Online Patient Payments integrated in PrognoCIS EHR
At a time when practices are relying more on direct payments from patients to maintain cash flow and produce revenue, online payment can allow you to collect more, faster, while reducing administrative costs. Online patient payment is an important feature in any EHR or Practice Management Software which lets practices accept payment from patients towards either co-pays or medical fees via online credit card transactions within the EHR. Data entered directly into the EHR helps eliminate time-consuming reconciliations and reduces the chances of any costly errors.
PrognoCIS EHR supports secure credit-card processing and provides patients with the ability to make payments from home or wherever they have Internet access via the Patient Portal. PrognoCIS also enables the practice manager to easily keep track of all payments received, billing communications and to create several different payment-related reports.
With this feature, all patient credit card information is also kept off site, which helps your practice avoid keeping data in the clinic which can lead to regulatory issues during PCI audits.
How Practices can Implement Online Patient Payment?
Each practice is assigned a dedicated support person who helps you get up and running and accepting online payments within 24-48 hours of signing up for the system. If your practice is new to accepting credit card payments, the support person will walk you through the process. Once fully installed, patients will be able to pay their bills conveniently and securely online.
Your practice can also set up payment plans and start communicating directly with patients so that you no longer have to endure the long delays that can come with mail billing.
With an online payment option you could even get patients to pay their bills, or a portion of their bill, while at your office! At the least, you can slash weeks from the payment cycle. To learn more about how offering online patient payments can help your practice grow, fill the form below.
Online Patient Payments Integrated into PrognoCIS EHR
Frequently Asked Questions - Online Payment
What is Online Patient Payment?
Online patient payment is an ability provided by medical practices which allows patients to pay their co-pays and bills directly online. This means patients can pay bills online through the use of a credit card from the comfort of home or wherever else they may be with Internet access.
What is the Issue with Current Patient Payment Methods?
Most doctors continue to send paper bills to patients who write checks and then send the same to the practice by snail-mail. This lengthens the bill payment process and also leads to additional administrative costs due to having to mail the notices and follow-ups. The current lengthy billing process can also lead to cash flow shortages and often results in patients failing to pay.
Offering an online payment option, allows practices to give patients a fast, convenient way to pay. It also can open the door to text and email communication over billing, which is much faster and less expensive than going through the mail.
What are the Benefits of Online Patient Payment?
According to a research published in 2007, the US health care payment system, which processes $1.9 trillion a year, is inefficient, and consumes 15 percent or more of each dollar spent on health care, compared with about 2 percent for the payment system in retailing. Expenditures on the processing of bills, claims, and payments; bad debt; and other transactions total more than $300 billion a year.Furthermore, without new approaches to streamlining the payment system, the movement to consumer-driven health care plans was likely to drive up administrative costs and further frustrate patients. Online patient payment is one of the important approach identified to streamline the payment system.
There are many benefits associated with offering online patient payment. These benefits include:
- Improved patient satisfaction
This is one of the biggest benefits associated with accepting online payments. According to medicaleconomics.com, “75 percent of adults are online daily, and one in four adults report being connected all the time.” The site goes on to say that “patients are growing accustomed to an Amazon-like consumer experience, where they can … pay in an instant, ideally from their mobile phones”. Thus, offering an online payment option could be a great way to increase patient satisfaction and keep them coming back to your practice. - Increased revenue and reduction in bad debt
Offering an easy way to pay online can reduce bad debt and allow a practice to collect more, which can boost your cash flow. Studies show that one of the top collection challenges among medical practices is slow payment among patients with high-deductible insurance plans. Offering more convenient payment options, such as online payment, could increase both the speed and the odds that a bill gets paid. - Accelerate revenue cycle
Using electronic patient statements following the adjudication of the claim by the payers is the first link in the patient payment chain. Offering the patients an online payment option allows patients to pay immediately reducing the length of the revenue cycle that can often take weeks and months to days or even hours or seconds. This reduces Days in AR. - Reduction in collection costs
Collecting from patients through the mailing of paper statements (often multiple), receiving patient payment by check, depositing and reconciling the same can be a big drain on a practice’s financial resources as well as manpower. The cost of mailing and following up can really add up fast. Online payments in conjunction with electronic patient statements are fast and simple and much less expensive. - Streamlined Process
Collecting online payments within the EHR system also greatly streamlines the payment process. Practice staff can automatically post and reconcile payments all in one place instead of collecting and filing paper statements and then reconciling them manually.
