A new study from a patient payments vendor suggests that many healthcare organizations haven’t optimized their patient billing and collections process, a vulnerability which has persisted despite their efforts to crack the problem.
The survey, which was backed by patient payment vendor Cedar, found that while the entire billing collections process was flawed, respondents said that collecting patient payments was the toughest problem, followed by the need to deploy better tools and technologies.
Another issue was the nature of their collections efforts. Sixty percent of responding organizations use collections agencies, an approach which can establish an adversarial relationship between patient and provider and perhaps drive consumers elsewhere.
Yet another concern was long delays in issuing bills to patients. The survey found that 65% of organizations average more than 60 days to collect patient payments, and 40% waited on payments for more than 90 days.
These results align other studies that look at patient payments, all of which echo the notion that the patient collection process is far from what it should be.
For example, a study by payment services vendor InstaMed found that more than 90% of consumers would like to know what the payment responsibility is prior to a provider visit. Worse, very few consumers even know what the deductible, co-insurance and out-of-pocket maximums are, making it more likely that the will be hit with a bill they can’t afford.
As with the Cedar study, InstaMed’s research found that providers are waiting a long time to collect patient payments, three-quarters of organizations waiting a month to close out patient balances.
Not only that, investments in revenue cycle management technology aren’t necessarily enough to kickstart patient payment volumes. A survey done last year by the Healthcare Financial Management Association and vendor Navigant found that while three-quarters of hospitals said that their RCM technology budget was increasing, they weren’t necessarily getting the ROI they’d hoped to see.
According to the survey, 77% of hospitals less than 100 beds and 78% of hospitals with 100 to 500 beds planned to increase their RCM spending. Their areas of investment included business intelligence analytics, EHR-enabled workflow or reporting, revenue integrity, coding and physician/clinician documentation options.
Still, process improvements seem to have had a bigger payoff. These hospitals are placing a lot of faith in revenue integrity programs, with 22% saying that revenue integrity was a top RCM focus area for this year. Those who would already put such a program in place said that it offered significant benefits, including increased net collections (68%), greater charge capture (61%) and reduced compliance risks (61%).
As I see it, the key takeaways here are that making sure patients know what to expect financially and putting programs in place to improve internal processes can have a big impact on patient payments. Still, with consumers financing a lot of their care these days, getting their dollars in the door should continue to be an issue. After all, you can’t get blood from a stone.
