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The Rise of theHealthcare Consumer A New Approach eBook

©2018 VisitPay All rights reserved.

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Hospitals: the Accidental BankBY BILL GEARY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

SECTION 1: The Rise of the Healthcare Consumer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

How Consumerism Is Driving Behavior and Redesigning HealthcareBY RICK KOLSKY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

What Healthcare Could Learn from CPG BY MELINDA HINSON . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT3 Learnings from St. Luke’s Health System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

SECTION 2: Elevating the Experience for Your Healthcare Consumer . . . 13

An Evolving Vision for Consumer-centric Healthcare Services . . . . . . . . . . 14

Creating the Right Personalized Experience for theRight Consumer at the Right Time BY VINCE MARTINO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT6 Tips from Intermountain Healthcare to Createa Consumer-centric Financial Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Great Consumer Experiences Drive Great Financial OutcomesBY WILL REILLY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

VisitPay // The Rise of the Healthcare Consumer

What’s Inside

2

“Healthcare networks need to be more flexible and

meet patients where they are. If you’re not thinking

about things a little di�erently than you have in the

past, you’re going to run into troubled waters.”

–MICHAEL RAWDANSenior Director of RevenueCycle and Patient ExperienceSt. Luke’s Health System


While the consumer has always been the central focus of a

great clinical care experience, skyrocketing consumer healthcare costs require

providers to reexamine their approach to the consumer financial experience. In this eBook,

you’ll learn how consumerism is reshaping healthcare, how providers are implementing

innovative personalized strategies to drive satisfaction and payments in this challenging

new landscape, and how you can do the same.

INTRODUCTION

33

The other side is a tandem solution for the hospitals. Hospitals cannot continue to act like a bank—it’s not their core business, and for many systems, it’s not a sustainable economic model. Hospitals need to be able to help consumers with their obligations, help them understand it, and help them in advance. This requires a solution that enables hospitals to predict which consumers need, and are likely to take advantage of, an alternative that o�ers them some economic relief, as well as a better understanding of their healthcare obligations. Such a solution will go a long way to solving a systemic problem rather than managing a symptom.

The consumer solution and the hospital system solution are inextricably linked. This dual-purpose solution is what the market needs to solve the problem of rising healthcare costs, the increasing burden the consumer bears, and hospitals acting like banks for the uncollectible portion of consumer obligation.

To take the giant down at its knees, we need a two-pronged approach: a solution that gives consumers low-cost financing alternatives that are consumer-friendly, combined with an easy-to-understand explanation of patient bills that o�ers consumers a variety of payment options that work for them financially. One that seamlessly enables consumers to manage their current healthcare obligations and to predict and assess their future health care obligations and manage them in advance.

As healthcare costs rise, the impact of higher obligations on the consumer has become crippling. To make an already tough situation worse, many consumers lack an understanding as to what most of their bills mean. “What do those codes mean that I can’t even interpret and why can’t I find out what they are; I didn’t even know I was responsible for that line item, what was it for and how can I a�ord to pay it?”

Health systems have inadvertently become major providers of consumer credit—something that is not their core mission as healthcare providers. Being a financial services provider is not the business a health system wants to be in or a role they wish to play within their community—yet they need to be serving their constituents in a capacity that enables them to carry out their core mission—that of providing clinical care. This economic burden on hospitals continues to add to the overall cost of care unless it’s properly addressed and corrected.


4

By Bill Geary

What’s really needed to solve the root problem is a solution that serves both the consumer and the hospital. On one hand, consumers need lower health care costs and financing alternatives. They need consumer-friendly explanations of their bills so they understand what’s giving rise to their economic burden. And, they need to have visibility into their current and future financial responsibilities, before they decide to go ahead with a certain procedure.

Hospitals:the Accidental Bank

The other side is a tandem solution for the hospitals. Hospitals cannot continue to act like a bank—it’s not their core business, and for many systems, it’s not a sustainable economic model. Hospitals need to be able to help consumers with their obligations, help them understand it, and help them in advance. This requires a solution that enables hospitals to predict which consumers need, and are likely to take advantage of, an alternative that o�ers them some economic relief, as well as a better understanding of their healthcare obligations. Such a solution will go a long way to solving a systemic problem rather than managing a symptom.

