As patients have become responsible for paying more and more of the costs of healthcare, they have begun to think and act more like they do in other aspects of their lives — as consumers.
As a result of this consumerization, patients now expect more financial transparency in their interactions with healthcare providers, even though they rarely get it. For example, The Payment Cure, a PYMNTS and Synchrony’s CareCredit study, found that half of patients with out-of-pocket medical costs said they were unaware if their providers even offered payment plans or financing.
“I think we really have to shift the idea of these conversations happening very quietly and after care, to a much broader viewpoint,” Synchrony Health and Wellness Senior Vice President and General Manager Shannon Burke told PYMNTS. “It is the job of everyone within the practice or health system to let patients know about those options.”
“Patients want to be made aware of their options, so healthcare staff — both administrative and clinical — should become part of that conversation,” she added. “… That conversation needs to be personalized for you, me and the patient. We don’t come at our clinical journey in the same way — we have a unique clinical journey, and we’ll have a unique patient payment journey.”
Refining the Personalized Payment Journey
Providers that find a partner and offer patient financing can then make that offering part of the financial conversation. They can meet the needs of the consumers who have come to expect options after having turned to digital technology more for spend management and budgeting during the pandemic, the study found.
“In offering [financing options, healthcare providers give] patients what they’re expecting, [an experience that resembles] what they [have come to] expect in every consumer part of their life,” Burke said. “Having a seamless, frictionless, transparent offer is going to be vital and very important to customer satisfaction and loyalty.”
Another disconnect identified in the study involves the timing of payments. The research found that 90% of patients would like to prepay for visits, and 87% would like to pay during a visit, yet most healthcare billing is done after the fact.
“I think this is a byproduct of more and more of the costs being shifted to the patient,” Burke said. “We hear it all the time — ‘the patient as a payor,’ ‘the patient as a consumer.’ As that’s been shifted, it’s natural that we want to know as patients what our costs are going to be.”
Bad Payment Experience Equals Bad Overall Experience
That expectation is driving healthcare organizations to bring the conversation about costs and payments forward in the clinical journey. Their existing tools, such as patient portals and electronic health record (EHR) platforms, can play a role in that if they implement estimation tools and other offerings from their partners.
By adding these to the portal, they can start that conversation early on. Patients walk in knowing that they’re going to owe something, so it’s best to let them know early on how much it’s going to be.
“Using the tools that [providers] already have in place today and expanding the functionality … of those tools is a great place to start,” Burke said.
Providers who deliver that sort of information about cost and payment options may find it to be a growth opportunity. The research found that 63% of consumers might switch providers for a better healthcare experience, including to providers with options for how to pay for care.
“We know that the experience of the financial journey is as important to a patient as the clinical journey, sometimes more so,” Burke said. “The cost [discussion is no longer separate from the] clinical outcome [so patients expect that conversation to occur]. Patients do not want to be surprised. Nobody wants a surprise.”
Meeting High Expectations
To avoid that surprise, the financial experience should be transparent, and the payment options offered by working with a partner should be seamless. Those should be offered early in the care journey and throughout the patient journey.
“Patients no longer compare one hospital to another hospital or one provider to another provider,” Burke said. “Instead, they compare their experience as a health consumer to the other buying experiences they have, such as those with Amazon.”
“The bar has really been raised in what we as a healthcare community need to offer patients,” Burke said. “It’s just absolutely vital that [providers] look at their workflow and make sure that workflow now represents what consumers expect today, which is conversations along the way and processes that are able to be personalized and specific to [the individual] and meet [them] where they are in their care.”
To meet those expectations when it comes to payments, she suggested finding a partner who understands the digital side and can make that frictionless and easy. That partner should also understand that healthcare is still conducted person-to-person, so they should provide training and other materials around payment options.
With such a partner, Burke concluded, “We can absolutely get there and provide just as good a payment experience as we do a clinical experience.”
She added that if a partner can integrate with the provider’s EHR platform and its patient portal, they can provide a seamless experience all the way from making an appointment to making a payment. That’s what today’s patients and consumers expect.
Today, as consumers, we are used to taking our business where we have a positive experience from start to finish, Burke concluded.
“What this [integration] does is it allows [providers] to really drive that loyalty and that experience, and [these are the qualities that lead to] strong [patient] satisfaction and strong loyalty,” she said.
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