How Clear, Personalized Payments can Drive Patient Engagement and Collections
By Casey Williams, Senior Vice President of Engagement, Analytics and Payment Applications, RevSpring
LinkedIn: Casey Williams
LinkedIn: RevSpring
Amid constant change in the healthcare industry, providers and health systems continue to face the same challenge: helping patients navigate the finances in their care journey with compassion, while keeping the services they rely on sustainable. With financial pressure on both patients and providers, clear billing, convenient payment options, and smart follow-ups remain the fundamentals that drive patient finance. Leveraging advanced analytics and intelligent communications platforms are our best tools to improve patient engagement and, in turn, help health systems stay in control of their collections amid the turmoil.
Prioritizing patient preferences
Providers and health systems should replace “one-size-fits-all” billing with outreach that meets patients where they are both in digital delivery and propensity to pay. With multiple digital payment options now available, aligning billing to where patients are digitally and financially, as well as their recorded past behavior boosts engagement and reduces waste. There’s no need to mail a paper bill if a patient would pay online, yet a mailed statement is worthwhile for those who prefer it. By using analytics to surface prior payment activity and predict likely behavior, health systems can choose the right channel, paper, text, portal, or app, so bills feel convenient, costs drop, and payments arrive faster.
Beyond communications, this approach should include personalized payment plans tailored to each patient’s propensity to pay. While the cost of care can be daunting, personalized payment plans can help reduce stress and enable patients to pay in full on their terms.
Technology makes this personalization scalable. Embedded artificial intelligence can surface preferences and prior behavior, guiding staff to engage more empathetically and effectively with the right plan, message, and timing to induce action.
Use analytics to your advantage
Navigating patient profiles and history can provide a 360-degree view of one’s financial journey, giving behavioral insights that influence follow-through on payments and future care.
Data allows us an inside look into the patient journey, but it also gives us an opportunity to see how, from the patient’s perspective, we can make the journey easier, clearer, and more seamless. Utilizing the full suite of available analytics, from patient acquisition to check-in, to service, and post-care, can be useful to see the full journey more clearly. Both demographic and behavioral data can lend additional insights into building communications, sending the right message at the right time for optimal engagement. Analytics deepen our understanding of patients, and turn those insights into smarter, more effective consumer engagement.
Clearing up confusion
Confusing billing statements don’t just make it harder for patients; they also limit the ability for patients to properly pay their bills, causing delays, debt, and erosion of trust between patients and providers. Confusion breeds inaction, driving patients to abandon the healthcare experience, further, negatively impacting outcomes. Billing should use easy to understand language, be consist across communications, and provide patients with options to engage with their bill in the way that makes the most sense for them. Creating a connected experience helps limit patient frustration with the care journey.
A more accommodating experience for patients that allows them to better understand the cost of their care helps to limit confusion within the system, driving trust, and creating a less stressful payment experience. For more successful patient engagement, consideration of how to engage the patient where they are and walking the patient down the proper path with clear direction is essential. This helps keep patients out of medical debt while also delivering the payment for health systems and providers, all while creating a more empathetic care journey.