White Paper | VantageHealth.AI

OPTIMIZING PATIENT CONNECTIONS ACROSS THE FULL ENCOUNTER LIFECYCLE

CHALLLENGE: Optimize Your Digital Patient Engagement Strategy Amid Postage Increases

The upcoming postage increase on July 14th presents a crucial opportunity to evaluate your current patient balance collection methods. With the additional $.05 increase associated with an already expensive (and often ineffective) use of paper statements to collect on patient balances, it may be time to take a deeper look at the effectiveness of your digital front door. Please take a moment to review the four core components of a value generating patient receivables collection program.

CONDITIONING: Establishing a Trusted Digital Connection

Interest in the concept of a digital front door (touchpoints between providers and patients across the service continuum) has been growing. At Vantage, we brand this digital front door as a vital digital Patient Connection Channel that is extensible to support financial, administrative, and clinical communications.

Establishing and expanding a digital connection channel is complex in today's technology landscape, where bad actors often use deceptive tactics to compromise sensitive information. With the rise of AI, it is increasingly challenging to distinguish authentic communications, leading many recipients to ignore or mark them as spam. Given these dynamics, it is essential that your digital channel is trusted.

At Vantage, we collaborate with our clients to develop a Conditioning Program that integrates a provider’s policies, processes, and people with the Vantage platform. This program is used to introduce the provider’s digital channel to the patient via a person-to-person interaction, resulting in greater adoption and ongoing trust for critical provider-patient communications.

What percentage of your patient community has provided (consent infused) digital contact information?
Do you have a fully integrated programmatic approach to maximize digital patient the collection of digital contact information and consent?
Do you introduce and demonstrate your digital channel through personal interactions during scheduling, point-of-service, and post-encounter moments?

Vantage has helped many providers increase their digital contact information from less than 40% to over 75% of their patient population

1

COMMUNICATIONS: Effective Balance Due Notifications

Most practice management systems and payment collection products enable providers to send both paper and digital balance due communications. However, merely utilizing these tools does not ensure maximized collections at minimized costs. Providers looking to ancillary solutions to improve patient collections, often pay a percentage of collections to operate a vendor software license. However, most software solutions push out statements and digital messages in an a-synchronous and rigid manner, which produces suboptimal results.

Effective balance due communication requires a flexible, dynamic platform that harmonizes and coordinates digital, telephonic, and paper communication. Transitioning a patient from a digital detractor to a digital adopter involves a well-designed program that uses both automated and person-to-person communications at scale. A well-designed program acknowledges that words and timing matter. Using the right precision of words, timing, and system vs personal notifications is required to drive greater digital adoption across your patient community.

Do your paper and digital communications complement each other to create an effective balance due campaign?
Can you design communication campaigns that align with your mission and cater to the geographical and utilization attributes of your patient population?
Can you identify your ‘curious’ population who view their bill but don’t make a payment, and are you able to further prompt them with personalized messaging?

Via strategically architected balance due communications, Vantage has helped many providers reduce their print mail volume and associated costs by 50 to 60%

2

COORDINATION: Ensuring Data Synchronization

Providers who leverage communication tools and technology that augment their core practice management system often struggle to keep systems aligned. While many organizations offering payment solutions to the provider community champion integration, integration often falls short of expectations. Integration becomes increasingly complex where another support system tracks balances and status outside of a provider’s core system.

Administering the state of a balance (or multiple balances at the guarantor level) is more addressable when the practice management system remains the source of truth. Transitioning balances to collection agency assignment, evaluating write-off eligibility, and applying self-pay discounts are a few examples of balance administration that can be streamlined and even automated when a synchronized partner platform is able to send discrete ‘instruction’ signals to the practice management system that reflect balance state and activity from the partner communications platform.

Would an audit of your patient encounter records show engagement and response activity history from communications flowing across your digital channel?
Are you able to offer patients multiple recurring payment opportunities when they are unable to make a one-time full payment, while ensuring a balance seamlessly remains in first party status when there is evidence of active patient engagement?

An extended first-party program that offers recurring payment options can generate significant payment volume between days 90 and 270, accounting for 30% of all patient payments without collection agency assignment or associated placement fees.

3 CONCLUSION:

A high functioning patient collections operation requires more than a software product, it requires a thoughtfully designed program supported by a partner and platform. If you believe you have further opportunities to optimize your digital patient communication channel to reduce costs, elevating patient engagement and increase collections, please reach out to us schedule a discussion about the differentiated Vantage program building approach.

CALCULATION: Measuring Program Effectiveness

Designing and implementing a program is crucial to generating high value patient connections, but the work is not complete until a CALCULATION framework is in place to measure program effectiveness and outcomes. Establishing performance metrics and operating the program through the lens of measuring and monitoring these metrics allows for iterative refinement and enhancements to generate adaptive and incremental value creation

On average, 75% of a provider’s patient population will address their balance through partial payments when the encounter balance is over $500, with 25% making partial payments when the balance is under $500. A platform that can seamlessly support auto-payments and informal payment plans through a streamlined quick-pay experience with strategic payment reminders, can generate a high volume of re-occurring payments and a far greater patient balance close rate.

Having a platform that can support prompting a patient to update their payment information is critical to maintaining re-occurring payments. Monitoring failed payments rates is one of many examples where a performance metrics dashboard ensures providers can monitor and manage patient connection performance to clear payment blockage and elevate connection adoption.

Do you know your average cost per guarantor per month to collect patient balances?

Do you know your average dollar collected per guarantor per month?

Are you able to manage costs and collections through granular KPIs to enable policy, process, people and platform adjustments in order to drive continuous optimized program performance?