Improving Patient Communication in Medical Billing

A patient’s experience includes every interaction or encounter with your practice. These encounters either result in a positive or a negative point of view. When patients take a negative experience from your practice, there can be damaging consequences. These include a decrease in patient engagement and a shrinking patient volume – both of which can hit your revenue hard. Providers must ensure effective channels of patient communication to prevent such instances.
We know what you are thinking:

How can I ensure a holistic patient communication experience when swamped with patient treatments? The answer lies in outsourcing medical billing services – freeing you enough room to improve patient-provider communication.

Relationship of Patient Communication with Patient Payments (RCM)

As a provider, if you are looking for ways to better your RCM process and the overall financial flow of your medical practice, then working on patient communication is the first base of your journey.

Where does one start?

Demystifying insurance payments and the medical billing process is one of the ways that your staff can effectively impact the patient’s experience with your practice. If you manage your billing operation in-house, then you are aware of how daunting and frustrating the entire process can be. Additionally, it is common knowledge how tricky medical coding is as a part of the billing process.

Medical Billing Services and a Novice Patient

Imagine the entire billing process and workload from an uninformed patient’s point of view – it might just be another language. Most patients are blissfully unaware of how the entire billing process works. What you and your staff can do is guide patients with a heads-up on the amount they will owe for a particular service. This conversation alone will allow your patients to ask questions or acknowledge the bill they expect to receive – successfully removing any confusion when it is time to make payments.

Explaining Financial Responsibility

This is yet another opportunity for your practice to help patients mitigate the need for more awareness by establishing a cohesive and easy-to-understand financial policy. This policy must explain the responsibilities of both sides, including the patient and medical practice. Defining an easy-to-understand financial policy and then training your in-house staff to carry out such conversations is an excellent way to improve patient communication and drive patient engagement.
What else can your practice do to ensure practical and effective patient communication?

Strategies to Improve Patient Communication in Medical Billing

Below are a few ideas with which your practice can improve communication – these include the following:

1. Ensuring proper training of staff on how to carry out patient communication effectively. It includes each facet of greeting the patients when they come to your facility, explaining their ailments/procedures in layperson terms.

2. Utilize modern technology to your advantage – using EHR-integrated mobile applications help improve doctor-patient communication. For instance, your practice can use EHR patient portals for appointment scheduling, reminders, bill payments, and test/lab results.

3. Another strategy to improve communication is to simplify your patient forms. Ensuring patients understand your forms’ outlined financial policy is key to improving their experience.

4. Creating a good first impression by greeting patients warmly and making them feel at ease in your office shall set the tone of their entire visit. This strategy breaks the ice and opens communication where patients feel comfortable and heard.

5. Staying highly responsive to patient needs – if patients present with concerns or questions – it is vital that you take time to address them.

6. Invest time to get to know your patients better and build relationships with them.

All of these are proven strategies for improving communication and boosting your revenue cycle. Improved patient communication results in better patient engagement, leading to higher reimbursement rates.

Final Word

It is important to focus on patient communication while outsourcing your billing operations to a trusted billing partner. Effective communication is to streamline and facilitate patient engagement and patient care. Furthermore, clear communication concerning financial obligations will help your practice get faster reimbursements.

If your in-house staff is overwhelmed with other vital aspects of running a practice, including medical billing and coding, consider outsourcing operations to a medical billing firm. By outsourcing coding and billing operations to a third-party provider, you can focus your efforts on making your patients’ healthcare experience seamless. At Physicians Revenue Group. Inc., we do just that by taking the burden of billing operations off of your staff. Additionally, our expert billers and auditors can help your practice increase its number of clean claims in addition to insurance reimbursements.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the 3 Cs of communication in healthcare?

Compassion
Clarity
Coherence

These are the three C’s of communication in healthcare. Additionally, communication is regarded as one of the central pillars of delivering top-quality patient care.

What is the top form of communication for healthcare services?

Written communication is vital in healthcare, in addition to social care settings. It can be used to record patient information and update medical/patient records.

Why is patient communication important?

Your patients must feel safe enough to openly and honestly communicate with your practice. It makes receiving effective care easier.