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What is Patient Financial Management in Healthcare and How Does It Relate to Revenue Cycle Management?

Patient Financial Management or “PFM” is a specialized discipline that prioritizes the patient’s financial experience and how patient financial responsibility is managed. By separating patient financial management from all the competing initiatives in revenue cycle management we narrow focus and enable healthcare companies to vastly reduce patient bad debt and grow patient retention rates.

FINPAY’S INNOVATIVE PRE-CARE PATIENT ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY CONSISTENTLY DELIVERS PATIENT PAYMENTS PRIOR TO CARE THAT ARE 600% BETTER THAN THE NEXT BEST OPTION.

By separating patient financial management as its own core discipline, the patient’s financial experience can finally be a priority and the revenue cycle team can spend the highest and best use of their time on priorities related to payer reimbursements. The impact on both segments of the business will be immediately measurable in both dollars and patient satisfaction.

How Should the Patient Financial Management Process Work?

FinPay’s pre-care patient financial management solution makes the patient financial experience a top priority. Combining cost transparency, strong patient advocacy, and education on healthcare financial literacy ensures that the patients remain engaged throughout the billing & clinical cycle and sustains loyalty to your organization.

FinPay’s best practices make the financial conversation the centerpiece of patient pre-care interactions. It may appear unseemly to make financial matters central to patient interactions, but the reality is that patients appreciate the forthrightness.

This is why thousands of FinPay patients gave us a 99% satisfaction score on their financial experience.

Improving Patient Financial Experience

It is no longer sufficient merely to send a bill to a patient and blindly expect them to pay it. The healthcare market is rapidly evolving and patients are having to foot a larger portion of their medical expenses, however, the required healthcare financial literacy and affordable payment options necessary to meet these increased obligations have remained flat.

FROM 2012 TO 2017, THE PATIENT BALANCES AFTER
INSURANCE (PBAI) ROSE 88 PERCENT, AND THIS TREND
IS LIKELY TO CONTINUE IN THE FUTURE.

Providers now need to move from a confrontational position to one of a partner. As patient financial responsibility continues to increase, the provider has a responsibility to provide the education and affordable payment options that patients need if they expect them to independently pay their obligations. Premier PFM platforms like FinPay recognize this and have developed solutions that deliver a hyper-personalized financial experience that builds brand loyalty while breaking down the barriers of affordability and financial literacy. Patients are more likely to pay their obligations if they know beforehand what to expect and if they have a plan to make affordable payments.

Just a short time ago patients remained with a single provider for years at a time, therefore patient retention was not much of an issue. In the current healthcare environment, however, patients have a growing number of tools and incentives to find new providers.

The financial conversation provides a unique opportunity; instead of being fearful of the financial conversation, when done right, there is a tremendous opportunity for a provider to differentiate themselves by providing an enhanced, more comprehensive financial experience for the patient.

Keep reading to see how we help providers cultivate a highly-effective pre-care patient financial management strategy.

Patient Pre-authorization

Pre-authorizations for services are a standard practice between providers and payers. However, pre-authorizations also presents a valuable opportunity to earn trust, through education, from the patient. The pre-authorization process is a great natural segway into the conversation about financial responsibility and helps to manage expectations to avoid surprise billing.

Once patients are educated on what they owe, why they owe it, and how their responsibilities were determined, it is a perfect opportunity to enroll the patient in a pre-authorized payment program and to keep the patient engaged throughout the process. FinPay’s platform provides automation of educational content and payment program enrollment so the patient engagement is smooth and seamless.

$459,000,000,000
CONSIDERING TOTAL OUT-OF-POCKET HEALTH CARE EXPENSES FOR
CONSUMERS IS PREDICTED TO SURPASS $459 BILLION BY 2022 HEALTHCARE
PROVIDERS CAN NO LONGER PRACTICE BUSINESS AS USUAL. IT IS TIME TO
RE-THINK YOUR PATIENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT STRATEGY.

Source: Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of The Actuary

 

The Fundamentals of Patient Financial Management

As a leader in patient financial management, FinPay has pioneered new strategies that have routinely delivered a 600% increase in patient payments prior to care.

The fundamentals of this innovative approach to the patient financial management process include:

Patient Financial Management Reporting

With FinPay’s robust reporting functionality, you can maintain visibility into your patient payments data on an enterprise level or by individual patient, enabling you to accurately measure and monitor the success of your patient financial management strategy.

The FinPay Analytics platform utilizes Machine Learning capabilities to help uncover hidden insights and trends in your data, identify key drivers, and forecast business metrics. You can also consume these insights in natural language narratives embedded in your dashboard. You can understand your data at a glance, share your findings, and discover the best decisions to achieve your goals, without developing teams and technology to create the necessary machine learning models and algorithms.