The consumer solution and the hospital system solution are inextricably linked. This dual-purpose solution is what the market needs to solve the problem of rising healthcare costs, the increasing burden the consumer bears, and hospitals acting like banks for the uncollectible portion of consumer obligation.

To take the giant down at its knees, we need a two-pronged approach: a solution that gives consumers low-cost financing alternatives that are consumer-friendly, combined with an easy-to-understand explanation of patient bills that o�ers consumers a variety of payment options that work for them financially. One that seamlessly enables consumers to manage their current healthcare obligations and to predict and assess their future health care obligations and manage them in advance.

5

As healthcare costs rise, the impact of higher obligations on the consumer has become crippling. To make an already tough situation worse, many consumers lack an understanding as to what most of their bills mean. “What do those codes mean that I can’t even interpret and why can’t I find out what they are; I didn’t even know I was responsible for that line item, what was it for and how can I a�ord to pay it?”

Health systems have inadvertently become major providers of consumer credit—something that is not their core mission as healthcare providers. Being a financial services provider is not the business a health system wants to be in or a role they wish to play within their community—yet they need to be serving their constituents in a capacity that enables them to carry out their core mission—that of providing clinical care. This economic burden on hospitals continues to add to the overall cost of care unless it’s properly addressed and corrected.

What’s really needed to solve the root problem is a solution that serves both the consumer and the hospital. On one hand, consumers need lower health care costs and financing alternatives. They need consumer-friendly explanations of their bills so they understand what’s giving rise to their economic burden. And, they need to have visibility into their current and future financial responsibilities, before they decide to go ahead with a certain procedure.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Bill Geary, Co-founder and Partner of Flare Capital Partners,has a more than twenty-year tenure investing in young and emerging healthcare technology companies. Flare Capital Partners has raised one of the healthcare technology industry’s largest independent venture capital funds, and investments include Aetion, Bright Health, Circulation, ClearDATA, Curisium, HealthReveal, HealthVerity, Iora Health, Valence Health (Evolent Health), VisitPay and Welltok.

Health systems have inadvertently become major providers of consumer credit—something that is not their core mission as healthcare providers.

Bill GearyCo-founder & Partner, Flare Capital Partners


SECTION 1


3

The Rise of theHealthcare Consumer

While consumers rely on providers to keep them healthy, we’ve entered a new era in healthcare where providers are now relying on consumers to keep their margins healthy. This shift requires a new approach—one that makes the consumer

financial experience feel as good as the clinical care experience. As

consumers struggle to understand and pay their medical bills, it’s

time to listen, time to o�er tools and solutions to help, and time to

deliver a level of personalization consumers expect from their

financial relationships.

6

Outside-in: Customer-centered Design

One of the fundamentals behind customer-centered design is being able to move from an inside-out focus on what we do, to an outside-in focus on more e�ciently and e�ectively helping customers solve pressing problems to profoundly change their lives for the better. Now I know this sounds kind of like motherhood and apple pie, but it’s a lot easier said than done.

Most companies define themselves in terms of the products and services they sell, such as a knee surgery. They work really hard to improve the operational features they o�er. “We’re going to get the latest in robotics. We’re going to send our physicians to charm school. And we’re going to have this wonderful, beautiful, hi-tech, state-of-the-art rehab center.”

The relatively rare customer-driven enterprise doesn’t start with the product or the features but rather with what we call the customer’s job to be done. As Ted Levitt, the father of modern marketing once said, “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”

How ConsumerismIs Driving Behaviorand Redesigning Healthcare

Given the inevitable tsunami that’s on the horizon for healthcare over the next 20 years, will our organizations, as we say, “Shoot the curl” or “Wipeout”? In the world of innovation and strategy, we have what’s called a perfect storm.

It starts when consumers have a serious problem. Oftentimes, incumbents who have been around the industry for decades choose to respond slowly to critical trends, which only serves to exacerbate the problem for consumers.

