- High patient volume.
- Enhanced reputation in the highly competitive healthcare market.
- Ability to attract and retain patients.
- Improved loyal customer base.
Have you achieved these goals successfully? Or still, struggling to secure a top position among patients? If not, then it’s the right time to take initiative to meet the expectations of your customers. Particularly, when it comes to both financial as well as care management. Have you ever thought that medical billing has a direct impact on your patient? It may sound weird. Because just like other physicians, you might think that billing is only crucial to make your business profitable and stable.
But the role of medical coding and billing is not just limited to the success of your healthcare business. It is also imperative to improve patients’ satisfaction. The majority of medical practitioners ignore the importance of their patient’s financial experience. They just pay attention to improve their patient’s experience by providing standard medical aid. Quality medical care is undoubtedly the primary objective of healthcare providers. But you need to understand the ways medical billing can impact your patients and enhance your reputation from good to great.
What Do Patients Want?
In this modern era, everyone is looking for maximum ease when it comes to understanding and paying medical bills. Patients want the options, by which they can pay their medical bills without burden or frustration. But unfortunately, despite the latest advancements in the healthcare industry. Some medical facilities are still relying on outdated methods for preparing to send and collect payments from patients.
However, in order to stay in the competition, attract and retain patients, healthcare providers should embrace the innovations in their billing system. They should start implementing a consumer-like, personalized approach. Particularly while dealing with patients’ medical invoices, co-pays, and deductibles. Below mentioned are some of the basic factors that almost every patient expects from their medical care providers.
1. Transparency
It’s very crucial for the patients to stay informed of what they are being charged and exactly for what procedures. Transparency matters a lot when patients pay out of their pockets for the healthcare services they receive. So, it is the responsibility of your billing staff to prepare comprehensive medical bills. They should not use complicated medical jargon that is difficult to understand.
Moreover, the price for every treatment, equipment, and medical care service should be clearly and fairly mentioned in the bills. So, patients can get a better idea about their financial responsibility and pay without facing hurdles.
2. Estimates Prior to Care
Healthcare providers should make sure that their front desk staff gives a clear picture of the costs associated with the services. That a patient is going to receive. They should provide a real-time detailed picture of a patient’s full responsibility at or before the time of services. Giving appropriate cost estimates help patients to make more informed decisions about their treatments and financial obligations.
Additionally, the majority of the patients complain they receive their medical bill weeks after the procedures were completed. And most of the time they witness an amount higher than their expectations. This situation can be a huge hurdle in collecting payments from the patients. As they may feel overwhelmed and ignore the bill to avoid dealing with the high balance. Here’s a question that arises: how can medical practitioners avoid this inconvenience? The best solution is to provide an accurate estimate of the costs upfront. While making it clear that these estimates may not be exact but are close to the final amount.
3. Payment Reminders
Sending alerts to patients when the due date reaches nearer is the best way to remind people about their responsibility. In addition to this, automated messages sent prior to appointments via voice message, email, or text can inform patients of co-payments and out-of-pocket costs. Furthermore, the use of cutting-edge technology in new ways can help both patients and providers overcome healthcare cost challenges.
4. Flexible Payment Options
It has been observed that medical practitioners, offering traditional and manual payment methods witness fewer collections as compared to those who provide online options to pay the dues. So, in order to streamline your cash flow and make your medical practice financially healthy. It has become necessary to enable patients to self-select payment options that work best for their unique financial situation. For example, you can offer them multiple methods such as payments via credit/debit cards, phone banking, online patient payment portals, etc.
Why Does a Patient’s Financial Experience Matters?
A poor financial experience can undermine your reputation. No matter how hard you work to alleviate your peoples’ sufferings, poor billing experience can leave a negative effect on your healthcare practice. According to patients’ opinion, they always give preference to the healthcare organization, where everyone has a fantastic financial experience. Here are the following reasons that justify the fact that you should always be clear about your billing statements.
Incorrect medical codes could directly impact a patient’s treatment.
- Incomprehensible and complicated medical bills can hold patients back from paying their dues.
- Patients might feel reluctant to pay their co-pays due to the inefficient or orthodox payment options. Which negatively impacts your cash reserves.
- Failure to provide complete insights into estimated costs, terms, and conditions regarding payment policies can lead to negative word-of-mouth. That eventually impacts your reputation.
- Bad experience of patients: getting surprise bills, etc, can cause losing existing patients as well as attracting new ones.
- Builds trust between patients and healthcare practitioners.
However, if your patients aren’t happy with your billing strategies, then don’t waste your time further. You need to take action. To know your patient’s preferences, you can conduct a survey or deep analysis to know the expectations of your customers. In this way, you can design customized strategies to keep your patients happy and get better financial outcomes.
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