PatientPay Survey of Revenue Cycle Management Executives Finds Rise of Patient Financial Obligations Demands More Efficient Billing, Faster Collections
Durham, NC (PRWEB) May 10, 2016 -- PatientPay RCM Connect℠ could be the critical factor between business success and failure for revenue cycle management (RCM) companies according to a just-released survey conducted by PatientPay™, the leader in paperless billing solutions for healthcare. RCM Connect is a new way for revenue cycle management (RCM) companies to speed and simplify the processing and management of patient billing with a single solution.
In-depth, one-on-one interviews were held with executives of top 20 RCM companies to understand their interest in a management platform that could help them more efficiently understand and manage their patient collection efforts.
“It was interesting to learn that most of the RCM executives we spoke with were just starting to focus on the impact of patient billing on their businesses,” said Tom Furr, PatientPay’s CEO. “To a certain extent it reflects how these companies have grown, focused on insurance company claims processing and only needing to push paper bills to patients based on small out of pocket from traditional insurance plans.”
The expansion of High Deductible Health Plans (HDHP) is changing the simplicity and predictability of the business model under which the majority of RCMs operate. Prior to HDHPs as much as 90 percent of a bill was covered by the insurer. Now the payer covers 50 percent, with the remaining obligation sitting with the patient, depending on the amount of the deductible already absorbed.
“Patient billing is becoming a matter of such importance in this field that, in my view, 30 percent to 50 percent of RCM companies will go out of business if they don’t wake up to the patient billing challenge and act quickly to address it, said one RCM company CEO. If RCM connect can integrate with my company’s workflow without any change to it, my financial systems or paper vendors, it’s a business-saving opportunity.”
Much effort and expense has been put into making the insurance claims processing systems used by RCMs robust. As such, PatientPay noted RCMs should not have to alter their in-place infrastructures or incur cost to change to paperless billing, which they are coming to realize is the way consumers prefer to get their healthcare bills.
“It’s becoming evident that RCMs must find a way to see patient payments occurring at the same or close to the speed they’ve come to enjoy for years with claims processing since our revenue is depending on us collecting payments,” said one RCM company CFO. “From my vantage point, that suggests the need to move away from paper billing based on these payments taking much longer to collect. But there is always the challenge of changing processes from an operating perspective not to mention an internal behavioral one. Changing the status quo is never easy.”
RCMs can adopt PatientPay RCM Connect without the need to change workflow or paper vendors, purchase hardware, manage new software or protocols, or incur any upfront expense.
It is a unique, intuitive single platform from which all patient billing activities, from processing, management, analysis and reporting can be handled. PatientPay Paperless℠, a component of RCM Connect, is the only paperless billing solution that matches charges with the Explanation of Benefits (EOB), eliminating confusion while accelerating payment and boosting patient satisfaction.
“Automation for patient billing has not warranted attention by RCM companies since most of their revenue has been derived from payers,” said one RCM company CTO. “Now it is starting to cause pain that is going to grow for years to come and many don’t know or want to deal with it. From what I can tell, RCM Connect can relieve that pain with technology.”
Learn how RCM Connect works. Click here to view a brief video.
About PatientPay
PatientPay creates patient payment solutions that help patients, practices and hospitals and revenue cycle management providers better control expenses in today’s healthcare environment.
Its solutions yield greater operational and financial efficiency for healthcare providers while giving patients a simple way to manage their healthcare-related financial obligations. The billing, payment and reporting services are HIPAA and PCI Level 1 compliant and eliminate time-intensive, error-prone, manual back-end efforts to process and reconcile paper bills or manage a traditional online portal.
PatientPay was founded in 2008 to bring to healthcare consumers the same type of payment solutions they use in retail and e-commerce environments. In 2012 PatientPay was granted three patents (U.S. Patent Nos. 8,155,983, 8,204,764 and 8,214,233) for its innovative process that underpins its solutions, which can be integrated with any healthcare management software.
The company is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. For more information, please visit http://www.patientpay.com or call (888) 730-9374.
PatientPay, PatientPay Paperless, PatientPay RCM Connect and the PatientPay logo are registered trademarks or service marks of PatientPay, Inc. Other marks belong to their respective owners.
Steve Hoechster, PatientPay, http://www.patientpay.com, +1 914-393-9219, [email protected]
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