Although COVID-19 vaccinations are finally paving the way for a more stable operating environment, more disruptive market changes are on the horizon. Healthcare leaders are considering the impact of these shifts on their organizations' financial plans and the overall patient experience.
During a virtual roundtable discussion sponsored by Patientco as part of Becker's 6th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference, session participants shared how they are building revenue resilience during challenging times. Three featured speakers were:
- Mike Simms, vice president, revenue cycle at Cone Health in Greensboro, N.C.
- Ben Patel, chief information officer at Cone Health in Greensboro, N.C.
- Bird Blitch, chief executive officer and co-founder of Patientco
Five key takeaways were:
- Technology can put more control in patients' hands. Convenience often drives innovation, a trend that Mr. Blitch expects to continue in healthcare. "Touchless communication, such as real-time chat, is gaining in popularity. Any time we can integrate into people's workstreams, we get results faster," he explained. A recent Patientco survey found that 68 percent of providers are using patient self-service payment plans. When patients have more control over and understanding of their financial responsibility, that translates into lower cost to collect and higher patient satisfaction.
- As hospital margins shrink, mergers will accelerate. "It's all about scale," Mr. Simms said. "How do you serve the public when you have margins of 1 or 2 percent, and payers are squeezing you more and more? I think you will see more partnerships among hospital systems, especially in rural areas. Many won't survive otherwise." The move to remote work during the pandemic is also causing hospitals to reexamine their office space in an effort to cut costs.
- Telehealth is gaining acceptance. Thanks to COVID-19, telehealth adoption has taken off. Although some payers expect lower reimbursements for telehealth, health systems see opportunity. A participant from an Ohio-based health system noted that her organization has capitalized on telehealth by doing inpatient specialist consults for patients in rural hospitals. "We already had the foundation built, so it was easy to partner with bigger hospitals. We used technology to serve people in our community, and we retained that patient revenue by treating them in our facilities."
- To compete with new market entrants, healthcare systems must improve patient access. "The reason why consumers go to CVS, Walmart and Amazon is for ease of access," Mr. Patel said. "We need to create an on-demand service model and an anywhere operations model to serve patients and consumers leveraging medical records data along with our relationship with them."
Other health systems have also recognized that patient access is a problem. A health system in North Carolina, for example, is offering same-day and next-day appointments for cardiology, gynecology and orthopedics. These services represent 25 percent of all specialty appointments. - Affordability is a persistent patient concern. Cone Health has committed to educate patients about their insurance benefits, as well as offer payment plans and a recourse loan program. Cone is also launching digital tools to reduce the patient cost for medications by aggregating coupons, discounts, pharmaceutical company reimbursement programs and grant funds.
"To build trust between patients and providers, we need to eliminate financial concerns and reduce patient confusion. Every patient is different, and we need to communicate in unique ways, so people can interact with the healthcare system that they want and they deserve," Mr. Blitch said.
To learn more about the event, click here.