At presentation during Becker's 5th Annual Healthcare IT + Revenue Cycle Conference in Chicago, Simplee sponsored a workshop to discuss how healthcare organizations are providing price transparency to patients. A panel of leaders from AdventHealth shared how they arm patients with essential financial information and tools during the healthcare journey.
AdventHealth serves over 5 million patients a year in nine states through its more than 400 acute care, hospice and skilled nursing facilities. The organization takes a holistic approach to care, which includes patients' financial health, and aims to make payments transparent, affordable, easy and convenient.
Pre-service estimates, price transparency and patient engagement
In 2018, AdventHealth conducted a study with Florida Hospital to identify patient attitudes toward healthcare pricing and payments. Seventy-nine percent of patients said they wanted estimates for out-of-pocket expenses prior to services plus flexible payment options and consolidated statements.
"In this consumer-oriented market, we are competing with the best of the best," noted Brianna Miller, AdventHealth's vice president of consumer access and revenue management. "Although we are a healthcare organization, patients expect us to act like Apple, Amazon or Netflix. It's something we take very seriously. We want patients to feel supported in their financial journey."
AdventHealth's quest for transparency began over a decade ago. Initially, the organization created an Excel spreadsheet loaded with contract rates. To calculate the patient's estimated responsibility, representatives selected the appropriate health plan and entered the deductible. The spreadsheet crunched the numbers for an estimate AdventHealth could share with patients.
Fast forward to 2019 and AdventHealth has launched a touchless estimate process within its estimator tool powered by the Simplee platform that informs patients of their estimated responsibility via email.
According to Simplee's analytics, AdventHealth has seen a 41 percent increase in pre-service payments collected from patients and an 8 percent decrease in no-show appointments for a significant win-win. In addition, AdventHealth's net promoter score increased to 64 rivaling leading consumer brands like Apple.
Marrying the patient's pre-service and post-service financial experience
If the health system drops the ball during the back-end financial experience, any positive feelings a patient gains during the pre-service or clinical experience can be lost. AdventHealth is taking steps to avoid this problem. All patient statements now include an access code for patients to view financial records online without a username or password.
Patients can see their outstanding balance, which is consolidated into the total amount due. When making a payment, patients are presented with a personalized set of payment options based on their unique capacity to pay. These personalized payment options led high capacity to pay patients to pay in full and greater enrollment into payment plans for low capacity patients.
Initially, the finance team worried payment plans would increase the organization's debt but the data shows no increase in long-term payment plans. Ken Ursin, AdventHealth's executive director of patient financial services, commented, "This isn't about just offering payment plans. It's about how we engage with patients through the entire spectrum from pre-service to post-service. We want to offer financing options that make sense and are tied to what they can pay."
4 lessons learned at AdventHealth
Amber Parkinson, AdventHealth's director of patient access and patient financial services, highlighted four lessons learned:
- Don't assume you know what patients want. Gather feedback about the preferred payment and financial experience directly from consumers in the market.
- Before rolling out technology, implement policies, procedures and workflows. Determine the payment strategy in advance and put processes in place that support it.
- Start simple. Begin with a pilot and ask for feedback. Do staggered rollouts across the organization and learn in an iterative fashion.
- Price transparency isn't enough. Being more transparent is important, however this is quickly becoming a baseline for organizations. Since healthcare is one of the largest expenses for most households, organizations must go beyond transparency and provide affordable paths for patients.
Conclusion
AdventHealth successfully built an automated, end-to-end financial engagement ecosystem that supports patients throughout their healthcare journey. Its platform offers proactive pre-service payments, payment plans, and discounting. As Ms. Parkinson said, "If you give patients the independence to choose their method and mode of payment, they will take it. We've seen high levels of adoption in our self-service capabilities."