Why You Need An Online Payment Solution For Your Practice?
Practices, hospitals, and clinics make up for most of the care that we receive. Our mental and physical health are priceless and some of the most valued of assets in our lives if not the most. This is why we need to take utmost care of our own self and our well-being.
All of us work in one form or the other and often fall prey to various mental or physical illnesses, which are either short-term or live longer than the others. This is why we need to look up to the practices and clinics nearby to shake off our illnesses, strengthen our minds and live up to normalcy.
Though the practices initially started as an alternative to the bigger hospitals and other healthcare facilities, the practices of today are modernized and extend a range of services to the patients. These practices now house a wide range of departments including the reception area, waiting area, consultation room, billing area, emergency room, and more.
Though most of the departments need an adequate number of staff and healthcare facilities, it is the billing department that grabs one's attention instantly. This is the department that is associated with the billing and claims of the patients and handles all the money matters along with keeping them engaged. All of these are reasons enough why the billing section needs to get the utmost attention of the practice owners and managers.
Patient Payments are Growing Concerns for Practices!
Payments are always essential and are central to any business or office in practice. Similarly, when it comes to the healthcare industry, it is the patient payments that matter much to the practices, clinics, and other healthcare units.
Practices and other medical service providers houses numerous staff on a regular basis, medical workers on an emergency basis across departments, medical office software, diagnostic tools, and other heavy machinery, doctors, nurses, janitors, and other workers. All of these are nothing but investments to gain the payments from the patients are revenue. This is why the patient payments drive much attention to the practices and optimizing the revenue cycle is thus, a must for the practices to flourish.
As a significant part of the management of practice revenues and the optimization of the revenue cycle in practices, payments that come from the patients need due attention.
According to the latest statistical data, it has been found that nearly 80% of medical bills contain errors. Furthermore, the updated reports also asserted that in nearly 50% of the medical claims, there are errors. Such a considerable amount of error creeping into the healthcare billing process can be due to numerous reasons.
Day in and day out the healthcare units lose a massive amount of their revenues due to bad medical billing practices and faulty billing. Doctors in the US lose around $125 billion each year, the reason being outdated, inefficient, or reckless billing and coding practices.
Now, if you are also associated with a practice, then your practice might also be encouraging errors in its billing processes, which are resulting in a decline of its overall revenues each year. This is why we are here with some prominent reasons that are giving way to errors.
A Look at the Causes of the Rising Errors in Healthcare Bill Payments that Need to be Corrected!
As we have already seen that the billing process, or where the patients pay for the care they received from a medical facility, is the section that is prone to errors more than one. These not only lead to a loss of practice revenues but wastes time, and have a toll on the overall reputation of the practice.
Here is a list of some common errors in the healthcare bill payments that need to be avoided:
Lack of implementation of digital tools and effective software
Manual methods of calculation are found to be exceedingly prone to error. This is the sole reason why calculators and effective digital systems and computers have come into being and this will be the same reason why the practice billings need to be automated.
Online patient payments and digital billing processes brought in by GrowPractice, on the other hand, save practice revenues a lot. Furthermore, it also leads to saving practice times by eliminating the loss of staff follow-up time. This online method of payment from GrowPractice has proved to increase collection rates by 20%.
Lack of proper distribution of work
A proper distribution of labor works a long way to help a business. The same goes for the clinics and practices of the healthcare industry. An alarming amount of medical workers are leaving their jobs lately and this got a new boost with the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic. 1 in 5 healthcare workers or nearly 18% of the medical staff has quit their jobs.
Though some of them have left their jobs due to the risky working conditions and a high chance of getting affected, a vast majority of them have resigned due to massive work pressure, which is keeping on rising high. This growing work pressure has an adverse effect on the remaining employees, who are becoming restless and giving into several errors. However, with GrowPractice's innovative ways and all-in-one medical office software and tools, this can easily be remedied.
Inefficient or inexperienced employees
The medical billing staff should be experienced and multi-tasking, which is some of the most essential virtues that the people in your practice possess. However, many practices hardly care for it or worse so, have to compromise their choices.
This, unfortunately, cannot get them any positive results because the lowering quality of staff in a desk as important as the billing would simply pile up their share of worries. It goes without saying that inexperienced and inefficient employees in the billing desk would be prone to more errors in receiving and processing patient payments even with the help of online payment processing services.
Lack of tech-savvy employees
People should be confident of the new-age technologies that are bringing in a revolution for almost all of the industries of today. However, even in the healthcare industry, like all the other industries, you will find people who are not comfortable with the present-day technologies and either shy away from them or are not willing to learn anything new. If such employees stand as a part of the patient practices, then they ought to be losing out on some of its patients and practice revenues.
The above-mentioned points need to be reviewed by the practices to identify the causes of the increasing billing errors. Some other essential factors that need to be checked by the practices to minimize these errors are:
The billing errors have always stood as a wide concern for the practices and healthcare units across the globe. The aforementioned points would certainly help them improve healthcare bill payments but the primary requirement of the medical practices of now seems to be the implementation of online payment platforms to make patient payments a breeze.
The patients form the core of the medical industry because they are the ones for whom the industry is built. The patients' payments are the primary source of the practice revenues, which is why they should be one of the most important things for the practices to care for.
