High deductible plans and health savings accounts create more patient payment responsibility than ever before.
Meanwhile, HIPAA compliance (and other hospital and health system operations) can lead to confusing patient payment solutions.
How do we fine-tune back office processes and your patient's experience together? By optimizing the patient journey from before check-in to billing and payment.
This requires good pre-planning, training, and flexible document, payment, and esignature software.
Why Modernize Your Payment Services?
Adopting a new patient payment solution is hard. Change means:
- Updating training materials and editing policy and procedure documents.
- Implementing education (for both staff and patients) on new medical billing procedures.
- Identifying late and unpaid patient accounts and creating outreach campaigns.
However, the long-term benefits of modernizing patient payments are well worth it.
Better Patient Payment Services
Patients are more likely to pay bills on time if they are informed and invested in the billing and payment process.
Using secure, reliable software for patient payment services will empower payers and create a positive experience that:
- encourages prompt patient payments.
- allows for better communication with patients when they need financial aid or need a recurring payment schedule.
- creates repeat patients to your healthcare facility.
- increases likelihood of good online reviews.
Shorter Revenue Cycle
Patient payment numbers increase when people are informed and happy with their experience.
When patients know how to pay, how to read their bill, and have convenient payment options, they pay faster—and with fewer issues.
Make it easier to pay and your facility will speed up the entire revenue cycle, from start to finish.
At Registration:
- set billing expectations
- explain the patient payment process
- educate patients on financial aid
Communication Preferences:
- offer communication options
- track patient preferences
Self-Pay:
- provide flexible self-pay options
- online payment portal
- payments via email or SMS
Patient Payment Touch Points
Modernizing patient payments and other patient workflows can start as early as appointment check-in.
Improve patient engagement and the relationship your patients have with paying their bills. Start with these common touch points.
Appointment Registration and Check-In
Appointment registration is a good time to lay the groundwork for the payment process.
You can explain check-in and insurance policies and educate consumers on financial aid and payment plan options at the same time.
For example, here are some ways PDCflow’s document, payment, and esignature software helps facilities with registration and check-in.
- HIPAA compliant document delivery: Send intake paperwork and request a copay at the same time ahead of a patient visit.
- Digital HIPAA policy delivery: Send a copy of your facility’s HIPAA and other privacy policies via email or SMS ahead of a patient visit.
- eSignature requests: Gather any other authorizations you might require.
- Photo & file upload requests: Request medical files or a picture of an ID or insurance card.
Performing tasks electronically makes check-in faster. This also sets expectations for email and SMS communication options during billing and payment.
Collecting Communication Opt-Ins
You can also use patient conversations to talk about the communication methods you offer and get opt-in approvals.
Offering multiple communication options (like email and SMS) helps you cater to modern patient preferences.
Providing choice makes patients more eager to participate in their care all the way through to payment.
Take care to find tools that help you monitor the patient preferences you collect. It’s important to know what channels your patients have opted into and out of.
Sending information to non-preferred channels will decrease payments. Ignoring preferences or opt-outs can also lead to compliance violations.
Online Patient Payments
Especially for younger patients, sending a check in the mail isn’t a convenient healthcare payment option.
If you only accept payments by mail, phone, or in-office, you are slowing down your revenue cycle. To better serve your patients and collect more, enhance your self-pay options.
Use online payment portals, email and text message payment requests, or even QR code payment links on a paper statement.
Implementing Modern Patient Payments
The first step to modern, effective patient payment workflows is deciding what your facility needs.
After this, it’s time to plan how. Focus your organization’s efforts on training staff and setting up better payment and communication workflows.
Training and Company Culture
No matter how easy your new processes are, you need to prepare and update your staff training plan.
- Include information regarding who is responsible for what tasks, any templates or workflows you want staff to use, etc.
- Build empathy training into your processes. Your staff must understand the pressure patients may be feeling during payment.
- Medical procedures can be stressful and costly. Emphasize parts of your company culture that promote positive patient interactions.
- Train staff to identify patients who need financial aid or would benefit from a flexible payment plan.
How PDCflow Simplifies Patient Payments
The document, esignature, and payment software you choose needs to be secure, efficient, and cost effective.
PDCflow is designed to modernize payments, communication, and digital document delivery. Here’s how:
- PDCflow HIPAA compliant messages via email and SMS
- Payment requests via email or SMS
- Online payment portals
- Electronic document delivery to send up to five files in a single message
- eSignature requests to get consent paperwork signed instantly
- Photo and file upload requests to receive insurance cards or medical records
- Recurring payment schedules patients can create through a self-serve online payment portal, or with the help of an employee who can control the terms of the schedule.
- Organizational management controls that allow you to choose who can access certain templates or reports, minimizing human error.
- Open APIs with low-code and drop-in components to integrate document, payment and signature workflows into your current system of record.
Are you interested in creating better communication and payment workflows for your patients? Set up a demo with PDCflow today.
Book Demo:
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
Hannah Huerta, Marketing Specialist
Hannah Huerta is a Marketing Specialist at PDCflow. She creates content for the accounts receivable and payment industry.
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