Consumers in all industries, including healthcare, are increasingly craving a digital and seamless billing experience.
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 their bills, explained John Talaga, executive vice president of healthcare at Flywire, during a featured session at Becker's October Health IT + RCM Virtual Event.
"While lots more consumers, patients are using digital there is still a big affordability problem. It doesn't matter what channel that they are using [to pay their bills], whether it's offline or online, if they can't afford the balance," Mr. Talaga said.
To improve the billing experience as well as collections, providers should consider offering their patients flexible payment plans, Mr. Talaga explained.
In a survey, Flywirefound that 90 percent of consumers want a payment plan for uncovered costs, but just 44 percent currently use a payment plan. Additionally, the survey found that 57 percent of patients said they prefer to get a payment plan ahead of their visit or at the time of service.
During the featured session, sponsored by Flywire, Leslie Richard, system vice president of revenue cycle at CommonSpirit Health, and Mack Wright, system director of revenue cycle at CommonSpirit Health, discussed how Flywire helped the system improve patient satisfaction and collections from patients.
Chicago-based CommonSpirit was formed in February 2019 through the merger of San Francisco-based Dignity Health and Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives. Specifically, Ms. Richard and Mr. Wright discussed how the 68-hospital CHI was able to revamp its patient billing experience by improving statement design, offering self-service payment plans and providing more online bill pay options.
CHI's revenue cycle challenges
Before updating its processes, CHI outsourced its revenue cycle functions to a third-party vendor, which led to a highly fragmented patient payment experience, Ms. Richard said. Specifically, the health system lacked control of the patient statement, some affiliated hospitals didn't have an online payment option and patients had to call to set up payment plans. Ms. Richard said this was partially due to the complexity of CHI's hospitals using five different EMRs.
Despite the challenges, CHI had a huge opportunity to improve collections and patient satisfaction with the billing experience. CHI set several organizational goals on its journey, including that it wanted to stay with its current bank, automate payment plans and increase transparency into self-pay financial reporting.
In addition, CHI wanted to create a personalized financial experience for patients and adopt a standardized methodology regardless of the EMR the affiliated hospital used to rid the system of the fragmented patient experience and create a more "retail-like" one.
"We wanted to create that personalized experience, that one that says I'm not just standing in line with everyone else," Ms. Richard said.
CHI's strategy for an improved patient financial experience.
CHI began its journey to a better financial experience by partnering with Flywire and getting a basic online payment option deployed at all of its facilities, Mr. Wright said.
"This was a critical move for us … making sure that we could provide that option was a really big win across the enterprise," Mr. Wright said.
Then, CHI began focusing on providing post-visit payment options for patients. This included improving the patient statement design, offering payment plans to patients and improving self-service functionality.
Since fall of 2019, given that a majority of patients want a payment plan at the time of their visit or before, CHI is working to provide pre-service payment options. Specifically, CHI is working to create estimates for patients before their scheduled visit and connecting those pre-service options to the post-service workflow, Mr. Wright explained.
Looking to the future, CHI is evaluating more enhancements to its billing experience, including establishing a single sign-on within Epic MyChart, how to offer more flexibility to patients that need it and how to leverage a more robust propensity to pay scoring, to provide even more customized payment options. "We want to put more self-service options in the patient's hands [and reduce] the need for a call for someone that might need additional flexibility," Mr. Wright said.
CHI's results
With the patient financial experience optimized through Flywire, more than 75 percent of the health system's patients have self-activated payment plans.
In terms of cash collected, CHI saw a 10 percent increase in patient payments in fiscal year 2020 compared to fiscal year 2019, Mr. Wright said. In addition, the health system saw a 156 percent increase in online payments in fiscal 2020, compared to fiscal 2019.
Overall, patients expect the same seamless and personalized experiences that other brands have delivered for years. However, the healthcare industry has the affordability challenge. One way hospitals can improve collections, while also improving the experience and affordability for patients, is by offering flexible payment options that fit patients' needs.
To view the presentation OnDemand, click here.