TransUnion announced the release of a new healthcare patient payment estimator at the Healthcare Financial Management Association's Revenue Cycle Strategy conference in Chicago last week.
The patient payment estimator is intended to help healthcare providers simplify the patient billing process by providing an estimate of the patient's financial responsibility. The company is implementing the new tool in hospitals this month.
According to Milton Silva-Craig, executive vice president of TransUnion's healthcare group, estimating the amount a patient owes prior to service is an extremely complex undertaking due to all of the factors that can change prior to an insurance claim being processed. These include medical complications, additional services, deductible levels and coinsurance amounts.
"With patients assuming greater financial responsibility for managing their healthcare dollars, the demand for improved patient pricing transparency becomes paramount as well as the need to understand those charity benefits that are available to patients," said Silva-Craig.
Healthcare providers using TransUnion's Revenue Manager software with the patient payment estimator will be able to determine the amount owed by patients and identify and qualify those patients for programs and/or charity benefits available based on their individual situation.
Riverside Regional Medical Center in Virginia will be the first healthcare system to integrate the patient payment estimator with Revenue Manager software.
"Riverside is excited about being able to determine charity eligibility at the time of registration with this new product," said Richelle Fleischer, Riverside's administrative director. "Combining the credit scoring data to determine charity eligibility with a contract-based patient liability estimator will equip our patient access team to have a meaningful dialog with patients regarding their specific patient responsibility beyond just co-pays. We expect this to have significant impact on our insured bad debt as we will know who has the ability to pay at the time of service, and who might need some type of assistance."