How To Maximize Your ROI With Healthcare Technology

Healthcare organizations face numerous challenges, such as staff shortages, outdated intake practices, billing errors and reimbursement claims. These factors can impact your facility’s reputation and profitability, which is why focusing on solutions to address these obstacles is vital.

Healthcare technology is one of the solutions more practices are using to address these challenges. Here are five types of healthcare tech you can use to maximize ROI:

1. Telemedicine
2. Insurance Verification Software
3. AI for Patient Engagement
4. Cloud-Based Software
5. Digital Mobile Payments

Digital healthcare software, platforms and integrations provide versatile features and benefits to rectify medical facility challenges like inefficient processes, revenue loss and staff burnout. These solutions can effectively address your practice’s obstacles, maximize your return on investment and help you stay competitive in your industry.

The Importance of Maximizing ROI

Increased return on investment (ROI) in healthcare can mean cost savings, improved patient outcomes and satisfaction, and increased efficiency and profitability.

Focusing on improving medical services and patient experiences is one of the best ways for healthcare facilities to increase ROI. That’s why prioritizing methods for evaluating and upgrading healthcare processes like appointment scheduling, insurance and medical payments, follow-ups, recovery, and patient engagement is vital.

When you enhance these operations, you add more value to your services, which helps to retain and attract more patients and increase your revenue.

Why Is Healthcare Technology Important for Increasing ROI?

Healthcare technology can streamline and speed up your healthcare process. Improved processes mean more efficient services and better patient journeys — patients with positive experiences at your facility can be more willing to continue using your services, increasing engagement. A reliable patient base means your facility generates more revenue.

Here are some more benefits of investing in health technology:

Increased Profitability

Challenges like slow intake processes, inaccurate insurance information, and long appointment wait times can leave a negative impression on patients. These issues can lead to loss of patients and poor reviews, which make your service less favorable. In addition, inefficient processes can slow the intake and follow up stages, limiting the number of new patients you can help. This lag leads to low consultation turnovers and less revenue.

Investing in technology can streamline end-to-end operations, from patient scheduling to intake, payments, feedback and engagement. Solutions like online booking and mobile payments reduce the need for manual processes, which can impact operational efficiency and cause delays. Automating your end-to-end process can speed up operations, limit delays and improve patient turnaround times, helping you assist patients more efficiently.

Reduced Revenue Loss

Human errors like miscommunicating information and incorrect billing can deter patients from your practice. More significantly, delayed insurance payments and incorrect billing balances can lead to confusion and possibly unhappy patients.

These errors can cause you a loss in revenue and patient loyalty. Automating processes like intake and insurance verification can limit human errors, streamline patient journeys and help patients get appropriate care and services as and when needed. It can also prevent complaints and create a positive patient experience, ensuring patients return and recommend your practice to friends and family.

Improved Patient Outcomes

Digitizing services like insurance verification, digital intake and telehealth allows patients to use them anywhere. Putting patients in control and providing convenient solutions like service review platforms can improve their experience and encourage them to return to your practice. They can review and rate your services immediately, helping identify and reduce challenges and upgrade services to improve patient retention and revenue.

Better Operational Efficiency

Manual processes like filing patient data, writing down patient details and updating surgical schedules on a board can be time-consuming. It can also cause a miscommunication between departments. Files, forms and other hard copy information can get misplaced, causing conflicts between medical teams and slowing down processes. Online systems and software can help staff capture and communicate data more effectively, speeding up processes. 

Types of Healthcare Technologies

Data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), mobile payments and telemedicine are some technologies healthcare facilities can use to maximize their ROI. When healthcare facilities learn to use this technology, they can maximize ROI and benefit their patients:

1. Telemedicine

Telemedicine or virtual consultations are remote healthcare solutions. Using digital platforms and portable clinics, patients can receive medical assistance anywhere. Virtual consultations minimize the need for on-site appointments and alleviate overburdened medical facilities and staff. They also allow patients to choose how they receive medical services.

Patients can choose between video and audio consultation, receive their bill via email or online portal and pay for it using mobile or contactless payments. These medical services provide a convenient experience and can enhance patient outcomes and satisfaction. They can also make patients more inclined to use your services.

2. Insurance Verification Software

Verifying and improving insurance claims is vital in healthcare revenue cycle management. On-time and organized claims, verifications and approvals can enhance patient experience, reduce human errors and speed up operations. Automated insurance verification software helps you check and validate patient insurance details and provide an estimate of the patient’s responsibility. 

Incorrectly capturing financial information can cause a loss in revenue. Automating your insurance claims processes enables better engagement with patients because they know what they may be expected to pay. This way, patients have more visibility and control of their financial responsibility.

3. Artificial Intelligence for Patient Engagement

AI software can automate billing processes and help you track patient revenue more efficiently. It can help identify patient billing, claims and registration discrepancies, minimize errors and streamline processes. Artificial intelligence is also a key component in patient engagement. You can leverage AI to communicate information like payment and appointment reminders, improving the patient journey.

For example, suppose a patient paid for a service using a digital payment method like text-to-pay. In that case, you can use AI to suggest the same billing method for the next payment. AI analytics can also identify when patients make payments, enabling you to send statements or payment reminders at preferred periods.

