Are you a healthcare provider looking for fast new ways to make your patient’s lives easier? Well, you’ve come to the right place!
The COVID-19 pandemic has completely changed how we go about our business in our everyday lives. Every time we walk out the door, we make sure we have our phone and keys and our masks. We say ‘hi’ to people by giving them fist bumps instead of kisses on their cheek, we’re more careful about the things we touch, and we take our shoes off before entering our homes.
These changes have also translated to how we pay for things. Next time you go to the grocery store (or any other store, really), try to count how many people pay with cash. You’ll probably be surprised by how small that number is. The truth is that many forms of payment have recently become obsolete and been replaced by newer ones that you need to be aware of to provide your patients with the best experience possible.
So, let’s dive into these financial innovations and how you can include them to optimize the operation of your business for the good of your patients.
Email Is The New Paper Mail – Completely Obsolete
After witnessing how technology rapidly changed the world, many healthcare providers decided to evolve and switched to sending bills by email. Probably they thought: ‘that oughta do it!’ The truth is that they were wrong. Very, very wrong.
Email has recently become an archaic form of communication, and no one expects to find their bills there. Furthermore, email is also unreliable since bills can end up in people’s spam folders (which usually no one checks) and get deleted after about thirty days, which will make your patients feel angry and frustrated.
But, if not by email, how are you supposed to notify your patients about the due date of their bills? Well, several ways have become increasingly popular after COVID, including:
- Online patient portals (basically allowing patients to pay through your website, in the same way, they would pay for any other online purchases)
- Mobile app
- Contactless mobile wallets
- Pay by text message
- QR code
According to recent surveys, the last three options are especially favored by Gen Z people. They’re trendy now that the pandemic has turned pretty much everything we touch (especially money) into a potential biohazard. This is why many companies have already switched to these forms of online payment to make their patient’s lives easier.
No one wants to use cash anymore. Having to scroll through your spam folder feels as strange as going through your paper junk mail; therefore, consider adopting these tactics before losing more patients to more modernized companies.
Make Office Experiences Safer With Contactless!
The pandemic has made going to the doctor a more terrifying experience than it already was. It is common knowledge that, under normal circumstances, most people hate going to the doctor. However, knowing that a doctor’s office or hospital can be filled to the brim with people who have the modern plague, those fears are maximized. In conclusion, everyone gets incredibly anxious and scared when they go to the doctor’s office.
The mentioned above is one of the main reasons why millions of practices have switched to contactless payments. Owners have found that it makes people feel more secure, as they don’t need to hand their card over to someone else to make a payment. Therefore, they don’t feel like they have a chemical bomb in their wallet when they go home.
How can you implement this into your practice? Well, one way to do it is to buy a contactless device off Amazon and set it up to the computer at your front desk! When patients come to pay, tell them to bring their credit card to the device, and that’s it.
A simple change like that not only makes patients feel better but also makes them trust you more. By including these forms of payment in your practice, patients will feel like their concerns are being heard. They will indeed feel respected and prioritized! Precisely for this reason, making contactless payments, a standard, should be the top priority for all healthcare providers at this time.
Provide Patients With A Way To Manage Their Expenses!
If you’ve lived in the US for any period, then you know that healthcare costs can sometimes go through the roof, especially for people who don’t have health insurance. Even for the people who do it, franchises can cost up to thousands of dollars, all for something as simple as an IV bag.
As a result, patients are now looking for healthcare providers to have greater control over their finances. One of the ways to do this is to let people choose where to spend their money.
Keep in mind that, due to the vast economic catastrophe generated by the pandemic, many people have had to cut back on their spending by prioritizing certain things over others. Millions of people have recently lost their jobs, their homes, and, with them, their health insurance. That’s why it’s so important to lend people a hand by allowing them to have more control over their expenses.
Does that mean people want this kind of thing? You’d be surprised. Recent surveys say that 59% of patients prefer recurring bill payments, but a whopping 46% are much more likely to take advantage of an early payment discount that allows them to pay for the entire service or treatment.
Patients are often very anxious about these types of issues. They want to know when payments are due and how much money they owe to keep their financial expenses under control. A great way to help them is through IVR (Interactive Voice Response), an intelligent tool that allows you to keep patients informed about their due dates and amounts to be paid.
Conclusion
Change is an undeniable fact of life; it’s always there, it’s a constant. This is why the only remedy for change is to embrace it and try to fit into the new model of the world as best as you can. Making healthcare payments easier is one of the many ways in which you can do so!
