Emerging payment trends in healthcare increase the importance of convenience and transparency. Healthcare payment innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare technology and streamlined patient payment methods can help you increase revenue. 

New financial trends in healthcare are placing more financial responsibility on patients, causing individuals to choose providers based on their experiences and quality of care. With an increasing shift toward higher insurance policy deductibles and patient-driven payment methods, it’s crucial for providers to adapt to new trends in patient payments.

When you enhance your practice with solutions such as revenue cycle management (RCM) and patient engagement intelligence solutions, you can significantly boost revenue by improving patient experiences. Millennia offers a unified patient payment solution to streamline your processes and collect more revenue. 

The Increase in High-Deductible Plans

A high-deductible health plan (HDHP) requires policyholders to pay higher deductibles than traditional plans do, but it also reduces their monthly fees. HDHP enrollment has risen over the past 10 years, increasing the percentage of covered workers enrolled in HDHPs from 20% in 2013 to 29% in 2023. Individuals often opt for HDHPs because the monthly premiums are more affordable, and employers often enroll their employees in HDHP plans to mitigate the costs of lower deductible plans.

Challenges of HDHPs

The rise of HDHPs is partially due to increasing healthcare costs and the resulting financial stress placed on patients. As health insurance companies shift more financial responsibility to policyholders, more people find it challenging to afford healthcare.

The government created HDHPs to prompt patients to use healthcare services properly, but high deductibles can cause more patients to neglect or postpone preventive and necessary care because they struggle to afford services.

Solutions for Managing Patient Payments With High-Deductible Health Plans

Adopting more efficient payment processes is crucial for managing patient payments under high-deductible scenarios. With an efficient process, you can help patients access the care, treatment and procedures they need in a timely manner. Your practice can implement the following strategies to manage patient payments under high-deductible scenarios:

• Prepare your patients: Sending patient payment estimates for services before patients receive them helps prepare individuals for financial implications. This helps patients feel ready for the costs they may incur, increasing the likelihood they will make payments on time.
• Encourage upfront or automatic payments: Encouraging patients to pay for services before receiving them prevents individuals from canceling or rescheduling appointments. If patients are unable to pay upfront, you can implement a policy that allows you to request and store their payment information for future automatic payments.

• Offer payment plans and other financing options: Setting up payment plans is another way to help patients feel more comfortable with automatic payments. When you outsource patient billing, you can set up payment plans quickly and easily.
• Optimize patient engagement: Optimizing patient engagement with effective communication and technology helps you retain existing patients and attract new ones, boosting your revenue.
• Adopt user-friendly payment technology: User-friendly payment technology helps patients make hassle-free payments, improving their overall experience through a consumer-driven model.

Importance of Understanding Consumer Behavior in Healthcare

Patient consumerism in healthcare is on the rise due to the increasing shift in financial responsibility for medical costs. As insurance companies increase patients’ financial responsibilities, they also raise their financial interest in healthcare decisions. 

Common Trends in Healthcare Consumerism

With the rise of consumer-driven healthcare, new insurance and payment trends are growing. Many employers and individuals are adopting high-deductible policies and combining them with health savings accounts (HSAs). HSAs are tax-advantaged accounts employers and individuals can deposit money into and use to pay for healthcare expenses until they meet their policy’s deductible.

Another trend related to consumer-driven healthcare is the rejuvenation of patient-doctor relationships. Patients are more likely to actively participate in their health and follow their providers’ medical advice when they are aware of and connected to their healthcare costs. They are also more likely to implement healthier habits and show up for annual checkups.

The Impact of Consumerism in Healthcare

Consumerism in healthcare is causing patients to become more discerning and selective about where they receive medical care, forcing providers to compete with other options to earn patient approval and increase revenue. It increases the demand for quality care because patients are more cautious about where they spend their money.

Since patients are taking their health more seriously, they appreciate providers who can ease paperwork and payment processes.

Embracing Consumerism in Healthcare Payment Models

To successfully embrace consumerism in healthcare, it’s important for practices to adopt efficient payment models. The best payment model allows a practice to collect patient payments directly, eliminating frustrating and time-consuming processes. Keeping costs as low as possible and facilitating a convenient payment process encourages patients to actively participate in their care.

Understanding general consumer trends can help identify ways to provide faster, more convenient payment methods for patients. For example, banks make it easy to manage your accounts, send money, and transfer and deposit funds using mobile devices. Most retail stores provide several ways to pay, including card, cash, and ApplePay or Google Pay. These consumer trends are becoming more relevant in the healthcare industry, as patients are responsible for paying for more of their medical encounters.