Being a crucial thing that influences patient experiences, payments and its methods need to be considered without delay and revamped thoroughly if necessary. Here, the implementation of the online payment platforms and online patient payment solutions can well be the first major step towards better handling the patient payments and improving the practice revenues.
Why Should Online Patient Payment Platforms and Solutions be Introduced for Healthcare Payments?
Bad billing processes or mistakes in billing cost the hospitals around $68 bn annually. Most of such bills have been discovered to be calculated manually or using crude methods or practices. Advanced billing software and medical office systems from GrowPractice can easily drag down these numbers, ensuring the practices stay fast and perfect at their billing desks.
Besides, recent data says that around 59% of patients from the Gen Y group have expressed their willingness to switch to a doctor or medical service provider with better online access, which instantly answers the question 'why do you need an online payment solution for your practice?'
If you are still not convinced, then here are some not-to-miss reasons why you should incorporate online payment platforms and solutions for the patients for your practice today:
Ensure Patient first payments
Patients certainly are the main reasons why the healthcare units exist today and this is why they need to be primarily cared for. Prioritizing the patients when it comes to payments not only helps the practices receive their payments successfully and without worries but also improves the sense of belongingness in the heart of the patients.
Keeping the patients first should be the motto of the medical service providers and this should start with patient first payments, which would heavily influence patient satisfaction.
Get Secure Dental Payments and Medical Payments in Place
Security is another concern for medical and dental practices. Primary health bill payments always need to be risk-free no matter at what cost. In this world that is seeing frauds and data breaches each day, practices always need to stay aware and updated about what's going on at this present moment.
However, if you choose GrowPractice as your medical office service provider, and go with its medical office software solutions then you need not worry about security issues. GrowPractice boasts of multi-layered security, HIPAA-compliance processes, data encryption, and its partnership with over 65 EHR/PM software and other trust software solution. All of these ensure the patients secure dental payments and medical payments in practice.
Speed up the Payments
Online payment processing services are not only smarter but definitively faster as well. These systems calculate faster and have all the data saved, which helps them to pull them up without much delay.
The faster healthcare bill payments at your practice will significantly reduce the wait times of the patients and can be the sole motivator for the patients. Do you know that 1 in every 5 patients has been found to change doctors because of long wait times?
This walking out not only results in wasting the time of the patients and the practices, and building a negative impression on the patient's mind but it also goes a long way in lowering down the patient satisfaction ratings and the overall revenues that the practices receive. Thus, waiting times can readily be avoided with the usage of the online payment solution for your practice.
Reduce the loss of Practice Revenues
Loss of patient revenues is something that needs to be tackled without a second thought. Practices are seeing a dearth of medical workers today that are severely dropping down the practice revenues.
Furthermore, numerous other systems and practices, which are outdated or ineffective, are followed still in the clinics, healthcare units, and practices that are leading to the practice losing its revenues. The implementation of cutting-edge medical office solutions from GrowPractice that would enhance healthcare payments, encouraging secure dental and medical payments, is thus something your practice should also look up to.
Boost Patients' Morale with Self Pay Options
Payments are confidential and if patients are not even given the liberty to choose their preferred mode of payment, then that would surely affect the patient experience. Nowadays, we are blessed with a whole range of payment options and not just stuck into cash or card transactions.
Besides, the online patient payment solutions from GrowPractice further bring the easiest and the most secure method of patient payments where the practices can easily collect them with just the SMS payment links. Self pay is something every patient looks forward to and when they are successful in doing the same, their happiness will now know no bounds.
Reduce the Expenses Related to Payments and Collections
Payments and collections demanded a lot of time and effort from the employees along with draining much of the practices' money.
While the currency notes were open to numerous ways of deception the card system of bill payments deducted a certain amount from the merchants. However, with the emergence of other ways of online payments collection of payments is no longer a problem.
Enhance Workflow
Getting online payment solutions in practice helps them enhance the overall workflow. These new-age solutions to payments and payment processing help practices take some of the burdens from their healthcare staff and improve the overall workflow.
Boost Patient Experiences
Patient experience speaks the last word when it comes to the growth of the practices and their revenues. The experiences can now also be measured using the improved patient satisfaction surveys and online reviews from GrowPractice.
Nearly 84% of the patients declare that the wait time they need to face is a major factor influencing their experiences. Here's where the fast and effective medical office software with improved online patient payment facilities that GrowPractice offers the medical practices greatly help!
Improve Practice Revenues
Practice revenues automatically get a boost with an increasing number of happy patients and this can only be possible if the practices encourage the implementation of online payment solutions to begin with. GrowPractice, with its online patient payments, has already added more than $60,000 revenues per provider and is gearing up for more with its state-of-the-art software and innovative technology.
Revolutionize the Payment Methods and Revamp Your Practice with GrowPractice
Being a leader in the manufacturing and distribution of medical offices, patient management, and practice management software, GrowPractice has numerous credits to its name and is supporting practices with its end-to-end solutions.
Some of the revolutionary solutions that GrowPractice brings to the medical practices are:
These are not the only benefits that GrowPractice offers your practice, you will get access to much more for sure. So, get set, grow your practice with GrowPractice now!
