The ability to collect patient payments greatly impacts a healthcare facility’s financial stability and sustainability. While patient portals can facilitate the collection of more payments, they are only effective if they are user-friendly. If not, they may have the opposite effect, resulting in even further delayed payments, added administrative expenses and a poor patient experience. 

Focusing on the most essential elements of these portals, here’s how to improve patient portal use. 

Why Patient Portals Are Important for Payment

The administrative side of healthcare can be tricky for patients and providers alike. Delayed or missed payments can be frustrating, but following up with patients is often the last thing on your busy to-do list filled with new consultations and other urgent tasks. 

On the other hand, many patients find deciphering paperwork, insurance policies and their upcoming bills time-consuming and confusing. One of the main reasons patients don’t settle their bills in full is that they find it challenging to keep up with what has been paid versus what hasn’t. After all, most medical bills typically arrive months after the medical procedures and visits have already happened. 

Healthcare patient portals, such as the Millennia Patient Payment Solution, can help overcome these barriers by providing patients with the information they need to understand and pay their medical bills, improving patient engagement and reducing healthcare teams’ workloads. 

Setting up a payment portal also streamlines the overall billing process, as people can pay and communicate with their providers online. Beyond making it easier to collect more payments, these portals can also allow you to keep track of your patients’ outstanding amounts and payment due dates. 

Key Elements of an Effective Patient Portal

Let’s look at the four main elements of an effective portal and ways to improve patient portal use for each.

1. User Experience

User experience (UX) refers to the portal’s look, feel and navigation. Patients are more likely to make punctual payments if they can do so conveniently, so a good user experience is vital for the success of your portal. Patient portals should always be easy to navigate, integrating features that enhance patients’ use of these platforms and support them on their financial journey. But to ensure your portal’s UX is optimized for collecting payments, you must first understand your patients’ needs, preferences and the issues they commonly face.

One factor to consider is which devices your patients primarily use to access their portal. Data has shown that 51% of people view their medical records using mobile apps. While portals are adopted by all generations, they are typically used by younger patients. To improve portal use amongst the more tech-savvy generations, having a mobile version of your patient portal is nonnegotiable. A mobile-friendly portal can make it easier for your patients to monitor and engage with their health information, encouraging them to do so more frequently. 

Millennia’s payment portal features a mobile-responsive design, meaning its interface instantly adapts to the screen size of patients’ devices. As a result, your patients can engage with the portal in their preferred manner — whether on the computer at home or on their cell phones while they are out and about.

Another critical factor in creating a pleasant user experience is identifying the payment-related obstacles your patients face. For example, if you discover that most of your patients aren’t aware they have outstanding payments, making their payment history easily accessible is key. Our portal lets patients view all past payments to confirm what went through and estimate expenses for different appointments.

An accessible payment history kills two birds with one stone. As 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, this feature can help them budget for upcoming appointments. 

2. Data Security and Compliance

Due to the nature of healthcare patient portals, you must prioritize security and data privacy to protect your patients’ data and payment information. Secure payment gateways and encryption technology are crucial. You should also follow industry-standard security protocols like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Such measures could increase your patients’ trust and confidence in you as their healthcare provider and make them feel more comfortable paying online. 

Millennia’s PCI DSS-compliant portal offers peace of mind that your patients’ information is safe while making it easy to collect payments. For example, our portal includes a PCI DSS-compliant feature that charges saved cards with a single-approval click. This means that patients can save time, as they don’t need to search through their bags or wallets for their preferred card. 

3. Integrated Payment Options

Patients will likely be dissatisfied with outdated portals that don’t support online and mobile payments. A portal with integrated payment options is connected to a payment processor, allowing patients to pay using various payment methods without needing separate terminals or manual processing. 

With Millennia’s platform, patients can quickly and effortlessly pay their medical bills using these methods: 

• Mobile pay: When you implement Millennia’s single-click approval feature, patients can pay their bills using their mobile devices.
• Text to pay: You can also offer patients the option to receive an SMS link that will take them directly to your portal.
• Photo-capture payment: With this option, patients can pay their bills simply by taking a photo 
• QR codes: Whether they are printed or electronic, all Millennia statements include a QR code that patients can scan to access their real-time balance and our payment options.
• Chat pay: Patients can make payments through the chat when inquiring about their bills with our concierge team. 

Along with streamlining the payment process and improving patient portal use, there are many benefits to supporting different digital payment options. As your patients can choose the channels and methods that suit them most, you are more likely to get paid and provide them with a better experience — it’s a win-win. Additionally, digital payments create a transaction history that can give your patients a better understanding of their medical spending.

4. Personalization and Customization to Your Brand

Even if you have implemented all the above ways to improve portal use and encourage payments, some patients will likely still require more personal assistance. Rather than finding the necessary features and information themselves on the portal, they may want to speak to someone directly. 

At Millennia, we’re aware of the need for extra guidance. However, we also understand that healthcare staff are pressed for time and may only sometimes be able to assist patients who have misunderstood their insurance or need clarification on their bills. Our concierge team can step in to help patients understand their financial responsibility and successfully settle their bills. As a white-label solution, the Millennia patient portal’s platform and services can be customized to your organization’s brand, including everything from its visual identity to scripts, rules and standards. 

Whether via phone call, email, text or live chat, your patients can speak with a live representative trained to resolve their problems and assist them in selecting the most suitable payment option. Our agents resolve more than 97% of issues that complicate payment — any other issues get redirected to the provider via our platform.

Schedule a Consultation With Millennia

Millennia offers a one-stop solution for various healthcare facilities to help engage patients from before their appointment to the last payment. We understand patients’ challenges when paying medical bills and providers’ frustrations when chasing delayed payments. That’s why we’ve developed a payment portal with features that allow for a positive patient experience, offer administrative support and enable providers to generate more revenue. 

To learn more about how our solution can help you collect more payments, schedule a consultation today!

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