A High-quality Digital Patient Experience Can Improve And Accelerate The Revenue Cycle, Time-to-pay And Collections
The healthcare industry took a big hit in 2020 and continues to battle the long-tail effects of the pandemic into 2021. A new analysis released by the American Hospital Association in February 2021, found that hospitals and health systems could lose between $53 billion and $122 billion in revenue this year should there be an uptick in COVID-19 cases, or if the industry players continue to experience a slow recovery.
Compounding the poor state of the healthcare sector, is the fact that patients have also had a rough year, and are still recovering both health-wise and financially from the effects of the pandemic.
Now is the time to improve patient experience
Hospitals, revenue cycle management companies and clearinghouses are all dealing with the financial fallout from 2020. It would be understandable if something like patient experience was put on the backburner until better times. However, the future of the entire supply chain relies on one thing – patients. And while consumers do not choose to become ill, they can choose their healthcare provider, based on whether or not they provide a great experience.
Today’s patients expect the same high standard of communication from healthcare providers as they get from any other sector. They are also increasingly open to digital alternatives.
In fact, more than 70% of patients today prefer digital communication and over half expect it (Accenture 2019)
A survey performed by Guidehouse Center for Health Insights found that healthcare providers must “develop winning consumer experience strategies to overcome a slow recovery in patient volumes and an uptick in self-pay.” The same study found that digital technologies are a critical part of this strategy to achieve “long-term performance improvement opportunities.”
One thing patients definitely want is information from their healthcare providers that is clear and easy to understand. That means healthcare providers need to design a better patient communication experience, including easily accessible information, intuitive processes and simple ways to self-serve via the channel of their choice.
Improving patient experience can improve key business metrics, like time-to-pay
With the shift to self-pay, patient payments are a large and growing portion of hospital revenue. As procedure volumes decrease, expenses rise, and margins are squeezed, healthcare providers must look at ways to improve their own business metrics. For example, accelerating patient collections can go a long way to providing some financial relief.
A high-quality digital patient experience can improve and accelerate the revenue cycle, time-to-pay and collections. Studies have suggested that patients have a preference for digital communication and engagement with their healthcare systems, not only for communications, but for paying medical bills via mobile payment systems and usage of online patient portals.
When you improve patient experience, you achieve higher engagement, which in turn can result in accelerated payments and collections. This is an enormous opportunity for healthcare providers to adopt sophisticated, flexible digital communications systems designed to personalize and streamline patient engagement.
Doxim’s Customer Communications Management Platform enables the composition and delivery of consistent communications from any data source to any output channel for seamless patient experience in the patients preferred channel including print and mail and digital communications such as pdf, html, text, and email. GET IN TOUCH WITH A DOXIM CCM EXPERT
