Should you adopt to pre payment strategy for you Medical practice/hospitals?
The pandemic has impacted the way medical practices and hospitals operate. The workflow demands huge piles of bills to be cleared and staff power who can handle multiple tasks at prolonged stints of time.
Once the medical service is provided to the patient, medical providers have to wait for the insurance company to reimburse the service provider. The wait time is uncertain for the provider, which causes friction in the Revenue Cycle Management (RCM).
The traditional process relies on the insurance companies to reimburse the claims to medical providers. The time taken for this processing is uncertain and causes undue friction in the Revenue Cycle Management (RCM). A strong Payer-Provider relationship is very beneficial for healthy Revenue Cycle Management (RCM). Prepayment can remove the burden for the provider in several ways.
One of the health plan CEO’s quotes “Our preference has always been to get as much prepayment as we could because it tends to be more efficient and create less hassle and frustration for the physicians who are usually the ones that bear the brunt of the editing.”
A managed care plan CEO said “Providers like the speed of payment. They like clarity, and they like transparency. To the extent that our prepayment services could provide those things, it was absolutely preferable.”
Some of the advantages of implementing this pre payment strategy in individual practice and hospitals.
Benefits for Patients: Upfront payments help to avoid prolonged collection cycles, thereby maintaining the patient’s ability to cover expenses, while also improving patient experience and increasing visits.
Benefits for Medical Service Providers: The number of returning patients is more thereby increasing the revenue. About 38% of the healthcare providers feel that their practice had a positive impact after implementing the prepayment strategy.
Benefits for Providers: With a pre-payment strategy, insurance service providers could considerably reduce and in some cases even eliminate collection follow-up from patients. According to a recent survey, very few providers, about less than 2% have reported negatively on pre-payment strategy.
Pre payment strategy provides would optimize patient care, increase revenue and streamline workflow.
