December 7, 2012 •Brian Watson
Let’s face it: patient statement processing isn’t a particularly sexy revenue cycle activity.
It doesn’t tend to get round-table symposiums. Virtual conferences are generally arranged around other topics. And it probably won’t be the basis of a cover story for any of the leading healthcare financial magazines any time soon.
In fact, it’s often relegated to low-hanging-fruit status when compared against other critical billing and payment activities.
Patient access and eligibility, billing and coding, claims and remittance: stuff like tends to take precedence – not to mention the lion’s share of time and resources.
But that doesn’t make patient billing and payment any less critical to the financial health of your bottom line.
Why Statement Processing Matters - Now More Than Ever
In fact, due to recent changes in the healthcare marketplace – healthcare consumerism and the steady growth of out-of-pocket costs due to high-deductible health plans and healthcare savings accounts – self-pay collections are now more important to health providers than ever before.
For example, a 2009 HFMA study reports 97% of hospitals have seen an increase in self-pay revenue year-over-year. And over a third of those hospitals experience self-pay receivables growth of over 10%.
Data like that makes the value proposition of make fast, efficient, patient friendly statement processing and balance payment crystal clear. The quicker you collect from patients, the faster your revenue cycle can operate – reducing days in A/R and bad debt and increasing cash flow and patient satisfaction (an increasingly important metric with Affordable Care Act quality measures set to affect reimbursement rates).
That’s why best-class patient statement processing matters in a big way. But how do you get there? In a word: tools. Read on for a checklist of 5 key billing and payment resources you should demand from your statement processing partner.
1). Postal Presorting Software. If statement processing is revenue cycle low-hanging fruit, then postal presorting might just be its print and mail equivalent. Mail bundling is probably not the first thing that springs to mind of when you think about essential patient statement tools. Features like smart design, address cleansing, and variable print tend to linger at the top of revenue cycle professionals’ must-have lists instead.
Which just goes to show how underrated postal pre-sorting truly is. No disrespect to patient statement design or on-demand printing. That stuff is still really important (and demand-worthy; see the next item, for example).
But presorting is equally impactful. As a work-sharing program, presorting and mail preparation saves the USPS time and money. Discounts that are then paid forward to statement processing companies.
The result: lower average statement delivery costs and a streamlining of mail ops that helps gets statements to your patients faster, and you paid quicker.
And that’s why it should hold a prominent place on your list of statement processing demands.
2). On-Demand Printing. Variable imaging is a cornerstone of fast, efficient, effective self-pay revenue collection. But wait just a minute. Isn’t on-demand printing a key part of every statement processing program worth its salt? Well, yes and no.
Yes, all statement processing programs print information on-demand in pre-established spaces on the billing form. But no, not all variable print programs are created equally.
Emerging print technology is fundamentally changing the way that statements are printed – reducing production time and massively upping the flexibility factor. That’s the kind of on-demanding printing that powers best-class statement processing platforms
Today’s top print technology eliminates the need to use pre-printed forms. Instead, it creates the entire document from the ground-up on a single blank sheet of paper. It looks the same as the static cut-sheets that most processers use; but it greatly reduces the time it takes to prepare a job – things like loading printers with specific stock and setting ad-hoc print and processing parameters.
And it provides unparalleled flexibility. Statement that are truly created on-the-fly enable critical statement changes to be made in a fraction of the time it would take a program using pre-printed stock. And it can be done without wasting existing inventory – reducing resource drain and saving you loads of time and money to boot.
3). Address Cleansing. When it comes to self-pay revenue collection, speed is a no-ifs-and-or-buts necessity. The faster you can collect from customers, the quicker you can pay creditors, reward employees, reinvest in core competencies, and otherwise run your business.
And that’s where having a bulletproof address cleansing program is worth its weight in gold.
If customers don’t receive a bill they can’t pay it. And customers don’t receive (and can’t pay) bills that use incorrect or outdated address information.
Return mail costs are no drop in the bucket, either. According to the USPS, over 40 million Americans file move updates each year. That’s a lot of potentially outdated address data.
If left uncorrected, undeliverable mail can be a significant drag on revenue cycle efficiency: increasing statement print and mail costs and slowing collections.
To ease your return mail burden, make absolutely certain that your statement processing provider’s address cleansing toolset is fully stocked with best-class address technology, like NCOALink. Tapping into the USPS’ move update database, NCOALink helps providers correct outdated or incorrect address information before it enters the mailstream – reducing bad debt, lowering collection costs, and speeding receivables.
4). Statement Archiving. Customer service goes a whole lot more smoothly when both patients and service employees are on the same page about an issue. That’s one of the major failings of patient service software: the patient is seeing information as it appears on their actual statement, while your service rep is reading information from their computer screen. Though it may sound pretty minor, a disconnect like that lead to a serious (and costly) communication breakdown.
Statement archiving is one low-expense, high-impact solution that makes a lot of sense for providers looking to streamline patient service response times. That’s because today’s best-class solutions go way beyond files saved to a CD.
In leveraging the power of the web, statement archiving applications are able to balance long-term storage with real-time responsiveness. Intuitive statement look-up tools allow service reps to access months and months of electronic statements at a moment’s notice – the exact versions of billing documents that your patients have received. Fast, simple statement recall improves the quality of service you provide and saves your patients’ valuable time.
5). Online Billing & Payment. Online billing and payment is quickly approaching a real tipping point. According to IDC Financial Insights, 73% of online households paid at least one bill using a web-based payment channel in the last month.
You rely on self-pay revenue to run your business. So you shouldn’t need me to tell you that statistic is really, really important. Not just because consumers are increasingly paying their bills online – and demanding providers offer progressive online billing tools. But also because online billing and payment provides a great opportunity to reduce collection costs, boost patient satisfaction, and speed patient revenue.
What should feature prominently on your EBPP check-list?
Well, years of usability data has provided a pretty clear snapshot of what patients want in an online pay channel. The process should be fast. The site simple. And the payment model diversified – offering tools like guest pay without enrollment, but balancing that with a portal built with value-added stuff like payment plan management, web statement presentment that enables paperless billing, and secure online communication with your staff.
When researching your EBPP solution, start there.
What patient statement print and mail tools are on your must-have list?