3 ways to boost patient satisfaction and financial performance

When you think of patient satisfaction, patient payments is probably not the first thing that comes to mind. But, if you take a deeper look into your patient payment processes, you’ll find a lot of avoidable inefficiencies. These can lead to hassles and inconveniences for your patients. Getting rid of them could be the key to a better overall patient experience.

You already know that accepting patient payments can be cumbersome. Billing staff members spend a lot of time every day on fragmented, manual processes that could easily be centralized and automated.

Let’s dive into a few of the things in your patient payment processes that frustrate your patients and waste staff time and discuss how to fix them.

1. Centralize payment processes

Many organizations still use a collection of payment paths and processes. Your patients may pay you with cards, cash and checks at point of service, but they also mail checks to your office that have to be batched or scanned and deposited. If you have an online payment option, it may only accept cards and route payments through another vendor with an entirely separate process.

All those payment avenues should make patient payments more convenient, but they often have the opposite effect. They’re fragmented and confusing, and they leave your staff and your patients in difficult situations.

If you can centralize all your patient payment avenues, you can save time for your staff and give your patients more payment options.

2. Automate bookkeeping processes

Of course, accepting payments is only the beginning. After you accept patient payments, you have to log everything and ensure that your books are in order.

Daily balancing is a cumbersome and painstaking task. In reconciliation, your front desk staff have to pull data from banks and card processor reports, track cash taken in each day and ensure that all transactions balance correctly.

And what happens when a patient needs a receipt or refund from previous services? With different processes, finding and fulfilling this request can take precious time. Patients feel neglected, and staff are left with unnecessary added work.

If you switch to a single source for payment processing, you can eliminate these inefficiencies and free your front desk staff to focus on your patients.

3. Offer automated payment plans

How do you handle patient payment plans? Does the burden of monitoring payments fall on your staff? When payment plans aren’t automated, your front desk and billing staff are tasked with keeping track of every patient’s payment schedules, notifying patients when payments are due and following up after payments are made or if payments are late.

Organizations spend a lot of time sending statements and following up on outstanding balances, but that’s not necessary when you automate the process. Payments can be processed automatically each month, and you can greatly accelerate A/R while cutting down on collections. Once claims are adjudicated and accounts receivable are determined, you can charge the correct balance without a lot of extra work.

Increase patient satisfaction with Inovalon

We help providers across healthcare, from billing agencies to large hospitals, streamline their patient payment processes every day. With a single solution, Inovalon’s Patient Payment Management (formerly ABILITY SECUREPAY), you can collect more revenue faster while enhancing patient convenience with card-on-file services and automated payment plans. At the same time, you can boost patient satisfaction by offering more payment options for your patients, including online options and check payments.

To discover how you can streamline your patient payment process and capture 100% of your patient payments in a single solution, learn more about Patient Payment Management.

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