August 30, 2012 •Brian Watson
From cleaning products to cars, green products and services are everywhere these days.
And it’s easy to see why. Climate change continues to be a major story. And consumers have not only taken note, they’ve adjusted their habits and buying intentions according. An EcoPinon survey found that 90% of Americans value energy efficiency. And a 2011 OgilvyEarth study echoes that sentiment, reporting that 79% of Americans recycle and 82% of Americans report green buying plans.
Corporations are beginning to follow suit as well, with the result being a general greening of core business activities and an increased focus on sustainability. According to the 2009 IDC Green IT & Sustainability Study, 92% of the companies surveyed reported that they hope to move clients from print to online services within 12 months. MITSloan Management Review concurs, suggesting that 59% of businesses surveyed planned to increase their sustainability commitments.
And while that’s all good news for both businesses and consumers, the bottom line still usually comes first. That same MITSloan Management Review study claimed 70% of sustainability embracers believe that their initiatives have helped them outperform competitors. And of the 82% of Americans with green buying intentions in the OgilvyEarth study, only 16% have true green resolve when making a purchase decision.
The Financial Benefit of Green Business Practices
Fortunately, green processes usually provide the goods in that respect, too. From lower costs to leaner, faster business activities, they tend to offer a pretty sweet financial payoff.
And green initiatives in healthcare are no different. EMR has been reported to offer savings of up to 6% over paper records (not to mention the HITECH Medicare/Medcaid incentives that go along with it). Paperless claims are faster and provide greater access than traditional options. And lean patient billing practices – whether paper or EBPP – have a myriad of benefits, from lower overhead to streamlined, efficient revenue cycle operations.
That’s the why. Now what about the how? Well, read on for five ways green patient billing techniques can provide a really positive impact on the health of your bottom line.
1). Use EBPP. Online billing and payment software is one of the best examples of how green patient billing technology can help you save money while streamlining revenue cycle practices. Eliminating paper billing entirely saves paper, inks, and electricity used to run print and insertion equipment. Not to mention gas that the USPS uses to ship and deliver patient statements. That’s all obviously good for the environment.
But it’s also good for your patients. That’s because they get anytime, anywhere access to transaction information and the ability to process fast, simple, trackable payments.
And the benefits come full circle because it helps you save, too. On materials costs (paper, ink, and envelopes), and processing overhead (printing and insertion), and postage expenses. Plus EBPP provides faster statement delivery (actually upload), faster payment processing and posting, and a host of patient accounts tools that simplify service activities.
2). Print Duplex. As we’ve discussed before, there’s plenty of ways to use the back of your patient statements to boost bill readability. But it also has benefits both green (less paper is used) and financial (printing duplex is typically less expensive than printing on additional pages; especially with the recent inflation in paper prices).
3). Reduce Page Counts. Duplex is one way to reduce statement page counts. Another way is to clean up your statements’ transaction summary. How? By providing a detail that’s appropriate for the vast majority of patients, and letting the others choose if they’d like to have more info.
That means summarizing transaction information and providing the means for patients to request an itemized bill. Or by using transaction roll-ups that reduce the amount of encounter information after a specific time on an account with no new activity. Or with zero balance procedure suppression to stop statement printing and mailing on statements that have no activity on a procedure for a specific time and a procedure balance of zero.
4). And Return Mail. Address cleansing is a simple way to reduce statement printing and mailing costs and smooth the efficiency of revenue cycle operations. By catching – and correcting - bad mail before enters the mailstream, address cleansing helps reduce both undeliverable statements and bad debt. It also cuts mail overhead by eliminating the print, processing, and delivery costs associated with statement re-mailings.
And did we mention it keeps you lean and further enhances your green bona fides? Well we should have. Mailing a statement the second time around use the exact same resources as it did the first time out. Same paper and envelopes; same electricity from printing and processing; same delivery mileage. Capturing a statement with bad address information before it becomes return mail spares both you and the environment the burden of those repeat costs.
5). Embrace Variable Printing. While static forms still have their place in patient statement processing, emerging variable print technology is making it easier and more efficient than ever before to print statements on-demand. That benefits core statement processing ops by infusing your message with additional flexibility. Want to change a statement design element without a lot of fuss? Or customize your statement message down to the individual patient level? With variable imaging you can.
Which is all very well and good for you. But what’s the green advantage? With the additional flexibility it provides, on-demand printing also reduces the likelihood that you’ll have to waste a bunch of static, pre-printed forms to make a critical statement change. It can instead be done on the fly. And that, of course, also reduces document obsolescence, resource drain, and saves you money, too. Ah, the gift of sustainability just keeps on giving.
Going green with your statement processing procedures is not only good for the environment. It can also help you save money and increase effectiveness. For more helpful hints to ensure that your statement printing and mailing practices are lean, mean, and efficient, download our free whitepaper, The Five Habits of Highly Effective Statement Processing Solutions today.
How else is your organization embracing sustainability in its business operations?