The following factors are important in addressing the shift toward healthcare consumerism:

Importance of Price Transparency for Patients

In 2024, the push for patient price transparency in healthcare continues. The government enforces the No Surprises Act to protect people who have coverage under individual and group health plans. This act prevents patients from receiving surprise or unexpected medical bills by requiring providers to give good-faith estimates for medical care. Under this act, patients have the right to know before receiving services if they may face out-of-pocket costs. 

Before the government created the No Surprises Act, out-of-network providers could bill unaware patients for uncovered services their insurance may have covered if they received them from an in-network provider. Also known as surprise medical bills, these unexpected balance bills previously forced patients to pay much higher bills than they thought they would when they agreed to treatment. 

Under the No Surprises Act, patients can request good-faith estimates of their services upfront before receiving care. If their bill exceeds their estimate and they disagree with it, they can file a dispute. This act also helps uninsured and self-pay patients request upfront estimates and file disputes.

The No Surprises Act benefits patients and providers because it informs patient decisions and allows patients to prepare for healthcare bills, increasing the likelihood they will be able to pay providers on time. You can promote transparency and keep patients informed by providing good-faith estimates. Millennia’s healthcare payment innovations make it easy to maintain cost transparency because they improve patient access to their service estimates and medical bills.

Meeting and Exceeding Patient Expectations in Payments

Meeting and exceeding expectations is crucial as patients take on greater financial responsibility regarding their medical care. Patients expect providers to deliver simple, straightforward and flexible payment methods and experiences.

As fast, accessible methods such as mobile pay and text-to-pay options become popular in many industries, patients also expect this ease when paying their medical bills. Millennia’s solution makes it easy for you to deliver a seamless patient payment experience tailored to the individual’s preferences. 

Fostering Loyalty

The more positive a patient’s experience is, the more likely they are to return to your practice. With Millennia’s solutions, you can foster patient loyalty to maintain steady revenue and bring in more revenue.

Strong Customer Service in Patient Payments

While digital payment methods are important for efficiency and convenience, it’s also important to provide dedicated support for billing inquiries. Patients appreciate personal attention, and you can use Millennia’s concierge service to provide patient-centered billing support. Combining this support with self-service payments allows you to increase payment efficiency while giving your patients the personal attention they need.

Investing in Healthcare Technology

Technological advancements are revolutionizing the healthcare industry, and it’s becoming increasingly crucial for providers to invest in high-quality digital solutions. Approximately 45% of providers increased their investment in software in 2022, and revenue cycle management is among the top areas in which healthcare practices used technology to improve their processes.

Integrating payment solutions with electronic medical records (EMR) and electronic health records (EHR) systems offers the following benefits:

• Improved collection rates: Technological advancements increase payment tracking accuracy and provide convenient payment processes. Investing in the right technology can help you alleviate hassle and boost revenue.
• More resources and time for other tasks: Advanced payment solutions make it easier to manage accounts so your staff has more time and resources for other important tasks. 

Millennia’s technology complements and maximizes EHR and EMR investments. You can seamlessly integrate Millennia’s solution with your EHR and EMR systems, compiling all your processes into one unified solution. 

How Millennia’s Revenue Cycle Management Solution Improves Payment Processes

As financial shifts in the healthcare industry change how patients choose their providers, your practice’s payment management system becomes increasingly essential. Millennia’s revenue cycle management (RCM) solution helps you enhance patient experiences in the following ways.

Flexibility

Flexibility is essential for patient satisfaction and collections. Patients have different needs, schedules and financial situations. When your practice increases flexibility, you can meet each patient’s individual needs. Whether they need specific appointment times or a flexible payment plan, remaining flexible to their needs and availability helps increase patient satisfaction.

Millennia’s solution gathers insights and automates engagement based on the patient’s needs and preferences. Our tools make it easy to offer flexible payment plans and options to accommodate patients and increase revenue.

Convenience

Patients are more likely to make timely payments and continue returning to your practice when you make it convenient for them. Payment platforms should be easy to navigate so your practice can minimize patient stress surrounding their healthcare experiences.

Millennia helps make your processes more convenient for each patient. Digital payment options allow patients to track and pay their medical bills quickly and easily for the smoothest process possible.

Engagement

Paying attention to patient preferences can help your practice enhance patient engagement and experiences. One of the best ways to optimize patient experiences and boost revenue is by getting to know your patients and accommodate their preferences. 