Inevitably, along comes an outsider, an upstart, somebody who’s not even in the business, who asks a very simple question: “Under what circumstances would these beliefs, would this conventional wisdom not be true? If it wasn’t true, how might we capitalize on those trends, break the rules, and solve those consumer problems?”

These perfect storms are both incredible opportunities as well as threats.


7

By Rick Kolsky

Healthcare: Ripe for Innovation

If ever an industry was due and ripe for innovation, it’s healthcare, which has become absolutely una�ordable for the average American household despite Americans being unhealthier than ever. I’m not saying your hospitals don’t do a good job when you’re asked to cure them; what I’m saying is that the outcome is bad.

Healthcare is a complicated business. There are lots of competing stakeholders, regulations, lawsuits, noncom-pliant patients. But these are not immutable facts and will be toxic to healthcare’s future where endless possibilities are opened up by big data, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, customer-centered design, and agile innovation. The barbarians are at the gate and the key to surfing the wave rather than drowning in the perfect storm is customer-centered design.

Improve the Patient’s Journey, Improve Their Lives

The customer-driven company’s process starts with the outcomes the customer seeks and how they seek to improve their life.

To start, examine every single step in the customer’s journey for how to not only help them do the job better, but far more e�ciently. Few industries have more pain points—functional, emotional, and social—in the customer experience than healthcare, or spend more money that actually increases that pain rather than decreases that pain.

As you diagnose patient journeys, act like your mom, your husband, your daughter is actually the customer. Ladder up to what we can do to improve their lives, rather than just perform a procedure.

When spending money to deliver this experience, act like it’s your money, as if your mom, your husband, your daughter had to actually pay the bill. After all, the visit and the subsequent billing experience aren’t separate. The two are linked, and critically, that financial experience can make or break the long-term healthcare relationship.

The Rise of the Healthcare ConsumerSECTION 1:

Outside-in: Customer-centered Design

One of the fundamentals behind customer-centered design is being able to move from an inside-out focus on what we do, to an outside-in focus on more e�ciently and e�ectively helping customers solve pressing problems to profoundly change their lives for the better. Now I know this sounds kind of like motherhood and apple pie, but it’s a lot easier said than done.

Most companies define themselves in terms of the products and services they sell, such as a knee surgery. They work really hard to improve the operational features they o�er. “We’re going to get the latest in robotics. We’re going to send our physicians to charm school. And we’re going to have this wonderful, beautiful, hi-tech, state-of-the-art rehab center.”

The relatively rare customer-driven enterprise doesn’t start with the product or the features but rather with what we call the customer’s job to be done. As Ted Levitt, the father of modern marketing once said, “People don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”

Given the inevitable tsunami that’s on the horizon for healthcare over the next 20 years, will our organizations, as we say, “Shoot the curl” or “Wipeout”? In the world of innovation and strategy, we have what’s called a perfect storm.

It starts when consumers have a serious problem. Oftentimes, incumbents who have been around the industry for decades choose to respond slowly to critical trends, which only serves to exacerbate the problem for consumers.

Inevitably, along comes an outsider, an upstart, somebody who’s not even in the business, who asks a very simple question: “Under what circumstances would these beliefs, would this conventional wisdom not be true? If it wasn’t true, how might we capitalize on those trends, break the rules, and solve those consumer problems?”

These perfect storms are both incredible opportunities as well as threats.

Healthcare: Ripe for Innovation

If ever an industry was due and ripe for innovation, it’s healthcare, which has become absolutely una�ordable for the average American household despite Americans being unhealthier than ever. I’m not saying your hospitals don’t do a good job when you’re asked to cure them; what I’m saying is that the outcome is bad.

Healthcare is a complicated business. There are lots of competing stakeholders, regulations, lawsuits, noncom-pliant patients. But these are not immutable facts and will be toxic to healthcare’s future where endless possibilities are opened up by big data, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, customer-centered design, and agile innovation. The barbarians are at the gate and the key to surfing the wave rather than drowning in the perfect storm is customer-centered design.

Improve the Patient’s Journey, Improve Their Lives

The customer-driven company’s process starts with the outcomes the customer seeks and how they seek to improve their life.

