Payment responsibility is shifting from traditional insurers to patients due to the rise of health plans with high out-of-pocket costs. To successfully navigate this trend, provider organizations must focus on improving billing flexibility and transparency for patients.
Initiatives to improve the patient billing experience have become even more vital amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis has not only placed significant financial stress on hospitals and health systems across the U.S., but many consumers are feeling the financial hit as well. And, when it comes to prioritizing bill payments, consumers often pay off medical bills last, according to a survey from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Carilion Clinic, a seven-hospital system with 13,000 employees in Roanoke, Va., saw the importance of improving the patient billing process and tapped VisitPay to help.
"We recognized that we needed to have a technological solution that would allow us to be more flexible for our patients, [allow us] to interact with patients in more innovative and modern ways, and put the capabilities for managing patient financial responsibilities in the hands of patients themselves and to move us into more of a facilitator role with that relationship," Carilion Clinic CFO Don Halliwill said during a Becker's Healthcare Podcast episode.
In the podcast, Mr. Halliwill speaks with Will Reilly,VisitPay's vice president of client and consumer marketing,about the hardships the system is facing amid the COVID-19 pandemic, how the pandemic altered Carilion's revenue cycle team strategy, the changing trends in patient financial responsibility and the success of its partnership with VisitPay.
To listen to the full podcast and learn more about the partnership, click here.