Patient Payments Blog

Michigan nurses, nonprofit team up to clear $1 million medical debt for 500 families

What I learned from over 1,000 awkward conversations with patients about money

Patients are almost always unaware of what their full healthcare costs are. 

The high deductible health plans from the insurance exchanges and insurance companies is really hitting the patients hard. So many of them get lost in the confusion and then just can’t pay.

After over 1000 awkward conversations with patients about money I have learned the how to find the middle path in collecting what you deserve and building better patient loyalty. Here's what they and you need to understand.

This week's Tactical Tuesday video continues the conversation around patient eligibility verification. We examine the pros and cons of 3 options for in-house eligibility verification: Manual verification, automated verification, or a blend of the two. 

Which one works best for your practice?

In last week's episode of Tactical Tuesday, we gave an introduction to eligibility verification and patient estimation as a strategy to improve patient collections. In this week's episode, we continue that conversation and offer tips and best practices for implementing patient eligibility software. 

In this week's Tactical Tuesday series, we explore the risk you take by not knowing a patient's eligibility verification. Patient estimates are a tool that can be used to boost patient collections success. Find out what happens when you take that risk.

Not long ago, while attending a national professional organization gathering, the organization’s chairman and event emcee shared a look back from his early days in the industry – kind of a precursor to what we might commonly call TBT, or Throw-Back Thursday – as part of reviewing his time at the helm of the organization. Where were we 30 years ago and how far had we advanced in that time? What were the main concerns then versus today’s hot topics? 

Reading his list, many people in the hall thought it was a setup for a joke. However, the list was no recent brainstorm; rather he was sharing a meeting agenda from early in his tenure. Topics included technology in healthcare, financing healthcare operations, Government programs, declining reimbursement, and patient benefit plan education, among many others. Truly, this could have been a program from last month!