The prevalence of high-deductible health plans — and the resulting increase in patients' financial obligation — have pushed hospitals to consider new means of collection to protect their bottom line.
Here are 10 things to know about how patient financial responsibility affects providers' and hospitals' collection efforts.
1. Health insurance deductibles have increased by 255 percent since 2006, according to InstaMed's "2015 Trends in Healthcare Payments."
2. An Advisory Board analysis of 400,000 claims found the higher a patient's deductible, the less likely it is patients will pay the full amount owed. Two-thirds of patients with a deductible less than $1,000 were likely to pay a part of what they owed, but only 36 percent of patients with deductibles more than $5,000 did the same.
3. True self-pay patients generally pay 6.06 percent on the dollar, while patients who self-pay after insurance pay 15.51 percent overall, an analysis by Crowe Horwath found.
4. When patients can't afford their medical bills, hospitals absorb or write-off the cost. U.S. hospitals' uncompensated care costs totaled $704.7 billion between 1990 and 2015, according to a recent American Hospital Association report.
5. Seventy percent of providers reported it takes an average of one month or longer to collect payment from a patient.
6. To combat mounting bad debt from unpaid medical bills, providers are increasingly instating payment plans. For instance, after Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Novant Health began offering zero-interest loans, its patient default rate dropped from 32 percent to 12 percent, Reuters reports.
7. Fifty-three percent of patients who had difficulty paying medical bills said their provider worked with them on a payment plan, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study.
8. Roughly two-thirds of consumers are interested in using mobile payment systems, such as Apple Pay, for medical bills. More than 75 percent of consumers pay their household bills through online payment channels, however, 87 percent of consumers said they still receive healthcare bills in the mail, according to InstaMed.
9. A study of complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found 63 percent of consumer complaints about medical debt collection claim the debt was never owed, was not verified debt or was previously paid or discharged through bankruptcy.
10. For providers, the top three challenges associated with healthcare consumerism are lack of: tools to estimate cost of care (18 percent), staff resources (13 percent) and enough convenient payment options (12 percent), according to a 2016 survey conducted by Porter Research and Navicure.