Anne Rose, vice president for revenue cycle at Lee Memorial Health System, a five-hospital public system in Fort Myers, Fla., explains how Lee Memorial is trying to make billing more patient-friendly.
Question: How did you get interested in patient-friendly billing?
Anne Rose: It's been clear for a long time that medical billing isn't designed for the customer. It's designed for the third-party payor. There is a lot of detail and special codes that even hospital staff have to learn. The Healthcare Financial Management Association has the Patient Friendly Billing project, which helps hospitals come up with strategies to make billing ore understandable and manageable.
Q: What strategy has Lee Memorial been pursuing?
AR: In the first two weeks of June, we held four focus groups with former patients at four of our locations, in sessions were led by a professional facilitator. We went through a series of questions, about the statements, the billing process, communications and our secure patient portal, where patients can pay their balances online.
Q: What did you find out?
AR: Different people want different things from us. Some actually want an itemized bill detailing every service they had. Others said, 'Please don’t send me the whole bill. It’s too much and I probably won’t read it." And then there was everything in between. They would also like to have the opportunity to bring in bills that confuse them and have them reviewed.
Q: What do you plan to do?
AR: We want to give patients the opportunity to customize their experience. We want to give them choices. We'd like to ask them, what do you want to see, how do you want to see it, and when? Do you want to see the full, itemized bill or a shorter version? Do you want a paper copy, an e-mail version or something on the patient portal? Do you want to see the bill at different stages or just when you are asked to pay something?
Q: Do you also want to offer advice on bills, as the focus groups also requested?
AR: We'd like to offer patients an opportunity to bring in all of the bills and have someone on our billing staff look at them over. This could be done in a kind of billing clinic for patients. It could be held on a Saturday and rotate through the campuses. We don't know how many people would come, so we'd first want to try out a pilot. If you have too few billing staff there, they could get overwhelmed.
In these sessions, patients would be able to bring in any bill, no matter who sent it. The bill could be from Medicare or a supplemental insurer. When the payor processes a bill, it sends a copy to the patient to tell them the bill has been processed. This can be confusing for the patient and you can imagine how quickly this paperwork can mount up.
Learn more about Lee Memorial Health System.
Learn more about HFMA's Patient Friendly Billing project.
Question: How did you get interested in patient-friendly billing?
Anne Rose: It's been clear for a long time that medical billing isn't designed for the customer. It's designed for the third-party payor. There is a lot of detail and special codes that even hospital staff have to learn. The Healthcare Financial Management Association has the Patient Friendly Billing project, which helps hospitals come up with strategies to make billing ore understandable and manageable.
Q: What strategy has Lee Memorial been pursuing?
AR: In the first two weeks of June, we held four focus groups with former patients at four of our locations, in sessions were led by a professional facilitator. We went through a series of questions, about the statements, the billing process, communications and our secure patient portal, where patients can pay their balances online.
Q: What did you find out?
AR: Different people want different things from us. Some actually want an itemized bill detailing every service they had. Others said, 'Please don’t send me the whole bill. It’s too much and I probably won’t read it." And then there was everything in between. They would also like to have the opportunity to bring in bills that confuse them and have them reviewed.
Q: What do you plan to do?
AR: We want to give patients the opportunity to customize their experience. We want to give them choices. We'd like to ask them, what do you want to see, how do you want to see it, and when? Do you want to see the full, itemized bill or a shorter version? Do you want a paper copy, an e-mail version or something on the patient portal? Do you want to see the bill at different stages or just when you are asked to pay something?
Q: Do you also want to offer advice on bills, as the focus groups also requested?
AR: We'd like to offer patients an opportunity to bring in all of the bills and have someone on our billing staff look at them over. This could be done in a kind of billing clinic for patients. It could be held on a Saturday and rotate through the campuses. We don't know how many people would come, so we'd first want to try out a pilot. If you have too few billing staff there, they could get overwhelmed.
In these sessions, patients would be able to bring in any bill, no matter who sent it. The bill could be from Medicare or a supplemental insurer. When the payor processes a bill, it sends a copy to the patient to tell them the bill has been processed. This can be confusing for the patient and you can imagine how quickly this paperwork can mount up.
Learn more about Lee Memorial Health System.
Learn more about HFMA's Patient Friendly Billing project.