Decreasing Cost-to-Collect To Improve Revenue Cycle ROI In Healthcare: 5 Ways Your Staff Can Help

In healthcare financial management, cost-to-collect significantly impacts your practice’s revenue cycle. Reducing it is crucial to increasing your bottom line and avoiding potential malpractice claims and missed collections.

Unfortunately, cost-to-collect is becoming increasingly challenging to address.

There are several strategies to improve revenue cycle ROI that involve aspects such as cost savings, operational modifications, and pricing schemes. Fortunately, you need not look further than what you already have working in the field: your staff.

Here are five ways your staff can help decrease cost-to-collect to improve your revenue cycle ROI.

5 Best Ways To Decrease Cost-To-Collect With Staff

1. Promoting Patient Financial Responsibility

• Communicate with patients actively about their bills.
• Provide a detailed breakdown of each patient’s billings.
• Encourage patients to ask questions about their dues.

65% of patients consider cost transparency an essential aspect of their satisfaction with a practice, according to a 2019 study by Accenture. This is especially true since 38% of patients find their medical bills confusing.

Addressing this confusion is essential to reducing bad debt in your practice. Generally, communicating with patients actively about their financial responsibilities and how you can help them encourages them to fulfill their dues and follow their providers’ medical advice, which helps ensure treatment success.

2. Improving Patient-Provider Communication

• Train your providers on how to interact with patients effectively.
• Emphasize maintaining sensitivity with patients of lower socioeconomic status.
• Ensure a consistent experience by training all your staff on patient communication.

Patient-provider communication has a significant role in decreasing cost-to-collect. When providers actively engage with their patients, they’re more likely to return to your practice. Patient loyalty results in lower cost-to-collect, as patients are more likely to fulfill their dues if they see that their appointments are worth it.

Thus, effectively communicating with patients is a skill you must cultivate in your providers to improve your revenue cycle ROI. For best results, train everyone in your healthcare team, especially your receptionists, to best communicate with patients for a consistent experience.

However, one critical aspect you should consider is your providers’ perceptions of patients. Studies have shown that physicians tend to have a more negative perception of patients of low or middle socioeconomic status (SES) than those of high SES.

3. Diversifying Payment Methods

• Support multiple modes of payment (e.g., cash, debit card, credit card, patient portal).
• Work proactively with patients to verify insurance and identify alternative payment plans.
• Maintain understanding with indigent patients.

Supporting multiple payment methods can significantly reduce cost-to-collect, as some patients prefer specific modes of paying for their treatment. More importantly, however, you need to take the initiative to ensure that patients can finance their treatments if they cannot take any of your current methods.

To help your patients, work with them proactively to verify the eligibility of their insurance providers. You can also identify alternative payment plans to help them find ways to fulfill their dues over time.

Finally, maintain empathy with indigent patients. While minimizing your cost-to-collect is vital to keeping your revenue cycle ROI, preserving a positive patient experience is still one of the most crucial factors in your practice’s success.

4. Utilizing Patient Reminders

Patient reminders are a significantly effective way of reaching out to patients and reminding them about their dues.

To ensure that your clinic’s workflow remains steady, assign patient reminders to your receptionists instead of your providers. This will ensure that reminders are sent regularly and adequately.

You should also personalize your patient reminders and set various parameters to keep each reminder unique and personable. Reminder templates can streamline the management of reminders; however, generic reminders can make your clinic seem cold and unempathetic to patients. On the other hand, patient reminders that mention the patient’s name, date of appointment, and other unique aspects will make your clinic appear approachable.

You must also offer various ways for patients to receive reminders. Besides emails and texts, messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Viber should be considered. However, you should acquire your patients’ consent before contacting them through these platforms.

5. Improving The Overall Patient Experience

• Focus on providing a patient-centric experience.
• Utilize receptionist performance evaluations that measure key performance indicators.
• Remind your staff always to observe empathy with patients.

Besides care quality and provider expertise, the patient experience is one of the most crucial aspects of a healthcare practice.

Unfortunately, many patients are unhappy with their experience.

Investing in the patient experience increases satisfaction and retention by establishing an image of your clinic as friendly, warm, and approachable. This instills in them a sense of giving back by fulfilling their dues.

To achieve this, focus on facilitating an experience that is actively catered to your patients via your front desk. Your receptionists play a significant role in ensuring that your patients feel accommodated at your clinic from the moment they enter. Hence, you must invest in your front desk staff to improve the patient experience.

Create and utilize front desk performance evaluations regularly, ideally monthly, quarterly, and yearly, for best results. This lets you track where your receptionists can improve to provide the best possible service to your patients.

Other Ways To Utilize Your Staff For Decreasing Cost-to-Collect

As mentioned, your front desk staff can be vital in decreasing cost-to-collect in various ways — it’s just a matter of utilizing and empowering them effectively.

Here are a few ways to make the most out of your receptionists to minimize your cost-to-collect:

• Staff engagement. Encourage receptionists to proactively manage patient collections by keeping them engaged in their work.
• Training and development. Train your receptionists properly in insurance eligibility and other aspects of patient collections, as well as other administrative responsibilities like scheduling appointments.
• Rewards and recognition. Acknowledge front desk staff who go above and beyond to help decrease your cost-to-collect.
• Clarifying staff responsibilities. Emphasize to your staff their value and impact on the overall success of your clinic.
• Coordinating with staff. Involve your receptionists in formulating strategies to improve your practice’s healthcare revenue cycle.

For best results, create an effective front desk training regiment for your receptionists to keep them refreshed and ready to facilitate a positive experience for every patient.

Improve Your Revenue Cycle ROI With Your Receptionists

Greeting patients and facilitating check-in are just some ways your front desk staff can impact your practice’s success. When you invest in tools and solutions like a remote front desk for your receptionists, you also invest in your practice’s revenue cycle for the long run.

WelcomeWare is a live virtual receptionist service that can transform your patient experience by enabling your receptionists to work from home and cover multiple clinics remotely. This allows you to reduce headcount, reinvest cost savings, and maintain a consistent patient experience. Learn how WelcomeWare’s video receptionist platform can help empower your receptionists and enable them to bring your practice to greater heights!