High-deductible health plans and the rising cost of care have placed an increased financial burden on patients to pay healthcare providers. Consequently, providers are collecting a decreasing portion of what patients owe. Are self-service patient options the panacea for providers to resolve these cash accounts to ensure their own financial health?
Self-service Payment Options
Self-service patient payment options have emerged in an effort to drive patient payments. By offering the convenience of online self-pay, companies that offer self-service payment solutions such as text-to-pay, website access and online apps are hoping that convenience will stimulate higher payment rates from patients.
Does Self-service Increase Collections?
Meduit conducted a case study to analyze what drives patient payments and best practices for increasing collections on dollars owed. In the case study, the Meduit team found that human contact is essential to increasing collections.
Diving deeper into the numbers, the Meduit case study shows that:
- 50% of patients prefer to speak to someone regarding paying their bill
- 60% of patients who began to use self-service technologies ultimately gave up and called in for assistance in either completing their payment arrangements or wanting additional information before paying
Without the opportunity of speaking to a person, self-service solutions fall short of a comprehensive solution that offers human contact. Not offering human contact actually works against providers and decreases patient engagement without any cash benefit.
Download our new issue brief and learn more about solutions that increase patient payments:
