Providers offer way for patients to pay medical bills
SAN DIEGO, CA - As more patients grapple with high-deductible health plans and self-pay circumstances, it is becoming increasingly difficult for providers to collect payment for services rendered.
Many organizations are starting to offer zero- or low-interest payment programs to their patients who would otherwise be unable to pay for medical services in a timely fashion.
San Diego, Calif-based CSI Financial Services offers an interest-free loan program called ClearBalance, which gives patients flexibility in arranging payment terms. Patients are guaranteed financing, and there are no late fees or aggressive collections tactics.
“It’s not that people don’t want to pay their bills,” said CSI Financial CEO Mitch Patridge, noting that ClearBalance provides a “very gentle, very friendly program to provide tools so hospitals can quickly and easily offer (a payment plan) to patients.”
Patridge says ClearBalance focuses heavily on customer satisfaction and strives to provide a positive experience through their call center, which is staffed with customer service representatives trained to handle the complexities of healthcare bills.
“Our patient satisfaction rate is 99 percent,” said Patridge.
The benefits for hospitals include increased cash collections, reduced bad debt write-offs, lower cost to secure payment and higher patient satisfaction ratings.
Providers who offer a payment plan have also found additional benefits.
“By offering patients an easy, friendly way to handle their obligations, you get them back as repeats and expand your reach because of positive word of mouth,” said Bruce Weintraub, vice president of marketing at ClearBalance.
San Diego, Calif.-based Palomar Health recently began offering the ClearBalance program to patients, transitioning to it from a similar but less patient-friendly program.
The health system made the switch “because (ClearBalance) provides several benefits to our patients that the (other) vendor does not have,” said Palomar corporate controller Tim Nguyen.
Among those features, Nguyen cites longer payment terms (up to 72 months), no interest, no late fees, flexibility to adjust the payment terms, ability to consolidate multiple accounts and the option to temporarily freeze payments as the most important.
“The biggest benefit in my opinion would be (the) longer term to pay off the balance, especially large balances with zero interest and no late fee,” said Nguyen.
He expects Palomar to reap benefits, too.
“Assuming that these accounts will go to bad debt without a program like ClearBalance, I am anticipating more than 4 to 1 ROI,” said Nguyen.
As providers look for every possible strategy to increase payment rates, business is booming for ClearBalance.
“Last year was our biggest growth year and this year will be even bigger than that,” said Weintraub.