Tales of patient financial responsibility: Hospital Management System

Once upon a time, the tales of patient financial responsibility: Hospital Management System providers were aiming their efforts at insurance reimbursement optimization. But as the healthcare kingdom was growing, changes started to happen. With the evolving reimbursement models and growing popularity of high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) allowing less expensive premiums but requiring higher deductibles, providers will have to sharpen their blades and prepare for another battle – the battle for patient financial responsibility. May not sound that threatening, but if the castles would stick with the bad debt, they wouldn’t be able to keep their gates open for those in need.

The ability to offer payment acceptance at all points in the care delivery process is key to encouraging patients to improve their financial responsibility. The touchpoints here include inpatient and outpatient settings, physician practices, triage/emergency rooms, home care and pharmacies.

Speaking experience, the healthcare kingdom can get a brief consulting from the borderlands of retail on how to treat a patient right with cutting-edge payment technologies. Providers need to ensure fast, efficient and secure payment processing, meeting individual patient preferences, be it a payment at check-in, at the point of care or at the pharmacy. This can be done by enabling payments via NFC, contactless payments (e.g., Apple Pay and Android Pay) and interactive touch screen terminals.

These terminals can also benefit workflow improvement through such features as capturing e-signatures for consent, verifying demographics, inviting to participate in a survey, leave a feedback, sign up for loyalty programs or therapeutic education mailout.