Millennia offers engagement intelligence tools to target communication and optimize your revenue cycle. With these tools, you can determine payment trends and behaviors with machine learning (ML) technology. Machine learning tools gather data about patient demographics, preferences, pain points and past experiences to analyze the best methods for engaging with patients and receiving payments on time. 

Millennia’s technology automatically analyzes patient trends to help your practice encourage payments effectively. It targets patient differences and determines the best ways to reach each individual for the best results. For example, one patient may pay their bills faster when they receive email reminders in the morning, while another responds better to text reminders they receive at night.

Millennia’s engagement intelligence tools also use speech artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze patient interactions and gauge satisfaction accurately. Our platform listens to phone conversations between patients and our patient support specialists to deliver helpful insights such as the following:

• Satisfaction insights: Engagement intelligence insights identify trends and patient engagement levels.
• Quality assurance: Quality assurance automation helps ensure patients receive effective, helpful support.
• Keywords: Trigger identification recognizes keywords and trigger phrases in conversations to identify potential global issues and pain points.

Millennia’s solution uses AI and ML to streamline payment automation processes by gathering and storing data to predict your patients’ behaviors and make payments easy for them. 

Automated Payment Processes

Automation helps streamline payment processes and medical billing. AI in patient collections has significantly transformed RCM by automating the following processes:

• Medical billing workflows
• Claims submissions
• Patient registration
• Eligibility verification

With automated processes, staff and patients can accomplish more in less time. Patients can spend less time filling out paperwork and more time receiving care.

Millennia also makes it easier to set up automatic payment methods and offer custom payment plans. Our integrated patient portal includes a card processing feature that securely stores patient payment information. This feature is compliant with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, providing a reliable, safe way for you to collect payments easily and keep your patients responsible for their medical expenses. 

After adding a patient’s payment method on file, you can introduce the option of automatic payment methods. Allowing patients to choose a limit for how much you can charge their cards at a time can help ease their minds and make automatic payments more appealing.

Digital Payment Options

Digital payment options make it easier for patients to pay their medical bills on time. The latest technology allows your practice to implement fast and easy payment methods for increased revenue and enhanced customer experience. Patients can quickly and easily pay their medical bills using the following methods:

• Mobile pay: Patients can use their mobile devices to pay a bill when you implement Millennia’s single-click approval feature.
• Text-to-pay: You can also offer patients the option to receive a link to your payment portal via text. This makes it easy to find and pay their bills.
• Photo-capture payment: With the photo-capture payment option, a patient can pay their bill with a photo.

• QR codes: All Millennia statements feature a dynamic QR code, which takes patients directly to their real-time balance and payment options. 
• Chat pay: Patients can inquire about their bills with Millennia’s concierge team using the chat pay feature, and they can submit payments directly in the chat.

Millennia’s online payment portal enables you to offer various payment options, making each patient’s experience simple, easy and pleasant.

Compatible Technology Works With Your EMR

Millennia’s patient payment portal is an EMR-agnostic platform that augments the functionality of your EMR with additional options for patients to manage and pay their bills. Patients benefit from the convenience of mobile and digital payment options without the need for your IT team to build integrations to your EMR. When our portal is paired with concierge services, Millennia is able to manage patient inquiries by phone, email, and text so your staff can focus on patient care.

Better Solutions for Hiring and Retention Challenges in Payment Collections

Advanced technology also increases healthcare recruitment and retention. Streamlined patient intake and payment processes increase efficiency, giving healthcare administrative staff more time for other important tasks. Millennia automates pre-visit administrative tasks by offering digital patient intake forms so your staff doesn’t spend time transcribing paper forms into the EMR. 

Millennia automates repetitive patient payment tasks, offering digital payment options that reduce the time necessary to collect and process payments. Our concierge handles patient calls, reducing the number of inquiries your in-house staff needs to manage. These features collectively reduce staffing challenges like burnout, recruitment, errors and low patient satisfaction.

Optimize Your Practice’s Payment Processes With Millennia’s Innovative Solution

New trends in patient collections are shifting the way individuals pay their medical bills. Adjusting to changes and optimizing your payment processes can help your practice boost revenue by improving patient experiences. Millennia’s patient payment solution streamlines payment processes for greater efficiency, convenience, accuracy and transparency. 

With our innovative technology, you can outsource patient collections and give your staff more time for important tasks. Contact us to learn more about our patient payment solution and how we can help your practice optimize payment processes.