Executive Summary
Some patient access departments are expanding payment portals to give patients new options. Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center saw more than a 500% increase in the number of patients enrolled to make online payments since 2012.
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Patient access employees can use portals to collect at point-of-service.
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Departments can send texts reminding patients of balances.
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Patients can set up payment plans online.
The number of patients who enrolled to make online payments at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center increased by more than 500% in the past three years, reports Christopher Lah, senior director of patient access.
The health system has had a patient portal in place for more than 10 years. “It continues to be an area of investment,” says Lah. “We are now exploring text reminders and hope to have our beta out sometime in the next three months.” (See cost-saving tip on how the payment portals saved money, in this issue.)
Here are benefits patient access is seeing from patient payment portals:
• Increased patient satisfaction.
Lah sees a strong correlation between the success of the online payment portal and an increase in patient satisfaction. “Since we went with Passport’s Patient Simple product, our key metric for gauging satisfaction increased by over 8%,” he says.
An online payment portal has been in place for years at Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston, TX. “But we are now offering additional options. It’s made the patient experience more dynamic,” says Tonie Bayman, director of system patient access and training. Patients can now do the following:
— Scan the QR code on paper statements with their phone to pay.
— Go online and print an itemized statement.
— Update demographic information online.
— Set up a payment plan online, so they don’t have to call customer service to do so.
“People don’t really want to talk to somebody. They just want to take care of it themselves and move on,” says Bayman. “There is so much more self-service in today’s society.” The next step is for the department to give patients the option of going paperless and receiving only electronic statements.
• Live chats with staff members online.
If a patient is taking a long time, a pop-up screen appears stating, “Do you need some help?” “If they have a question, they can talk to us online instead of on the phone,” says Bayman.
If patients don’t want to use online options, they don’t have to. “It doesn’t affect them at all; in fact, we have more time to spend with those patients,” says Bayman.
Patient access provided an online survey to find out how satisfied patients were with the payment portal. “We have gotten lots of positive comments. People say, ‘I love this. It’s much faster. I’m glad I didn’t have to call,’” says Bayman. “This feedback makes us want to do even more.”
Here are two ways Memorial Hermann’s portal is used by the department:
• Patient access employees use the payment portal to collect at the time of service.
“We created a macro from our registration system into the portal,” says Bayman. “It’s faster, and everything is in one tool.”
This setup helps the department to track upfront collections instantly, down to the individual employee level. “We were able to do this before, but it was a very manual process. Now we can do it with one click,” says Bayman.
• The data is used to determine if the employee will receive incentives for meeting certain collection totals and to coach struggling collectors.
“We don’t have to wait for the monthly report,” says Bayman. “We can see, ‘How come an employee hasn’t collected anything in the last two days? Is the employee not using scripting?’”
Patient access employees sometimes admit they feel badly asking for money. Bayman tries to change that employee’s mindset by saying, “The patient is not going to be surprised by a bill later and have no idea they were going to owe that much money.” She explains that just as a good clinician tells a patient what to expect after surgery, “from a financial perspective, we need to explain what to expect as well.”
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Tonie Bayman, Director, System Patient Access and Training, Memorial Hermann Health System, Houston, TX. Phone: (832) 658-6002. Email: [email protected].
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Christopher Lah, Senior Director, Patient Access, Cincinnati (OH) Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Phone: (513) 636-8904. Email: [email protected].
