How Pre-Care Engagement Can Help with Patient Retention

The American healthcare experience, including behavioral health, for the average patient, is generally complex, confusing, frustrating, and overall unpleasant experience. Is it any wonder that the relationships between patients and providers are so distant or that unpaid medical bills are now a major source of debt collection for American consumers? There is a solution for providers who wish to foster a healthy, productive relationship with their patients.

FinPay offers an automated, data-driven payment system that employs pre-care engagement to drive patient retention. Engaging with the patient before any services are provided and having a frank, transparent conversation about insurance, costs, and payment options, erases the confusing complexity and frustration.

Contact FinPay at info@finpay.com to learn more about our transparent, automated solutions.

Benefits of Pre-Care Engagement

Behavioral health providers want to help their patients, and patients want to receive treatment to improve their health. Unfortunately, financial problems or misunderstandings get in the way of this basic relationship. A confusing insurance policy or misunderstanding about what is covered or not covered can result in surprise medical costs for a patient.

Even if this does not wipe them out financially, it creates a sense of outrage and mistrust as the patient feels like they were tricked. This clearly harms the provider-patient relationship, and the patient is certainly not making payment of the debt a priority. At the same time, the provider will not continue treatment until some form of payment is made. Everyone loses.

Pre-care engagement solves that by presenting the costs upfront before entering into any healthcare services. With FinPay, an automated payment plan can be created before treatment so that the provider understands what the patient can pay, and the patient can develop a payment plan that fits their budget. The lose-lose situation that is so common becomes a win-win.

Pre-Care Patient Collections

Healthcare is a business, but it is also a necessity. Financial concerns are the primary reason people do not seek needed medical care or continue treatment.

According to a February 2022 report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau¹:

• There is $88 billion in medical debt on consumer credit records as of June 2021.
• As of 2021, 58 percent of all third-party debt collection tradelines were for medical debt, making medical debt the most common debt collection tradeline on credit records.
• Past-due medical debt reported to consumer reporting companies can appear on a person’s credit reports and lower their credit scores. This may reduce their access to credit and make it harder to make future payments on necessities, including medical needs.
• Black and Hispanic people, young adults, and low-income individuals of all races and ethnicities, are more likely to have medical debt than the national average. Additionally, medical debt is more prevalent in the Southeastern and Southwestern U.S.

And according to data from the 2019 Survey of Consumer Finances by the U.S. Federal Reserve, Americans have a weighted average savings account balance of $41,600, including checking, savings, money market, and prepaid debit cards; the median was only $5,300.

Reach Out to FinPay for Pre-Care Engagement and Patient Retention Solutions

Pre-care engagement and patient retention go hand-in-hand, and both provider and patient win. FinPay offers automated, transparent payment solutions that integrate seamlessly into your existing accounts receivable department and revenue management cycle.

FinPay’s pre-care engagement model delivered by our automated system can address patient financial responsibility before it becomes an outstanding debt and is delivered to collections. There is no collection problem if the debt never occurred. This improves patient-provider relationships and, ultimately, the bottom line.

Contact FinPay today at info@finpay.com to learn how to get started with our innovative and effective technology.

Footnotes

¹Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – “Medical Debt Burdern in the United States”