Healthcare Patient Payments in 2020 & Beyond
How PatientPay is leading the Healthcare Patient Payments Sphere
Whoever said “complex problems require complex solutions” must have never worked in healthcare patient payments. Although we live in the digital age where connecting, contacting, and sending information is as easy as the click of a button, some things still remain difficult: namely, getting patients to pay their bill while adhering to compliance standards (such as HIPAA, PCI, TCPA, etc.) that seem to limit your options for improvement.
So, how do we achieve both?
Healthcare Patient Payments: Simplicity is Key
“Simplify, simplify.” — Henry David Thoreau
Simplicity, as it turns out, is the name of the game. Studies show that 2 of the top 8 reasons for shopping cart abandonment in eCommerce are because the user either didn’t want to register/create an account just to make a purchase or because their preferred payment option wasn’t available. Now, if those are the abandonment rates for people wanting to spend money, just imagine the drop off in collected payments for those paying a medical bill. We’ll wait…
That’s where PatientPay comes in: we understand that the more clicks, the more hurdles, and the more registration screens it takes for a patient to view their bill, the less likely they are to pay it. We’ve streamlined that process to give providers and their revenue cycle partners the best chance at capturing payments while also providing a successful patient-focused billing solution.
See why PatientPay is the leading technology partner for Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) companies looking to capture more payments, faster and at a lower cost.
Healthcare Patient Payments: Opt-In vs. Opt-Out
Where most healthcare patient payment providers go wrong is by using an opt-in method for sending electronic communications and receiving payment. There are a few problems with this:
The chain of communications is almost always started with snail mail (of which there is no way to measure read-rate or open-rate).
Of those patients who actually receive and open their snail mail, their next step is to go online and register just to view another impossible to understand bill.
For the few patients that have finally made it this far, the platforms being used typically don’t offer creative payment options or billing schedules.
As you can imagine, in this opt-in model, more and more patients are being lost at every step. That equates to less reach, less payment interactions, and less money in your pocket.
At PatientPay, we take a different approach by using our advanced dunning engine to leverage an opt-out model, making calculated assumptions that most patients are perfectly alright with receiving a digital message from their provider (spoiler alert: most are okay with it). So why text and email initially instead of paper? Glad you asked!
Healthcare Patient Payments: Using the Right Tools
Achieving success with healthcare patient payment hinges on using the most effective tools to get the job done, which is why we leverage text messages as a focus of our communication efforts. SMS (text messages) receive a 4x greater open-rate than traditional email marketing, and electronic communications and billing texts have a 99% read-rate.
PatientPay makes the most of this by using text messages as a vehicle to warm up communications with the patient in lieu of or before sending over a patient statement, resulting in a much higher conversion rate.
We know what you might be thinking, “But what about privacy?” As it turns out, it is perfectly okay for providers to send text messages to patients — it’s HIPAA-compliant as long as there aren’t any “personal identifiers” in the text message and TCPA compliant as long as you are offering the appropriate opt-out channels. This works great because the text itself only serves as a vehicle to drive more patients to pay.
Simplicity, security, and using the right tools — this is the PatientPay recipe that’s put us at the forefront of healthcare patient payments. What do you think? Wouldn’t you like to capture more patient payments, faster and at a lower cost? Ask us how.
Thinking of PatientPay as your RCM patient payments partner? Schedule a Demo today!