AI uses machine learning to track phone calls between staff and patients and generate data reports based on the communication. As a result, you can identify patient preferences, like their preferred language and communication style. With this information, you can communicate with patients how they choose, improving their experiences.

AI also identifies macro trends. For example, high QR adoption can indicate that your patient base is receptive to digital payments, while high call trends might signal increased insurance errors. These trends can tell you more about the efficiency of your processes for collecting insurance information, helping you assess and improve them in the future.

4. Cloud-Based Software

System downtime can create negative patient experiences, cause information or data loss and slow operations. You might lose valuable information when your scheduling or patient data systems become unresponsive. Retrieving this data can be challenging, especially if you have yet to store it in a cloud environment. Integrating cloud-based software helps you keep and save vital information outside your server or systems.

If your systems crash, you’ll have peace of mind that your patient and facility data are retrievable. If you lose patient data, your staff must recapture patient health records, which can be time-consuming and lead to errors. It also causes delayed processes and leads to poor patient experiences. Integrated cloud software or a cloud-based EHR can address delays when billing patients and scheduling appointments, contributing to positive patient relationships.

5. Digital Mobile Payments

Payments can get misplaced, declined or forgotten. For example, if a patient’s check is declined or misplaced, your staff must use valuable time to track down payments. This process can be unproductive and lead to frustrated patients. Complex, time-consuming and manual payment processes might cause patients to delay or forget to pay their medical bills.

Digital and mobile payment options streamline the settlement process, making them more convenient and efficient. Mobile payment provides a user-friendly platform for patients and medical staff. Patients can view their statements and make payments on the app or platform. Staff members can track and monitor fees and flag discrepancies, including late fees. These platforms speed up the payment process and make it more seamless for both parties, leading to increased patient accountability and satisfaction and fewer financial losses, errors and tasks for healthcare administrators.

How to Decide Which Healthcare Technology Will Maximize Your ROI

Understanding your challenges and analyzing solutions to meet these obstacles is one of the best ways to use healthcare technology for ROI. While many healthcare technology solutions exist, some can suit your business better than others.

You want to ensure you select worthwhile and valuable technology solutions. Here are some steps to help you decide on suitable and value-added technology for your healthcare facility:

1. Identify Your Biggest Challenges and Pain Points

Find and isolate the most significant healthcare challenges you want to solve. For example, are you losing patients due to poor scheduling and intake process? Do you have multiple payments and fees accounted for? Do you have staff shortages due to high turnover rates? Are you losing essential patient data from system crashes and malfunctions? 

When you have a clearer idea of your challenges, you can identify solutions to address them. Collaborating with staff and different departments can also help you identify the most pressing or concerning pain points.

As a team, you can start by listing these challenges in order of importance and their impact on your business. Once you know which obstacles cost you significant loss, you can narrow the list to the most appropriate solutions when evaluating different technology options.

2. Research Solutions for the Best Results

Identify potential solutions to your challenges. You can research various technology options aimed at helping you solve these problems. Once you have a good list of options, you’ll need to examine if they are worth the investment. Identify the features, benefits and costs of various technology solutions to decide which options will offer the best results.

For example, if you want to undertake an inefficient payment fee tracking process causing your revenue loss, you might consider a digital or mobile payment platform. Before settling on an option, you’ll need to estimate if your investment value justifies your losses and if this solution will address all your billing inefficiencies.

An online ROI calculator is one of the best ways to estimate your potential investment value. You can input data like your revenue losses and the actual value of your average monthly appointments or consultations. Calculating these values can estimate how much money you would save by investing in a mobile payment platform. 

Once you have an estimate, weigh it against the vendor’s prices to see if the amount of money you’ll save outweighs the product’s costs. Now, you can decide if your mobile solution is worth the investment. 

3. Analyze Your Options to Find the Best Investment

Evaluate your vendor options to find the best deal and investment. Technology providers will offer you varying quotes, and you want to ensure you’re getting the best value and long-term investment.

One of the best ways to do this is by asking for as much information as possible. You can ask your vendor for their results and client retention rates. You can also ask their clients about their experience using their products and services.

Additional factors to consider when vetting different business products include:

• Read client reviews and ratings to identify the quality of your vendor’s solutions and services.
• Conduct one-on-one calls with clients from a provider customer base to get first-hand experience of their relationship with the company and its products.
• Gather information like how long the company has been in business, their growth, previous and existing clients and how many solutions they offer to see if they are a reputable and trustworthy brand. 
• Consider how a service provider’s technology fits or integrates with your existing digital strategy and if it can fill various gaps like payment platform limitations.
• Ask for a trial period or consultation to get practical assurance of the product’s features and capabilities and to ensure it meets your goals.

Millennia Can Help You Maximize Your Healthcare ROI

Millennia offers a comprehensive patient payment solution focused on helping organizations just like yours maximize ROI. We understand the importance of efficient processes in healthcare and how they can set you apart from your competitors.

We offer a comprehensive and user-friendly digital solution to help you create better patient journeys and increase engagement and revenue. The Millennia Patient Payment Solution integrates technology platforms, insights from AI and engagement intelligence, and concierge services for patients and providers.

With a personalized payment process from pre-visit to final payment, we help you exceed your financial goals and enhance patient satisfaction.

Request a consultation today to get started and find effective healthcare revenue management solutions for your healthcare facility.