To start, examine every single step in the customer’s journey for how to not only help them do the job better, but far more e�ciently. Few industries have more pain points—functional, emotional, and social—in the customer experience than healthcare, or spend more money that actually increases that pain rather than decreases that pain.

As you diagnose patient journeys, act like your mom, your husband, your daughter is actually the customer. Ladder up to what we can do to improve their lives, rather than just perform a procedure.

When spending money to deliver this experience, act like it’s your money, as if your mom, your husband, your daughter had to actually pay the bill. After all, the visit and the subsequent billing experience aren’t separate. The two are linked, and critically, that financial experience can make or break the long-term healthcare relationship.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr. Kolsky is a Lecturer at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and holds a Ph.D. from Yale in Economics and a BA-MA in Engineering and Economics from Brown.


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2. Make it easier to access the product or service.

There are a myriad of ways to book a hotel, flight or monthly wax appointment online or via a smartphone. Amazon has redefined the way consumers shop for products and services, making a purchase as easy as one simple click.

Some health systems, but not all, have patient portals to schedule appointments. Without these, the process typically entails a phone-call, lengthy message and callback. For those seeking second or third opinions, like I did, the process is further exacerbated. Not only did I have to haul around x-rays and MRI records to physicians whose electronic systems didn’t integrate, there but there was extensive wait time to see doctors.

Frustration in making appointments and getting questions answered is not putting the customer first. Surveys suggest that patients prefer engaging online via a mobile device and there are many companies o�ering this technology to healthcare providers.

3. Over-inform the patient to improve outcomes.

From appliances to automobiles, manufacturers provide a wealth of information on how to use their product, set it up, fix it and enjoy it. If I have a problem or question, I can make a call, ask a bot, or send an email. And I usually hear back from customer service pretty quickly. There is information overload before and after I try and buy.

For a $44,000 medical procedure, however, all I received from my doctor was a short stack of photocopies on how to take care of my shoulder post-operatively. Don’t get me wrong. I adored my doctor and was very happy with the care he provided. I simply would

What HealthcareCould Learn from CPG

Early in my career, I worked in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) marketing. A “classically trained marketer” was the term to describe these brand or product managers. Though times have changed considerably since those days, this business structure put the customer at the center of all business decisions. As a product’s general manager, we viewed all engineering, packaging, research, advertising, PR, sales training and new product decisions through the lens of the customer.

After undergoing a shoulder replacement surgery, I reflected on ways the healthcare industry could learn from their CPG counterparts in providing patient- centered care. While


9

By Melinda Hinson

physician reputation and patient safety are still top priorities for consumers and health systems alike, a more consumer- driven landscape is on the near horizon.

1. Create the product or service with the customerin mind.

In the CPG world, we did lots of both primary and secondary research. We facilitated focus groups, conducted quantitative studies, and combed through Nielsen data. When we introduced a line extension, named a product or launched an ad campaign, we got input from consumers first. We made well-informed decisions to help ensure the strongest ROI for the business.

Healthcare providers tend to survey patients after an appointment or procedure. In fact, my mom received 10 di�erent surveys to assess her experience after knee replacement surgery last summer (I only received one from my provider). I appreciate that providers are trying to better understand the “patient journey.” Yet such questionnaires are focused on patient satisfaction following an appointment or procedure — with a clinical focus — rather than a comprehensive view of understanding the patient experience and needs from beginning to end. Thus the value of such data is limited.

Surveying patients after-the-fact is not putting the customer first. To truly shape an experience, you need to get input from consumers before, during and after a brand interaction, evaluating all touch points along the journey.

have preferred texts and email reminders about laying o� Advil, abstaining from food, weaning o� meds and other important considerations in expediting my recovery. And when it came to making payments, I had to piece the parts of the bill and insurance coverage together myself

Faded paper copies and disjointed financial information do not put the customer first. If doctors really want to improve outcomes, they need to figure out what works for individual patients. To ensure patients are informed, providers may need to utilize paper, emails and text messages (after all, we’re a bit groggy after a surgery). Companies like Xealth are making it easier for doctors to prescribe information and streamline this process right from an EHR.

