Strategies to Improve Medical Billing, Payment and Patient Satisfaction

STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE MEDICAL BILLING, PAYMENT AND PATIENT SATISFACTION This article discusses the strategies that could help providers enhance patient billing, payments and satisfaction.

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2018

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A new survey by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) shows that price transparency, email capture, electronic billing and keeping a credit card on file can help improve billing, reimbursement, and patient satisfaction. Partnering with medical billing companies can help speed up the billing process and ensure timely reimbursement.

 Price Transparency Hospitals, clinics and other healthcare settings must provide cost estimates for medical services or procedures to the patients upon request. This makes the healthcare pricing less confusing and more transparent, thereby helping patients to determine how much they must pay out-of-pocket before receiving care. In fact, many people are calling for greater price transparency in health care. Price transparency has a number of positive consequences. It is an important information gathering tool for people who want to compare prices and thereby make more informed decisions about their health care. In addition to that, it also helps lower the cost of health care. The task force recommends different price transparency frameworks for different care purchaser groups, as the care purchaser’s information needs and sources vary.

Transparency tools for insured patients should include some essential elements of price information, such asthe total estimated price of the service, a clear indication of whether a particular provider is in the health plan’s network and information on where the patient can try to locate a network provider, a clear statement of the patient’s estimated

out-of-pocket payment responsibility and other relevant

information related to the provider or the specific service sought.

Price transparency frameworks for uninsured and out-of-network patients should reflect basic considerations such as:  An estimated price for a standard procedure without complications

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 Make

clear

to

the

patient

how

complications

or

other

unforeseen

circumstances may increase the price  Clearly communicate preservice estimates of prices to uninsured patients and patients seeking care on an out-of-network basis  Clearly communicate to patients what all services are included and what are not included in a price estimate  If any services that would have significant price implications for the patient are not included in the price estimate, the provider should try to provide information on where the patient could obtain this information  They should also give patients other relevant information such as clinical outcomes, patient safety, or patient satisfaction scores.

The survey report of MGMA shows that 79 percent of ambulatory organization respondents can produce a cost estimate upon request, while only 69 percent of hospital respondent scan do this task.

 Getting Email Address from Patients Email is the most common method used for communication now. A recent study by Kaiser-Permanente (KP) found that most of the patients like to communicate directly with their providers online. It is the best function people use most often on their smartphones. The KP study found42 percent of those surveyed felt that email reduced their phone contacts, 36 percent said it cut down in-person office visits, and 32 percent reported that emailing improved their overall health. Email helps keep receptionists off the phone, thereby allowing them to spend more time with patients in the office. In fact, asking for email addresses does not violate a patient’s privacy or security, rather it helps build better relationships with the patients and be better able to hold them over time, save time and money, increase cash flow, and minimize A/R.

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 Electronic Billing Electronically submitting a bill, or claim to a health insurance company or payer for the rendering of medical services helps healthcare providers reduce the time and cost to a great extent. Procedures for sending medical bills via email involves getting written permission from the patient to send their bills via email, saving file to a .pdf format, protecting the .pdf with a password that is known by both parties, attaching the file to an email, and finally, sending the email.

Even though 52 percent patients prefer electronic billing, 77 percent group practices still send paper bills. Another study conducted in January also showed the same trend, where 52 percent of patients preferring electronic billing and 89 percent of providers still using regular mail.

 Credit card on file (CCOF) Storing credit card data on file is highly beneficial to revenue cycle management and helps reduce patient bad debt or write off, minimize days in patient A/R and cost of collections.

In fact, practices and hospitals must pay attention to these trends among patients, who now act more like retail consumers, who will go where their needs and preferences are met optimally.

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