December 19, 2012 •Brian Watson
From annual holiday parties to New Year’s resolutions, December has always been a time for tradition.
And for bloggers, there isn’t much that’s more tried-and-true than the customary end-of-year predictions list.
It’s pretty much inevitable. With 2013 just around the corner, pundits, experts, and commentators will be out in force during the next few weeks, pontificating about the trends that will shape their industries over the coming year.
And, really, who am I to argue with tradition?
So, without further ado, here are five really big statement print and mail trends that I anticipate playing a major role in healthcare billing and payment throughout the upcoming year.
1). Statement Quality Will Be Increasingly Scrutinized
While it might never be as high-profile as other revenue cycle tools, healthcare financial professionals will likely be keeping a closer eye on statement quality and billing performance in 2013.
Why? Well, for one, it’s more important to the success of your financial operations than ever before.
Given today’s tight economy, more and more businesses are offering high-deductible and self-directed healthcare savings accounts to employees.
Mercer, a global consulting firm, reports that nearly 16% of employees are now covered by a high-deductible health plan (an increase of 11% since 2007). And nearly 60% of employers are now offering workers enrollment in such plans – a figure that is only expected to grow in the coming years.
That means patient out-of-pocket costs – and self-pay payments – are rising.
That’s significant. But it’s not nearly as transformative as the Affordable Care Act’s quality and patient safety measures. In flipping the focus of the entire care model – from sickness and volume to care and health – healthcare providers will be emphasizing the patient experience in a big way in 2013.
That clearly involves massive change; and a holistic re-evaluation of the entire care process – from admissions, through treatment, through billing and payment.
Yes, billing and payment has an impact, too.
For proof look no further than the 2011 Connance Consumer Survey, which found that 61% of the patients surveyed that were dissatisfied with a provider’s billing process wouldn’t recommend the clinician that treated them. (While nearly 91% of those that were fully satisfied with their billing would recommend.) And that, post-discharge, overall hospital satisfaction dropped by 10%.
What steps can you take in 2013 to upgrade the quality of your patient statements and letters?
• Re-focus on statement design. The fundamentals haven’t changed, but perhaps it’s been awhile since you took a good look at the bills you’re sending patients. Short version: focus on clean, clear, impactful design. Long version: check out our statement design primer for more best-practice tips.
• Variable print technology continues to get more sophisticated – and affordable. Best-practice statement processing companies are now producing bills on the fly (without base stock) to increase brand identity and flexibility and enable personalization at the batch, group, or individual statement level. Take advantage.
• Use the lower costs provided by this emerging print and mail technology to upgrade your statements’ communications ability. With duplex and multi-page print becoming more and more affordable, providers will be able to integrate high-impact tools – like billing and payment FAQs, payment and contact info, and important statement-specific instructions – into their arsenal without straining budgets that are already tight.
• Patients consistently rate hospital statements as more confusing than bills from other industries that use self-pay, like cable or utilities. A big part of that is the language. Consider a statement audit to purge all confusing medical jargon and industry terms and match the writing to an 8th grade reading level.
2). But Cost Will Still Matter
Statement quality will be a major focus in 2013. But it likely won’t come at the expense of providers’ balance sheet.
In other words, cost-containment is still really important – at all levels and across all departments. Especially given the fiscal challenges that most providers face; including higher bad debt, shrinking margins, and tight capital markets.
Fortunately, patient financial pros will have plenty of smart options available to help them up quality while keeping costs consistent – or lower – in 2013. That includes:
• Limiting the number of statements sent, through advanced statement suppression tools (including zero-balance and credit statements and those that fail to meet pre-defined low-dollar amounts) and by early identification of patients that qualify for special financing or early-out programs.
• Reducing total pages, though the use of transaction roll-ups that reduce the amount of encounter information after a specific time on an account with no new activity.
• Easing the bad debt burden through the use NCOALink address cleansing and efficient return-mail procedures.
• Using online, mobile, and voice automated billing and payment platforms to reduce statement delivery costs and streamline back-end payment processing and posting.
3). Next-Level Statement Tracking
When it comes to statement processing, visibility is a wonderful thing.
Having the data to track a patient statement from production through piece delivery not only provides a lot of peace-of-mind, it also can help keep small missteps from become full-fledged big, hairy problems.
Address issues. Suppression questions. Delivery concerns. They can all be solved by increasing mailstream visibility.
And in 2013, you’re going to have a lot more tracking options to give you that kind of top-down oversight. That includes stuff like:
• Pre-production tools, like electronic access to a PDF record of each statement produced in a billing cycle for you to review.
• Electronic time-signatures – taken by digital cameras mounted on machinery during the print and mail process - that provide a delivery guarantee backed by date and time information.
• Intelligent Mail Barcodes (IMB) that are printed on each statement to enable piece identification and tracking from mail drop through delivery. Another important reason to embrace IMB? As of January 2013 they’ll be required on all mail to receive automated pricing discounts.
• Electronic statement archiving that enables statements to be easily located and viewed for fast auditing/reporting. And it also makes patient issue resolution a lot easier on your staff, too.
4). More Integration of Patient Financial Programs
With self-pay patients and high-deductible plans increasing out-of-pocket cost, your ability to identify and respond to patients’ personal financial needs is going to become more and more critical.
That includes everything from financial assistance, to early-out programs, to pre-approved payment plans. Financial programs provide steady income and help you reduce bad debt levels and collection costs.
But chances are you already knew that. Financial programs aren’t a new development to most healthcare financial professionals, after all.
What is a little bit different is how emerging statement print and application development tools are helping to smooth administration of these programs. Smart, personalized, integrated statements are providing all sorts of new ways to help you approach patients with pre-approved, customized payment arrangements, like:
• Customized early-out statement programs that use eligibility, charity care, and credit scoring tools to focus extra attention on accounts in the post-encounter period that’s optimal for eliminating bad debt.
• Payment plan integration that leverages pre-defined logic and third-party credit monitoring data to provide patients with a personalized financial program within the same mailing as their first statement.
• Responsive application development and statement print and mail tools that make it simple and efficient to execute any type of payment program or balance discount.
• Custom reporting that streamlines and supports plan administration.
5). Get Ready for Consolidation
For years, healthcare providers have been waiting patiently for consolidated statements.
Their rationale is simple: patients that receive treatment from a single organization expect a single bill. They don’t care that their treatment experience involved several different departments in a hospital. They just want billing to be clear and to-the-point.
What wasn’t always simple was the process of actually creating consolidated statements. Until recently, statement processing providers simply lacked the resources to bring it all together efficiently.
But - with the help of the emerging application development and variable print tools I’ve talked about throughout this post – that’s all changing.
Today, best-practice statement processing companies can create programs that capture, match, and confirm charge data from multiple files and legacy systems, creating a one-patient, one-guarantor statement that incorporates info from several departments at once. And do it all at a cost that won’t put additional stress on your bottom line.
Have any fearless predictions of your own? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.