Nobody likes feeling taken advantage of financially, and that definitely includes your patients. When healthcare providers’ collections processes are opaque and bills end up being far larger than initially promised or projected, it feels like you’re getting swindled. And there’s no better way to leave a bad taste in a patient’s mouth and dissuade them from coming to your practice again than by avoiding price transparency.
For these reasons and more, price transparency plays a critical role in positively impacting your collections process. To help you understand price transparency’s full impact on collections, we’ve compiled a 3-step rundown of the ways it influences them.
Patients are willing to pay for transparency because they value it so much.
Even if your prices may be higher than competitors, patients will not know this if your competitors aren’t transparent about the financial costs of their services. The peace of mind that price transparency affords patients is enough for them to be willing to pay more for it than not knowing if they’ll be able to afford the treatment or services they’re seeking.
Price transparency plays a large role in patients’ provider selection.
Almost 50% of patients say that price transparency is the reason they choose a certain provider over another. Visiting a hospital that has transparent costs is much less daunting than potentially racking up huge, unknown bills at another that doesn’t.
Collections will likely run smoother if patients know how much they’ll have to pay in full.
Understanding, empathy, and integrity are key things to communicate in your correspondence with patients during the sensitive collections process. Being honest and upfront about what’s due will help you make the most reasonable repayment plan for each patient. And this will also minimize the scariness of collections for patients.
While it may seem daunting to take the time to create standard pricing and implement transparency across your host of services and treatments, you’ll receive dividends in the long run by doing so. Collections will be more seamless and recovery will improve as a result of price transparency. Frost-Arnett is more than willing to discuss measures to help you improve your collections’ price transparency and maximize recovery with you. Just give us a call at (615) 259-6271.