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?
Somewhere along the way, a perception took hold in health care--that talking with patients about money was a direct path to dissatisfaction. In this blog, I’m going to turn this assumption on its head. Is it possible that hospitals are getting it backwards—that in fact, patients are dissatisfied because they want to talk about money and no one is having this conversation with them? If so, it certainly calls into question many of the processes we use in the revenue cycle today. But it might also offer hospitals a path to achieving earlier resolution of accounts--by tapping into what patients really want.
I recently read with great interest that Avery Comarow, director of U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals and other healthcare rankings, recently retired after 31 years with the organization. [1]
It was great seeing Suzanne Lestina, our Vice President of Revenue Cycle Innovation, expounding on the 43rd Annual NAHAM conference theme “The Patient Experience” with her presentation, Empowering Patients to Take an Active Role in their Financial Outcomes: UnityPoint Health Case Study in Dallas, TX on April 27th.
We’re excited to share some of the innovative ways two of our clients and our patient financing provider are implementing payment liability strategies and transforming the Patient Financial Experience.
Thanks for the info John!
At Avadyne Health’s 2017 Market Roundtable, Mark Rukavina, Principal, Community Health Advisors, LLC, walked attendees through an in-depth look into factors that both shape and reflect the current state of the Patient Financial Experience.
Rukavina’s consumer-oriented perspective on the patient financial experience dove deep into external influences on patients’ financial situations and motivations and focused on the topics of affordability, community and the patient perspective.
