Novant Health recently consolidated bills and improved the end-to-end patient experience.
The patient financial experience is cumbersome and bills can be difficult for the average patient to navigate. As the patient financial experience begins to play a greater role in the overall success of the organization, revenue cycle leaders are now turning to streamlined technology for bill payments to transform the patient financial experience into a positive to protect patients from unforeseen medical costs and to free up revenue cycle staff to spend more time doing meaningful work.
However, doing so is not always easy.
Many organizations rely solely on mail, email, and/or EHR communications to contact patients.
Acknowledging this gap in his patient financial experience, Geoff Gardner, senior vice president of finance at Novant Health, saw the need for his organization to consolidate hospital and physician group billing, and decided to integrate email billing with electronic billing. Established a better end-to-end patient experience for bill payment via email billing. text notification.
According to Gardner, this has enabled Novant Health to achieve: 90% patient satisfaction scores, 87% of collections are fully self-service, 43% faster collection days, and return on investment. Nine times the rate.
Gardner recently chatted health leaders Learn about Novant Health’s journey to establish success in this revenue cycle.
HealthLeaders: What made Novant Health look for solutions to streamline their financial and billing experience?
Jeff Gardner: For years we have been working to modernize and improve our consumer experience and revenue cycle organization. We saw slow and steady improvements, but we knew we needed a completely revamped process to deliver the simplified patient billing experience we envisioned.
HL: Healthcare has been going through a lot of turmoil and upheaval lately, and it’s been very difficult financially. Can you share your experience and how the technology has helped Novant Health grow its collection?
Gardner: Like many other healthcare systems, Novant Health experiences financial challenges, including inflationary pressures on wages, supplies and medicines. In addition, the need to utilize contract clinical labor has significantly increased the cost of the overall system.
Launched Cedar Pay, a patient engagement and payment platform integrated into the Epic system for both hospital billing and physician billing.
After implementation, the collection increased and the time it takes to collect has decreased significantly. Specifically, in 12 months, cash collections increased by tens of millions, while the time it took him to collect was reduced by more than 40%. And in addition to the financial impact, patient satisfaction has improved dramatically, now he is at 90%.
Photo: Geoff Gardner is senior vice president of finance for Novant Health. Photo courtesy of Novant Health.
HL: What changes do you see in the patient’s financial experience in the next few years, especially in light of the No Surprise Act and the Price Transparency Rule?
Gardner: In light of recent laws on price transparency and surprise billing, it’s important for healthcare providers to listen to their patients and find ways to do their job for them. One of the reasons we decided to introduce new technology was because we wanted to optimize the billing experience on mobile devices. We believe this trend will continue, both at Novant Health and the healthcare system in general. Providers should provide patients with a digital forward experience that helps them understand how bills and benefits are applied.
HL: Are there any additional solutions or strategies you plan to leverage in the future to further improve patient experience and revenue cycle capabilities?
Gardner: Our revenue cycle leadership team is constantly looking for ways to improve various processes and how patients experience the payment process. I’m looking for new ways to automate specific workflows using robotic process automation and AI so my team can focus on the highest value work. On top of that, the pre-service experience is on our radar and we are working to modernize and improve it in the future.
HL: What tips do you have for other leaders looking to digitize specific revenue cycle processes?
Gardner: I recommend partnering with a tech-forward vendor who fully understands the end-to-end to medical billing journey and truly understands what consumers want. Integrating emergency and outpatient care into an integrated patient experience has long been a desire of ours. We asked several other vendors and went to the one that said they could do it and deliver on their promises.
Amanda Norris is the Revenue Cycle Editor at HealthLeaders.