4. Make price comparison a given, not a hidden.

CPG companies can recite competitive prices and promotions in their sleep. They know if I like to buy Sara Lee or Killer Dave’s bread, and will sneak me a coupon so I’ll switch to the competition. Amazon.com knows more about my shopping history than I do, recommending products I didn’t even know I wanted.

Today it is virtually impossible to determine how much a healthcare service or procedure will cost. We rarely know costs until after-the-fact. When I was selecting a provider for my shoulder, I narrowed the list down through my insurance company. Then I attempted to price compare di�erent surgeons by painstakingly calling and talking to PAs and nurses. Most admitted, however, the quotes did not include anesthesiology and hospital fees (the latter alone was $34K).


Though pricing healthcare is much more complex than putting a bar code on Coke and Pepsi, there needs to be greater fee transparency before we make an investment in the healthcare we receive. Prices vary significantly, and it’s our right to know how much. And then, when we do know, we should be able to organize payment approaches that work for our budgets, well in advance and that will auto-adjust if the actual bill varies from the estimate.

5. O�er payment plans to ease the pain.

You typically get a mortgage loan when you buy a new house. To purchase a new pair of Prada boots or a sweater at Banana Republic, you might resort to a credit or store card. The makers of consumer products make it too easy to purchase their goods.

Healthcare providers typically send paper statements to collect on services rendered and sadly, you usually receive separate invoices from di�erent players in the process. Often the insurance Explanation of Benefits (EOB) might be more accurate. My hospital bill was too high to pay in its entirety, so I’m paying what I can each month — even though no one suggested a designated installment plan. This practice is costly and cumbersome for hospitals, especially if patients get overwhelmed and decide not to pay at all.

One option to pay bills is not putting the customer first. Hospitals should o�er a service like VisitPay, where patients pay their bills online much like credit cards. Flexible payment plans should be as part of a system’s operating procedure.

























10

VisitPay // The Rise of the Healthcare ConsumerThe Rise of the Healthcare ConsumerSECTION 1:

























ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Melinda Hinson is a marketer, researcher and writer.

VisitPay // The Rise of the Healthcare ConsumerThe Rise of the Healthcare ConsumerSECTION 1:

11

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

3 Learnings fromSt. Luke’s Health System

Since 2015, St. Luke’s has worked to transform their patient financial experience. Here’s what they’ve learned along the way:1. Financial experience matters. Patients are starting to vote with

their wallets. Start by understanding your patients and ask them what matters.

2. A combination of e�orts is required to make the revenue cycle more consumer-centric. There is no silver bullet.

3. Health systems need to decide what they’re going to be good at and where they should bring in outside experts.

$2.4B Health System

Located in Idaho & Oregon

8 Hospitals/200+ Medical O�ces

First Deployed VisitPay in 2015

12

SECTION 2


3

Elevating the Experiencefor Your Healthcare Consumer

Taking the opportunity to lose the rigidity of a billing process built for commercial and government payers sounds radical, but it doesn’t have to be. What if providers could

augment that system with one that is user-friendly at its core –

one that can be customized and managed to reflect the needs

and wants of individual patients?

13

An Evolving Vision forConsumer-centric Healthcare Services

At the heart of a personalized and consumer-centric approach are data and analytics. But analytics are really only useful when they’re fit for a purpose.

That means having a model or an analytic approach that distinguishes consumers into specific groups or segments. It’s an approach that must also be applicable to the unique needs of an individual health system and its operating environment as well as to the unique needs of their patients. Based on what providers know about the individual, each stage in the revenue cycle can be customized, from pre-service right through to bad debt.


14

With insights around age, gender, location, and other demographic and consumer attributes, providers can customize the patient experience. For example, based on segmentation and analytic data, providers have insight into which patients might require prepayment options. The demographic details might indicate whether providers should o�er finance plans—or whether to charge interest. The point is that along each interaction with patients, there’s an opportunity to enhance the contact in ways that are simple, positive, intuitive and personalized for the consumer as payer. Make it easy for them to do business so they walk away feeling as good about the financial part of their experience as they felt about the clinical part.

The application of segmentation and analytics allows providers to continue o�ering their patients the same quality of health care, while also enabling the health system to tailor repayment packages according to that individual’s ability and propensity to manage debt. It also helps providers and systems to better understand their consumer population and deliver an overall better, more personalized experience along the way.

