Patient-Friendly Strategy in Healthcare Revenue Cycle

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Patient-Friendly Strategy in Healthcare Revenue Cycle

From quality healthcare services to increased level of patient financial responsibility, the healthcare industry is facing a mighty evolution.

Now is the best time to learn some new tricks and strategies to sustain this ongoing change. The healthcare revenue cycle should consider extending a patient-focused strategy, according to Andrew Kouba.

How a Patient-Focused Healthcare Strategy Can Benefit Hospitals?

Being the CFO of Abilene Diagnostic Clinic, Kouba experienced a noteworthy change in services of the healthcare revenue cycle. When he initially joined in 2016, he found that patient accounts receivable (A/R) was at about 14%.

Also, the group of physicians was only concerned about maintaining their own bills and collections, and not putting attention to creating a patient portal. Clearly, Abilene’s revenue cycle was missing the vital participant at the center of care – ‘the Patient’.

While half of the patients continued to demand electronic medical payments and billing via the web-based platform or through the patient portal, there were only a few physicians who met their expectations. In addition to that, another demand is that patients look to the healthcare providers to maintain their financial record on file, grant them a provider website, and finally automate the medical payment plans and billing system.

On a recent survey by HIMSS Analytics, it was found out that hospitals still are not heeding towards consumers demands and are billing manually. Nearly about 20% of providers had the potential to store credit card details for their subjects.

So, overall providers failed to attain their goal of fulfilling patient’s requirements. As a result, physicians were working in the red.

However, improvements began to show within a year when a consolidated medical billing system was executed. This patient-focused system brought many positive changes, improved the Abilene’s revenue cycle metrics and patient A/R fell to two percent. Also, the group of physicians ended up collecting $9 more per visit than observed in 2015.

Kouba also emphasizes on creating self-service pathways to care. This is because it simplifies and automates the prepayment registration process for patients.

Implementing a Patient-Focused Revenue Cycle

Below strategies are suggested by Kouba to foster a patient-focused culture in the clinic.

Simplification of the patient registration process throughout the clinic.
Personalization is the key, particularly in a multispecialty crowd.
Design the registration platform in such a way that can help providers to garner patient’s details from multiple things like survey forms, screenings and other documents which are typically required to secure a visit. Even before a patient arrives for a doctor’s appointment, the entire patient’s data should be in the system.
A dehumanized process of patients data collection
Consolidated of the medical billing system
Medical practices should be equipped with a platform that gives patients ownership in doing front-end office tasks. This way patients will be more engaged and involved in the process. In the end, physicians will also see the improved results.
Likewise, patients should be aware of the front-end process and their insurance coverage.

What Healthcare Organizations Should Be Doing?

Consider your particular market space in order to figure out how to implement the best patient-focused experience across the clinic.
Listen to providers and receive their insights about the plan’s longevity, patient’s reaction, and cost-effectiveness.
Redesign the financial processes.
Avoid long waiting times for patients.

Conclusion

In order to earn improved collections and patient satisfaction, reworking the revenue cycle is a key component. Keep the patient in mind while designing the revenue cycle. Keep the primary focus on the betterment of patient outcomes. Healthcare providers should aim to remit a high-quality consumer-centric experience that can meet patient expectations and enhance collections.

Likewise, make the patient’s journey to the physician’s office a pleasant one so they perceive it as if they are going to the Disney’s FastPass. Similarly, healthcare provider needs should also be considered.