Many industries have made tasks, whether it's paying bills, buying a plane ticket or ordering a cup of coffee, easier and more transparent for consumers. These industry-disrupting technologies are uprooting expectations for consumers and pressuring health systems to rethink the patient financial experience.
During an Oct. 23 webinar sponsored by Flywire and hosted by Becker's Hospital Review, Leslie Richard, system vice president of revenue cycle at Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives (now CommonSpirit), and John Talaga, executive vice president and general manager of healthcare at Flywire, discussed the need to transform the patient billing experience and how CHI rolled out a patient-centric billing strategy to improve collections and satisfaction.
The healthcare industry's unique payment challenge
Along with changing consumer expectations, healthcare faces another big challenge when it comes to collecting payments compared to other industries: Patients can't always afford to pay their bills in full, Mr. Talaga explained.
The reality is that healthcare is often an unplanned expense, and patients are responsible for larger portions of their bills than ever before due to the rise of high-deductible health plans.
Research has shown that 47 percent of consumers would struggle to pay a $400 unplanned bill, and the average self-pay balance per patient at a health system is nearly $1,000, Mr. Talaga said.
"This creates a natural gap of affordability for the patient, which leads to a direct downstream impact on the hospitals in terms of collectability. … It may even be a collection rate that is unsustainable," Mr. Talaga said.
To successfully address these collection concerns and patient affordability, Catholic Health Initiatives revamped its patient billing experience by improving its statement design, offering self-service payment plans upfront and providing more online bill pay options.
CHI's success story
CHI, a 100-hospital system that is now part of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, understood that establishing a positive patient financial experience was necessary to improve collections; however, it faced several challenges that prevented it from delivering a seamless and convenient billing experience for patients.
"Given the foundation [of the system] — multiple EMRs, outsourced RCM services and lack of standardization — we lacked control of the patient statement, had fragmented online payment abilities, and patients had to call into our call centers to set up payment plans," Ms. Richard said. "The younger patients…they were just not going to do it."
To rid the system of the fragmented patient experience, CHI tapped Flywire to help.
CHI began its journey to a better financial experience by standardizing the statement design and increasing the modes of statement delivery to improve patient engagement with the system and offer patients more options to pay, Ms. Richard explained.
But CHI wanted to further improve the billing experience, so it set out to establish a payment support program that engaged, interacted with and collected payments from patients based on their ability to pay and payment choice. It also wanted to offer preservice estimates and remain compliant with payment card industry requirements.
The system that CHI now leverages automatically qualifies patient accounts to determine who needs financial support before a patient encounter, engages patients with tailored payment plan options upfront, and enables patients to self-activate those payment options. It is also Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant.
Through Flywire's platform, CHI was able to gain control of the statement and better engage its patients with online bill pay and personalized payment plans.
For example, before using the platform, CHI patients had to set up a payment plan through the call center. Today, about 70 percent of payment plans are now activated by the patients themselves, Ms. Richard explained.
In addition, there has been a significant increase in self-pay cash collected due to the payment plans, Ms. Richard said.
"We are running over $23 million per month in cash paid through payment plans, which is significantly improved," Ms. Richard said.
In addition, Ms. Richard cited improvements in patient satisfaction, transparency and performance tracking.
"We are changing the way the patients engage with us. …They have grown to not just accept it, but embrace it," Ms. Richard said.
Overall, patients today expect the same seamless and personalized experiences that other brands have delivered for years. It is time for the healthcare industry to catch up, and one way it can start is by providing flexible payment options that fit patients' needs.
To read more about CHI's successful patient-centered billing strategy, listen to the webinar here.
To learn more about Flywire, click here.