplifying-provider-payments
Healthcare spending has been increasing year over year. In 2021, US based healthcare patients spent $407 billion on medical bills. Additionally, consumers have more purchasing decisions than ever before, even in industries like healthcare where patients have choices limited by their network. As deductibles and out-of-pocket costs continue to rise, patients have become more responsible for their healthcare bills than they have been in the past. Which means the method of making payments plays an important role in providers getting paid and for patients not to miss their bills.
Components of a Positive Billing Experience
Experience can have a big impact on the retention of patients within a healthcare practice. While providers tend to think of experience as it relates to interacting with patients or providing a diagnosis, a patient’s billing experience can also determine whether or not they choose to stay with that provider or look elsewhere for healthcare services.
Patients are looking for providers who offer the easiest access to quality healthcare. A positive experience starts with the interaction between provider and patient and continues through to a completed payment for any testing and medical services provided.
A positive billing experience is one that enables patients with easy-to-find information about benefits, payment breakdowns, and billing options. A healthcare payment system should be a simple experience for both your billing department and patients. It should allow you to efficiently track and input billing information while patients have control over how they pay.
There are a few components that contribute to a positive patient billing experience. Utilizing a payment system that offers the following functionalities can simplify the payment process for both providers and patients.
Electronic Payments
As so many of today’s business practices are happening online, having an electronic payment option for healthcare payments is a necessity. Not only does this save money for providers on operational costs associated with paper mail-in payments, it improves the patient billing experience. Offering an online payment center that’s easy for patients to find via online or printed communications can also cut down on the number of payments that occur over the phone and take up valuable call times. Electronic payments should include all major credit and debit card providers and maintain secure storage of transactional data.
Patient Payments Ease-of-Use
Navigating the healthcare payments landscape can be challenging for patients and providers alike. Having a payments portal that can be easily found and used to check a balance, pay bills, or establish a payment plan helps to improve payment volume and keep patient bills from being left to collections. A third of consumers have had a medical bill go to collections when the bill is less than $600. Providing a variety of payment options in a simple format helps patients navigate their payment process without overdue bills going unnoticed.
Financial Knowledge
Healthcare is complicated. Providers have a deep knowledge of the human body that can be difficult to communicate to clients, particularly when it comes to a bill with details of lab testing and costs associated with various medical services. Your system for provider payments should provide accessible and accurate information to patients about the cost of their doctor and lab visits.
A Provider Solution
The healthcare payment solution system that supports your patients in making easy online payments also needs to work for your providers and billing department. Having the ability to efficiently manage payments on the back end streamlines your payment process. And payment tracking ability allows you to stay on top of how effectively your payments process is working.
The Patient Financial Engagement Solution
Patient Financial Engagement by Payspan is a streamlined provider payments solution that makes handling your billing easy while patients have multiple options for making a payment.
For providers, an efficient payment system can increase revenue, cut down on staff time spent handling payment phone calls, reduce paper costs associated with mail-in payments, and help deliver a positive payment experience to your patients.
Patient Financial Engagement is a solution designed for medium to large physician practices and multi-office organizations. Fully-customizable field options allow your billing team to create a payment system that works in a way that integrates well into your practices billing workflows. Particularly for medical practices using outdated merchant terminals, having a flexible payment solution allows patients to pay in whatever method they prefer and improves your ability to collect payments in-office and online.
Patients can make payments with a credit card, debit card, FSA/HSA cards, an ACH payment from a bank, or between two payment sources. Our Patient Financial Engagement solution also includes support for payment plans. This is an increasingly important option for patients responsible for a large amount of their deductible or out-of-pocket costs who can’t make a full payment. With payment plan functionality, patients can work with you to establish the frequency of their payments and the system will automatically authorize a recurring bill.
Our Patient Financial Engagement solution allows patients to pay a bill without needing to set up an account, create a password, or log-in. This reduces the likelihood that patients will avoid payment due to frustrations with your payment system.
Utilizing a streamlined payment system for your practice can improve patient experience and simplify your billing processes. While payments may seem like a small part of your overall practice, in today’s digital world everything that contributes to your patient’s experience can have an impact on the success of your organization.
To learn more about Payspan’s payment solution, Patient Financial Engagement, and the ways it can support your provider practice, download our free ebook. In this guide, we cover the state of the industry, billing experience for both providers and patients, and the Patient Financial Engagement solution. This ebook also includes photo examples of our payment platform and the details of the payment interface.
Click the button below to see how your organization can collect more patient payments with Patient Financial Engagement.
