The rise of consumerism in healthcare is driving providers to evaluate how they approach healthcare payments. To collect more from patients and reduce administrative costs, providers need to offer more convenient, consumer-friendly options, such as online patient payments.
According to the Trends in Healthcare Payments Eleventh Annual Report, 67% of consumers prefer online payments for medical bills. If you don’t offer your patients online payments today, here are the top five reasons why you should.
5 Reasons to Let Patients Pay Online
1. Collect More Patient Payments
While providers rely on patients for an increasing portion of their revenue, they face challenges with collecting. An August 2020 survey from Kaufman Hall showed that more than 40 percent of respondents have seen increases in bad debt and uncompensated care. Offering your patients an easy way to pay you online will enable you to collect more and reduce your bad debt.
2. Get Payments Faster
After a patient visit, providers frequently do not receive patient payments for weeks or even months. By allowing your patients to pay you online immediately after receiving their statements, you will get paid faster and decrease your days in A/R.
3. Reduce Administrative Costs
On average, a provider’s costs to collect from patients are three to five times greater than the costs to collect from payers due to the need for multiple paper statements and follow-up with patients. You can significantly reduce these costs by accepting online patient payments to streamline the billing process.
4. Improve Patient Satisfaction
Data from the Trends in Healthcare Payments Report shows that 86% of consumers pay recurring bills, such as cable, utility and phone bills, online. Therefore, many of your patients are accustomed to paying bills online and will enjoy having a more convenient way to pay their healthcare bills.
5. Streamline Processes
By integrating online patient payments with your practice management system, you can automatically post and reconcile all payments in the same place to reduce administrative time and costs.