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Know your Patients, Not Just their Insurance
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What Should Patients Pay at POS?
This is the million dollar question. The answer is that it depends on the patient. Some patients are good credit risks, some are not. Hospitals should ascertain the patient’s medical credit score and related information to understand the probability of that patient paying their hospital bill on time.
It is just as important to understand the patient’s ability and willingness to meet financial commitments, as it is to enter their insurance coverage correctly.
For example, high probability of payment patients should experience more lenient onsite collection procedures, as hospitals can expect full payment on the first billing. Lower probability of payment patients should result in predefined workflows. Each workflow should secure a portion of the patient’s bill at the POS and/or direct the individual to a financial counselor to discuss the hospital’s payment options.
Payment stratification at POS has resulted in significant returns for dozens of hospitals, reducing aging of accounts and improving cash flow. Some examples:
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Integris Health – received payment from ‘high likelihood of payment’ patients 92 percent of the time within the first two collection attempts. 98 percent of the time, payment is received prior to an account going to a collection agency for further efforts.
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Patients with a well-funded HSA should be equipped to make payments immediately, and a hospital’s billing process should send statements to these individuals more rapidly for faster collections.
No one would dispute that the financial and clinical responsibility for one’s health is more and more under the direct supervision of the patient themselves. Today’s higher deductibles, new savings plans such as the HSA, and technology to stratify patients according to their payment probability, offer hospitals the incentive and ability to customize their financial interactions with each patient. Networks that improve their knowledge and interactions with the patient as an individual at the onset position themselves for a mutually beneficial relationship.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rich Racioppi has more than 15 years of experience working with leading healthcare networks to streamline and improve their revenue cycle and patient relations. SearchAmerica leads the industry financially clearing patients using address verification, prediction of payment, and automated screening for charity, Medicaid, and other government programs with its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.
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