Written by Alyssa Higgins on Sep 25, 2014
Online Bill Pay - A Guide for Healthcare
We are pleased to introduce Alyssa Rubenstein, Channel Development Manager at Salucro Healthcare Solutions. At Salucro, she oversees partnerships and relationship growth on a national level.
Are you offering Online Bill Pay to your patients? Providing a simple, convenient online payment method drives patient satisfaction and revenue cycle, but your payment page is an extension of your patient experience; you need to make sure you’re doing it right.
Make sure your Online Bill Pay and your staff adheres to these crucial best practices for best results:
1. Create awareness surrounding Online Bill Pay and payment options.
What benefit does Online Bill Pay have if your patients aren’t aware that the option is available? Exactly none. Patients should be educated about their payment options upfront before ever setting foot outside of your facility.
Let your patients know how soon they can expect to see their first bill, and that when that bill does arrive, Online Bill Pay is an option available for their convenience. Driving more traffic to your Online Bill Pay is easy, just print the URL on your patient billing statements with a Pay Now Online heading.
2. Make sure your patient payment portal is easy to access.
Navigating through an unfamiliar website can be frustrating, especially when you can’t find what you’re looking for. In the end, the longer it takes for a patient to locate that pay button, the more likely they are to give up and abandon the payment.
In my own experience working with healthcare providers, I see too many websites with an Online Bill Pay option that is nearly impossible to locate. Make it easy for your patients to locate the payment page by adding a Pay Your Bill Online button to your company homepage. This addition will take moments to upload and can save your facility in the thousands.
3. Provide a One-Time Payment option that doesn’t require account setup.
Online Bill Pay is all about convenience. Often times, patients are required to go through the lengthy process of setting up a user account in order to make a payment online.
Give your patients the option of making a one-time payment; not requiring them to log in to make a payment is more efficient and means less of a time commitment. This way, your patients remain engaged and payment abandonment is dramatically reduced.
Your patients will appreciate it. Here’s some feedback a Salucro client received from a patient on their one-time payment portal:
“I love the fact that you don’t have to sign up as a member or anything to pay your bill. This is great, on most sites to pay a bill online you have to go through the process of being a member. With you, all you need is the bill in your hand.”
4. Better support your patients during payment with Online Chat.
Patients are likely paying online because they don’t want the hassle of calling in or sending their payment via snail mail. Therefore, if they have a question throughout their online payment process, what better way to support them than with live online chat?
Any questions they may have throughout their payment process can be addressed immediately – easily preventing confusion or incorrect payments that your staff must correct later.
5. Payment Options, Payment Options, Payment Options
Last but certainly not least, PAYMENT OPTIONS! As self-pay becomes more prevalent in healthcare, patients are shifting to ‘consumers’, and they’ve come to expect the same payment options from their healthcare providers that they do from their favorite retailers.
The more payment options you offer to your patients, the likelier they are to follow through with that payment and in a more timely manner. How many payment options do you offer to your patients online?