Revenue Cycle Management Survey What Does it Mean for your Practice
By ION
Black Book Market Research annually evaluates leading service providers across 18 operational excellence key performance indicators completely from the perspective of the client experience. In a 2017 survey of Finance and Revenue Cycle Management they covered a variety of topics including patient payment solutions, patient accounting and patient management, complex claims solutions and patient access, to name a few.
As a part of that survey data, some salient points for practices and their revenue management is noted below:
- Technology: 83% of providers surveyed expect that practices will have to bring more technological solutions into their practices to be successful – to help them with their patients.
- Skyrocketing Out-of-Pocket Costs: With an increase in deductibles and out-of-pocket maximum costs, patients have experienced nearly a 30% increase in personal financial responsibility.
- Online Pay: 62% of medical bills are paid online, but 95% of patients say they would pay their bills online if this payment option were offered. Patients also note that mobile pay and billing alerts have improved their satisfaction with their providers.
- Online Cost Estimation and Information: Posting practice costs online and providing online instructions for post-procedure and post-medication administration have increased satisfaction of patients surveyed, translating into a faster collection of payments.
- Mobile Pay: While nearly 90% of the financial interviewees expected healthcare payments were going to be made online or through mobile devices, only 20% of them were ready for electronic payments.
- Slow Pay: One of the top collection challenges is slow pay. 83% of physician practices with fewer than five practitioners said their top challenges were slow patient payment of high-deductible plans followed by staff difficulty communicating patient payment accountability.
- Inaccurate Estimates: 83% of ambulatory providers say estimates from health plans are often incorrect, this is becoming a larger issue each year, despite (supposedly) getting current information from health plans on patient deductibles.
- Payment Enhancements: Some of the enhancements practices are focusing on include: managing consumer expectations through confirming insurance eligibility of all patients prior to appointments, not just new patients; providing cost estimates online and providing patients with out-of-pocket cost estimations; and making available convenience enhancements for payment remittance.
This information was taken from the InfoDive webinar Accounts Receivable, February 2019.
Topics:
Financial management
