May a extra focused method to affected person collections assist suppliers maximize income? Wooster Neighborhood Hospital (WCH) has proof that it could possibly – to the tune of a 7.75% increase in annual collections.
In a latest webinar, Kristen Shoup, Wooster’s Income Cycle Director, and Judy Wirtz, Senior Analytics Guide at Experian Well being, shared their success in implementing a patient-centric, automated method to collections. With Collections Optimization Supervisor, PatientDial and PatientText, they noticed affected person funds enhance by $3.8 million in a single yr.
Watch the webinar: Find out how WCH reworked affected person collections with higher insights into sufferers’ propensity to pay and automatic affected person outreach.
Shifting away from guide processes
After outsourcing self-pay collections for 20 years, Wooster Neighborhood Hospital determined to carry the method in-house to provide sufferers a greater buyer expertise and enhance money funds. Nevertheless, as a result of they’d a lean crew, they wanted a technique that might make higher use of employees time and guarantee every affected person’s account was dealt with in essentially the most acceptable method. Guide methods wouldn’t reduce it.
They needed to make higher use of information and automation so employees might give attention to sufferers who had been probably to pay and enhance affected person communications. Utilizing Experian Well being’s Collections Optimization Supervisor, alongside PatientDial and PatientText proved to be the successful mixture.
Customizing collections with smarter segmentation
The spine of Wooster’s new collections technique is smarter segmentation. Collections Optimization Supervisor categorizes sufferers into totally different tiers in keeping with their capability and probability to pay, utilizing information evaluation and predictive modeling. Wirtz explains how these propensity-to-pay scores, or phase scores, enable employees to tailor their collections method and decide the best outreach for every group’s wants:
“Most opponents depend on historic affected person fee information to calculate propensity-to-pay scores. The Experian Well being segmentation rating is exclusive, as a result of now we have entry to a number of information sources, corresponding to credit score information, fee conduct, socioeconomic information and monetary information. Combining these sources offers our shoppers a complete propensity-to-pay rating, which permits them to prioritize assortment efforts.”
Not solely does the Collections Optimization Supervisor direct efforts to high-value affected person accounts, however this instrument helps the crew perceive affected person fee patterns in order that they don’t pursue uncollectable accounts and acquire extra with fewer sources. It additionally identifies charity eligibility, which eases stress on sufferers and creates a extra compassionate expertise.
Zero complaints with a customized affected person expertise
Wooster was ready to make use of the insights generated by Collections Optimization Supervisor to create a extra acceptable engagement technique for every group of sufferers, primarily based on their wants and preferences, and automatic communications utilizing PatientDial and PatientText.
With PatientDial, Wooster automated outbound collections calls utilizing interactive voice response (IVR). This helped sufferers deal with funds on their very own over the telephone, while not having to talk to an agent. Workers can even ship sufferers customized textual content messages for another however equally fast and handy approach to pay their balances.
Earlier than utilizing these instruments, sufferers expressed frustration at receiving collections calls at inconvenient instances. Since adopting this new tailor-made, handy, and unintrusive contact mixture, Wooster has seen a big enchancment in affected person satisfaction.
The proof is within the funds
Finally, Wooster’s objective was to extend self-pay income. Wirtz shares that because of the brand new technique, Wooster has seen affected person funds enhance by $3.8 million in only one yr. The annual assortment charge elevated by 7.75%, with $1.47 million collected by way of PatientText and $485,000 by way of PatientDial.
Encouragingly, Wooster has additionally seen a $600,000 drop in unhealthy debt placements and found a further $800,000 in Medicaid protection because of Collections Optimization Supervisor.
Partnering for fulfillment
Shoup and Wirtz additionally mentioned their partnership method to figuring out the optimum collections technique for Wooster. Wirtz labored intently with the crew, offering devoted assist to arrange and monitor workflows, focus on any ache factors, and pull out benchmarking insights. Shoup says:
“Judy’s been an incredible companion, and the crew at Experian Well being has been nice to work with. The nice factor for me was with the ability to present the worth within the modifications we made. Once I first determined that we wanted to carry our self-pay course of again in-house, and we partnered with Experian, I wanted to have the ability to show that what we had been doing was profitable. And 100%, arms down, it has been an enormous success. We’ve collected more cash, and I can monitor that and present the outcomes utilizing Experian’s instruments.”
Watch the webinar on-demand to listen to the complete dialogue, and see how Experian Well being may help your healthcare group can use segmentation and automation to create a focused, environment friendly and compassionate affected person collections technique.
