How patients experience financial-related encounters at hospitals may be as important to their overall perceived experience as clinical quality, especially as patients take on more financial responsibility for the healthcare services they receive.
A recent study by TransUnion Healthcare found that out-of-pocket patient costs for healthcare rose 22 percent in just one year. The study compared patient co-pays, co-insurance and deductibles for the fourth quarter of 2011 to the fourth quarter of 2012 for five common procedures and found that out-of-pocket costs increased from an average of $1,678 in Q4 2011 to $2,042 in Q2 2012.
Milton Silva Craig, president of TransUnion Healthcare, says this increase is concerning for hospitals because if patients can't afford their increasing costs, the burden shifts to the hospital. "Uncompensated care and consumer/patient responsibly are increasing," he says.
As responsibility shifts to patients, hospitals will find themselves interacting directly with patients more often. In the past, a large majority of financial interactions focused on dealings with payers; now patients are more actively in the mix, and this can impact a hospital's performance.
"A poor financial experience, a billing experience, for a patient, leads to a direct poor experience on the overall healthcare experience," explains Mr. Silva Craig. "So you have a hospital that does a great job of providing clinical service only to do a poor job on the patient financial billing process and that will yield a poor patient experience to the extent that they will choose not to receive certain services from that hospital if it was indeed a bad experience."
More Articles on Patient Finances:
Report: Patient Out-of-Pocket Payments Rose 22% in 2012
Study: Hospital Billing Limits Improved Access for Uninsured
Survey: 89% of Patients Want to Know Medical Costs in Advance