Back on December 31st, Rajesh was a guest on the eHealth radio podcast, " Tackling the New Dynamics of Patient Revenue Cycle Management in the Era of Healthcare Consumerism with Eric Michaels. On the podcast, Rajesh touched on several topics related to the reality and after effects of patients now being the primary payer in revenue cycle management.
Rajesh started the interview by discussing the fast rise of patient as the primary payer of healthcare expenses due to the sharp increase in high deductible health plans (HDHPs), and the fact that practices need to find a way to adjust accordingly. There are several different payment methods to ensure that practices are optimizing patient payments. One that Rajesh mentioned, and Health iPASS uses, is allowing patients to keep a credit card on file (CCOF) to pay for any residual balances that may be owed post insurance claim adjudication. Not only does the CCOF help patients manage healthcare expenses, it can also significantly improve medical practice cash flow by quickly reducing days in accounts receivable (A/R).
With the rise of HDHPs, patients are responsible for more of their medical bill. As a result, price transparency is becoming increasingly important in the revenue cycle. Rajesh also discussed how as a result of higher out-of-pocket (OOP) costs, trust between provider and patient is more important now than ever.
“Every patient that walks into their [doctor’s office] wonders how it will impact what comes out of their pocket,” said Voddiraju, “Trust has been sorely missing in healthcare. We need to be getting more patients to believe in the billing process.”
Patients are also looking for greater price transparency and a breakdown of what they may owe for specific procedures once their insurance process the claim. That's why offering cost estimates pre-arrival, at point-of-service, at claim submission, and pre-surgery is critical to establish price transparency that builds patient trust and patient retention.
“Consumers are beginning to demand [price transparency]. There needs to be a very consumer-friendly way to making the technology.” Rajesh mentioned, “Both consumer and state/federal regulatory demands are requiring practices to rethink their revenue cycle from the time of scheduling all the way through providing and promoting price transparency.”
Additionally, Rajesh also talked about about the Health iPASS patient revenue cycle solution. Practices using the Health iPASS revenue cycle solution are recognizing 97% collection of residual balances when patients check in using the Health iPASS kiosk and place a CCOF. He mentioned how Health iPASS is taking advantage of the new technology to improve the revenue cycle for medical practices.
“Health iPASS has been able to leverage technologies such as machine learning to study information available in medical billing systems and present this in real-time at the point of service through a user-friendly, easy-to-understand patient revenue cycle solution that brings a level of price transparency to the consumer on the front end.”
Lastly, Rajesh discussed the future of healthcare. He has mentioned many times that automation and technology are at the forefront of the future for the patient revenue cycle in healthcare. In one of our recent blog posts, he reiterated that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotic process automation (RPA) to streamline back-end practice tasks such as insurance eligibility and patient demographic checks, patient payment posting, and appointment reminders, will become increasingly common.
Health iPASS would like to thank Eric Michaels and the eHealth Radio Netwoek for having Raj on their program and allowing him to share the benefits of the Health iPASS revenue cycle solution. You can listen to the podcast by following this link. Read More
