The PFX Voice

Many hospitals are experiencing changes in patient financial services call volumes and operational complexity since the COVID-19 pandemic began. These calls often require a coordinated and consistent response, since the types of questions and comments can become emotionally charged and customers need faster and informative help more than ever. To serve customers effectively in this dynamic environment, hospitals are best served by data-driven responses to customer concerns surfacing from real-time speech analytics. 

A few years ago after my father died, I pored over the  bills we received from the hospital. Even with a background in healthcare revenue cycle, I couldn't make sense of some of them. I remember thinking, "If I can't understand these bills with all my years of experience in healthcare, how could the average person make sense of statements like these?"

Since then, I've been passionate about driving change in healthcare - in particular, around the patient financial experience. Recently, I shared insight on ways providers can design a better patient financial experience in a podcast with Gary David, PhD, Professor of Sociology, Professor of Information Design and Corporate Communication and the Founder of ethno-analytics, LLC, which focuses on integrated design and experience alignment. 

I’ve heard the same complaint recently from several hospital administrators. The scenarios are all pretty similar: They implemented a payment portal with very high hopes, sometimes stemming from promises made by vendors. But they got disappointing results.

If a patient complained so vehemently about an unpleasant collection encounter that it reached the CEO’s office, is that an indication that the hospital’s Patient Financial Experience is terrible? What if the same CEO, on the same day, gets a letter from a different patient raving about the registrar who brightened her day while collecting a $25 copay? Should you take it as a sign that the financial experience you offer is extremely high quality?