One of the business pain points for physicians is collecting payments from patients for their services, which often involves lots of customer service call time on the phone. An online payment platform for healthcare, called Money2, from Citi aims to make that process easier, more efficient and consumer-friendly, according to those involved with the tool.
As profit margins for providers have decreased, the pressures are enormous to meet the bottom line, said Robert Shaffer, a physician with a medical group in Miami Beach, Fla.
"So any technology, any help we can get to get payment a little quicker and a little more efficiently, we're looking for these ways," he said. He recently learned about Citi's tool and has presented the concept to his practice, which plans to move forward with it.
Citi hopes to bring together a network of insurers and providers so that patients can go online at a patient portal or use their mobile devices to view their claims and reconcile their healthcare bills, receive alerts when claims and bills are available and pay amounts that are due.
Aetna, the initial insurer participant, will pilot the tool in April with Citi employees who are Aetna members. During the summer, the payer will add four or five large customers to the pilot, said Erin Hatzikostas, head of strategy and business development, Aetna Consumer Financial Solutions. It will roll out more broadly later in the year and also go mobile.
"It gives the member the information they need and the context in which they need it, where they go to check for and look at their claims," she said.
Incorporating the feature in the members' portal enables them to better understand and manage their healthcare costs by being able to view their claim, pull up their bill and click on a 'pay now' button, which will link the member to the payments platform.
Money2 is designed to make it simpler for consumers to both track and pay their healthcare bills while speeding up payments to providers, said Paul Galant, Citi Enterprise Payments CEO.
"Paying healthcare bills is often confusing and time-consuming, and the disjointed and inconsistent array of payment options available today leads to delayed or missed payments and higher costs for patients, providers and insurers," he said in news release when Citi announced the new tool.
Currently, 90 to 120 days is the typical delay between when a patient comes in and when providers get paid, said June Felix, managing director, global healthcare, Citi Enterprise Payments. Additionally, up to 50 percent of patient payments are written off because the collection costs for significantly delayed payments "are not worth it, getting cents on the dollar," she said.
Based on initial analysis, cost savings could be $5 million to $7 million for every $1 billion of patient revenue. With 3 percent operating margins on average for hospitals, "now you're talking about another way to improve operating margin," Felix said.
Providers will also be able to reduce costs because they won't have to send out paper statements and make fewer phone calls.