A significant share of today’s hospital and doctor reimbursements now come from patients rather than commercial payers, yet many providers haven’t updated their collection practices. As charge amounts on medical bills continue to rise, healthcare providers are increasingly challenged to collect the high deductible amounts owed them. Patients are also more conscious of how much they spend on healthcare services as medical costs consume an increasingly large portion of their paychecks.
Ten years ago, high deductibles were an innovative way to reduce employer healthcare spending and encourage policyholders to shop and compare costs when choosing healthcare services. Now, the recent popularity of high deductible health plans has caused many patients to experience difficulty paying medical bills, causing a significant consumer medical debt problem downstream.
There is a definite link between high deductibles and bad debt. Medical bills are the highest cause of bankruptcy in America according to multiple studies. The Kaiser Family Foundation and The New York Times found 20 percent of insured patients reported having difficulty paying for their medical care within the past year.
What can be done to ameliorate this financial challenge?
GeBBS Healthcare Solutions provides a suite of self-pay collection solutions that can help healthcare providers cope with this new phenomenon. We start with a remotely-hosted Centralized Eligibility Unit for hospitals, faculty practice plans, PMS/EMR vendors, and billing companies. The solution consists of GeBBS staff, technology, management and expertise that delivers high-quality, cost-effective patient insurance eligibility and related services. We then follow-up with proven self-pay collection solutions.
A 2009 McKinsey study found that 74 percent of insured consumers indicated that they are both able and willing to pay their out-of-pocket medical expenses up to $1,000 per year and 90 percent would pay for medical expenses up to $500 per year.
Reasons for a rise in self-pay bad debts are due in part to inefficient and ineffective collection practices followed by billing companies and physician practices. Providing the patient with easy access to patient statements that are easy to understand will help drive higher patient collections.
The GeBBS self-pay collections team uses technology-enabled practices to maximize patient contact using:
- Automated dialers
- Digital messaging campaigns
- Mobile technology to drive text messaging campaigns
The GeBBs Self-Pay Collections team leverages analytics to arrive at the best time to contact and propensity to pay scores to create outbound campaigns that are patient experience-oriented, non-obtrusive, and drive higher patient connect ratios
We work with the patients and offer them flexible payment options and easy access to payment and capability for capabilities for web, phone, credit card, and e-check payments.
