This article discusses the strategies that could help providers enhance patient billing, payments and satisfaction.

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STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE
MEDICAL BILLING,
PAYMENT AND
PATIENT SATISFACTION
This article discusses the strategies that could
help providers enhance patient billing,
payments and satisfaction.
2018

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A new survey by the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) shows that
price transparency, email capture, electronic billing and keeping a credit card on
file can help improve billing, reimbursement, and patient satisfaction. Partnering
with medical billing companies can help speed up the billing process and ensure
timely reimbursement.
 Price Transparency
Hospitals, clinics and other healthcare settings must provide cost estimates for
medical services or procedures to the patients upon request. This makes the
healthcare pricing less confusing and more transparent, thereby helping patients to
determine how much they must pay out-of-pocket before receiving care. In fact,
many people are calling for greater price transparency in health care. Price
transparency has a number of positive consequences. It is an important
information gathering tool for people who want to compare prices and thereby
make more informed decisions about their health care. In addition to that, it also
helps lower the cost of health care. The task force recommends different price
transparency frameworks for different care purchaser groups, as the care
purchaser’s information needs and sources vary.
Transparency tools for insured patients should include some essential elements of
price information, such asthe total estimated price of the service, a clear indication
of whether a particular provider is in the health plan’s network and information on
where the patient can try to locate a network provider, a clear statement of the
patient’s estimated out-of-pocket payment responsibility and other relevant
information related to the provider or the specific service sought.
Price transparency frameworks for uninsured and out-of-network patients should
reflect basic considerations such as:
 An estimated price for a standard procedure without complications

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 Make clear to the patient how complications or other unforeseen
circumstances may increase the price
 Clearly communicate preservice estimates of prices to uninsured patients and
patients seeking care on an out-of-network basis
 Clearly communicate to patients what all services are included and what are
not included in a price estimate
 If any services that would have significant price implications for the patient
are not included in the price estimate, the provider should try to provide
information on where the patient could obtain this information
 They should also give patients other relevant information such as clinical
outcomes, patient safety, or patient satisfaction scores.
The survey report of MGMA shows that 79 percent of ambulatory organization
respondents can produce a cost estimate upon request, while only 69 percent of
hospital respondent scan do this task.
 Getting Email Address from Patients
Email is the most common method used for communication now. A recent study by
Kaiser-Permanente (KP) found that most of the patients like to communicate
directly with their providers online. It is the best function people use most often on
their smartphones. The KP study found42 percent of those surveyed felt that email
reduced their phone contacts, 36 percent said it cut down in-person office visits,
and 32 percent reported that emailing improved their overall health. Email helps
keep receptionists off the phone, thereby allowing them to spend more time with
patients in the office. In fact, asking for email addresses does not violate a patient’s
privacy or security, rather it helps build better relationships with the patients and
be better able to hold them over time, save time and money, increase cash flow,
and minimize A/R.

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 Electronic Billing
Electronically submitting a bill, or claim to a health insurance company or payer for
the rendering of medical services helps healthcare providers reduce the time and
cost to a great extent. Procedures for sending medical bills via email involves getting
written permission from the patient to send their bills via email, saving file to a .pdf
format, protecting the .pdf with a password that is known by both parties, attaching
the file to an email, and finally, sending the email.
Even though 52 percent patients prefer electronic billing, 77 percent group practices
still send paper bills. Another study conducted in January also showed the same
trend, where 52 percent of patients preferring electronic billing and 89 percent of
providers still using regular mail.
 Credit card on file (CCOF)
Storing credit card data on file is highly beneficial to revenue cycle management and
helps reduce patient bad debt or write off, minimize days in patient A/R and cost of
collections.
In fact, practices and hospitals must pay attention to these trends among
patients, who now act more like retail consumers, who will go where their
needs and preferences are met optimally.