The more patients owe in out-of-pocket costs, the less likely hospitals are to collect their payment, according to an analysis by Crowe Horwath.
For the analysis, the public accounting, consulting and technology firm examined benchmarking data on patient accounts from 172 hospitals with more than 125 beds each. Researchers examined true self-pay accounts from uninsured patients, as well as self-pay after insurance (SPAI) accounts from insured patients.
Here are four findings.
1. The analysis found true self-pay patients generally pay approximately 6.06 percent on the dollar, while SPAI patients pay 15.51 percent overall.
2. Crowe also found SPAI patients on average pay approximately 10.9 percent across inpatient accounts, while SPAI outpatient accounts pay approximately 18.2 percent.
3. Inpatient SPAI patients who owe below $1,200 have a payment rate of 40.1 percent, according to the analysis. However, inpatient SPAI patients who owe between $1,201 and $1,450 only have a payment rate of 17.6 percent.
4. For inpatient SPAI accounts, the payment rate is more than 25 percent among patients with higher-deductible health plans with balances from $1,451 to $5,000. The payment rate is only 10.2 percent for higher-deductible patients with balances of $5,001 through $7,500, 4.1 percent for $7,501 through $10,000, and 0.9 percent for accounts with a self-pay balance at more than $10,000.
Access the full analysis here.
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