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How Investing in a Payment Solution Can Improve Your Organization’s Financial Health
Mental health providers are only as successful as they are accessible. However, a fragmented and costly health system in the US holds many patients back from receiving the care they need. Boston College research indicates Americans reported rates of depression and anxiety 6 times higher during the first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic versus 2019. Considering the continued escalating need for mental health services, it is alarming that up to a third of Americans are canceling therapy sessions due to out-of-pocket costs, while 39% report reduced frequency of therapy sessions to save money—all of which influences a provider’s ability to serve both patients and its bottom line.
Assessing your payment process can be one factor within your control to attract and retain patients. New modern payment solutions can help patients clearly understand charges and existing balances, and offer multiple channels to patients for easier communication. Leveraging a simplified payment solution can be a key component to helping to maintain a positive patient/provider relationship and ensure successful payment resolution.
There are several surprising culprits in the payment process that can put revenue at risk. Here are some examples of how modern payment solutions are helping provider organizations address them once and for all.
Reduce Data Entry Errors
Entering patient contact information through a traditional, manual data entry process is time-consuming and more prone to errors. Incorrect contact or payment information ultimately impacts the ability to collect on payments—and leads to more frustrating staff hours wasted in pursuit of correcting details and obtaining payments. Adopting modern payment technology can turn the tide and reduce those errors by allowing patients to enter their own contact and payment information. As a result, office staff will have reliable contact details to secure payment and need less time to track down updated addresses for their patients.
Leverage Telehealth Popularity
Telehealth has grown exponentially in recent years, which can be a great convenience to both health practices and their patients. Even as the world adjusts to the pandemic aftermath, telemedicine continues to be a patient-approved mental health choice: 49% of surveyed patients report they would be willing to use telehealth for talk therapy. However, having more telehealth appointments means fewer in-office visits with time-of-service payments. Patient payment technology can close the gap and provide reliable and secure solutions for telehealth patients to pay in full, along with clear digital communication reminders about existing balances in a manner chosen by the patient. Patients can also access their patient portal for additional details as needed, which creates a feeling of trust and transparency.
Communicate Balances More Effectively
The days of paper statement effectiveness as primary billing communications are over. Today’s technology has changed the way we interact, and providers can now reach patients through text messages (SMS), email, or traditional mail based on their preference. While traditional methods relied on paper statements that could take weeks or months to arrive to the patient, text message and email updates and reminders arrive in minutes, making the process easier and quicker. These can also be set to a custom reminder schedule with an automated set-it-and-forget-it feature, meaning staff no longer have to manually follow up and will have time for other tasks.
Capture Time-of-Service Payments
A pediatric surgery center in Greensboro, North Carolina, found that it often took weeks to get any patient response to their paper statements after an office visit. The center instead adopted a digital payment solution with an on-site payment terminal to easily capture time-of-service payments. This increased convenience and simplified the process for the patients. The 1-click payment option also could securely retain a credit card on file for future use and accept multiple forms of payment, including Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Maintaining the financial health of a mental health organization must be a priority to guarantee future growth and capacity to serve patients. Receiving, processing, and collecting on patient payments has an enormous impact on the bottom line, and previous manual methods only exacerbated payment issues with errors, limited ability to process payment at time of service and ineffective balance communications. As telehealth’s popularity surged, its limitations became abundantly clear. Switching to a digital payment technology allows organizations to step into the future of consistent and impactful patient balance communications, drive more reliable payment resolution, preserve staff hours for high priority tasks, and ultimately better serve patients.
d'Artagnan Osborne is the general manager of payment solutions at Kareo.
The views expressed in Perspectives are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Behavioral Healthcare Executive, the Psychiatry & Behavioral Health Learning Network, or other Network authors. Perspectives entries are not medical advice.
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