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Develop Patient-Friendly Medical Billing During Pandemic

December 9, 2020

A patient-centric approach means you need to design a system that places the needs, preferences, and behaviors of patients at the center of the experience of healthcare. It holds the key to attracting fresh patients and retaining existing ones. The whole idea revolves around a carefully designed user journey that delivers an outstanding patient experience. You need to ensure that every touchpoint meets their expectations since patients now hold medical practices to the same standards as other consumer services. 

The patient billing statement is one patient touchpoint that often gets overlooked. It’s often treated as an afterthought. However, you can’t afford to overlook the payment process if you want patients to be satisfied with their entire experience and return to your practice or facility. A badly designed or confusing billing statement not only reduces patient satisfaction but also makes collecting unpaid balances more difficult.

It’s time to upgrade your medical billing statement!

Essential Elements of a Patient-Friendly Medical Billing Statement

A patient-centric statement presents billing information in a way that helps patients understand the charges and give them easy ways to pay the bill, access additional information, or get assistance.

Here are some essential elements to consider when designing a patient-friendly billing statement:

Integrated Statement

Patients often have to receive care within a facility from various providers or departments. When they have to deal with multiple bills from different services, e.g., radiology bills, laboratory bills, and doctor’s bills, it is a frustrating experience. 

You need to display all charges in one place so that patients can easily understand the breakdown of the charges and the total for the entire visit. Consequently, the itemization of each service or treatment makes it easy for patients to identify the suppliers, services, and costs involved. A consolidated bill also makes it easier and faster for patients to make payments while ensuring that they do not ignore a payment just because a bill is lost in the pile.

Easy-To-Understand Presentation

The use of jargon and complicated format in billing information presentation is often frustrating for patients. By using jargon-free language in your statement, you can enhance the patient experience and include explanations of the terms in the FAQ section. Colors can also be used to link financial data and design elements to highlight the next step so that patients can take the necessary measures.

Payment Options

You have to make it easy for patients to pay the bills proactively. Offer detailed instructions on how to access the online payment portal or send a payment. Patients should also be able to make payments by phone or online, in addition to the traditional option of sending a check with a payment coupon. Thus, offering a payment plan option is another way to encourage patients to pay. Include information about it alongside the payment instructions so that patients can contact your office for further queries.

Clutter-Free Statement Design

Your billing statement should be easy to comprehend by showing only the relevant information that patients need. By including a URL and/or QR code, you can provide a way for those who require additional details or access to medical data online.

Tap Into Our Expertise

At 5 Star Medical Billing, we offer the highest level of performance for high-quality medical billing. We offer a text notification feature for sending bills to your patients and they can access their billing statements through our Patient Portal too. Talk to our experts to further improve your collections and achieve a patient-friendly medical billing

Schedule a consultation with our experts today!


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