Creating Access and Engagement Across the Revenue Cycle

Patient demand isn't the only reasonable access, and engagement is important; they also significantly affect practice revenue. Because of patients' greater financial responsibility, physician practices should think of them as a payer. From a bottom-line perspective, writing off self-pay dollars is no longer an option. Third-party reimbursement dollars are increasingly difficult to secure, especially due to value-based care, which intensifies the need for a patient payment strategy that educates patients regarding their financial responsibility and promotes payment.

For all these reasons, addressing the patient experience — including price transparency, plus patient access and engagement — will be crucial to physician practices' success and long-term growth.

Increasing patient financial responsibility has made the front desk's role in revenue cycle management (RCM) more important; therefore, the technology they use to determine and collect patient payments must be user friendly and able to streamline formerly tedious processes such as cost estimation.