Along each interaction with patients, there’s an

opportunity to enhance the contact in ways that

are simple, positive, intuitive and personalized

for the consumer as payer.

Elevating the Experience for Your Healthcare ConsumerSECTION 2:

Creating the Right PersonalizedExperience for the RightConsumer at the Right Time

What exactly does a personalized experience look like in a healthcare payment application?

Some of the customization may be driven by rules—i.e. configurations—you control and create. For example, you might want someone like Fred, who is a member of your system’s insurance plan, to see relevant information about his plan, and you might want to give him special payment terms or discounts based on his plan type.

Additionally, you may want to vary the experience based on consumer scores and segmentations. For example, if you charge interest, you might want to provide low- income people zero percent interest all the time. Or you might want to prompt higher income people to pay in full or in some cases take lower duration finance plans.


15

By Vince Martino

Some of the customization can also be driven by choices a consumer makes. For example, Eva might want to see the site in Spanish and get alerts by phone, while Jane might want to see custom alerts via email when her credit card is about to expire. Mark might not want any of those things, but he might want to create single sign-on settings to his HSA account so he can easily see his balance and contributions to date, and also get custom alerts when there is an auto-adjustment made on his finance plan.

Elevating the Experience for Your Healthcare ConsumerSECTION 2:

Now let’s explore how VisitPay lets a healthcare system easily personalize the consumer experience. VisitPay consists of two important “rules engines” that allow you and the consumer to drive the experience:

1. A Configuration Rules Engine allows the healthcare system to mass customize the consumer experience with rules based on 200 di�erent attributes, some of which are VisitPay’s market-leading consumer segmentation and scoring. VisitPay stores all these rules for you and allows for easy updates; most changes can be made and deployed overnight.

2. A Preference Rules Engine allows a consumer to select, store, and update settings based on choices they make. VisitPay o�ers a wide variety of options that ultimately gives the consumer a great deal of choice in how they interact with the portal. Like the configuration engine, all these rules are stored for you and easy for the consumer to update—most of these can be changed and activated in real time. A short list of these settings includes:

• Email preferences

• Text/SMS preferences

• Payment due date selection

• Single sign-on settings to external websites like HSA and insurance

• Consolidated account management with other VisitPay consumers

While personalization in and of itself is important, vital to its success is the ability to measure and test personalization strategies to understand e�ectiveness and constantly improve. We think it’s important to measure both what people say and what people do, and also to be able to test new strategies in a controlled fashion.

For most organizations, deploying one to a few personalization options is relatively easy. But most organizations find it daunting to integrate hundreds of choices with consumer scoring in a way that is easy to manage, measure, and improve. VisitPay was purpose- built to make personalization very easy for a healthcare consumer to understand and manage at scale. I don’t think of the VisitPay platform as a payment portal, although it does collect and manage payments, but as a delivery mechanism for personalized consumer finance strategies tailored to healthcare.

The VisitPay platform enables health systems to build better, personalized relationships with their patients. These relationships go a long way toward improving a consumer’s overall satisfaction with the health system and as a result, financial outcomes for the provider.

Customization can drive patient satisfaction because you’re giving consumers choice and putting them in control—those are two of the key tenets upon which VisitPay was built.

Vincent MartinoCPO & Co-founder, VisitPay

All of these can drive patient satisfaction because you’re giving consumers choice and putting them in control— those are two things people want and two of the key tenets upon which VisitPay was built.

To collect what people “say,” VisitPay o�ers surveying tools that can be deployed generally in the application, or tied to either general or specific features. We can prompt a consumer to give feedback after taking any action, discovering how easy it was to complete the action or how valuable the feature is to them. And to understand what people “do,” VisitPay is always collecting data and providing analytics about user behavior and results. Finally, VisitPay is built on a testing and learning platform that allows you to test strategies in a controlled fashion.

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VisitPay // The Rise of the Healthcare ConsumerElevating the Experience for Your Healthcare ConsumerSECTION 2:

E V A Leer en Español

M A R K HSA Single Sign-on

J A N E Custom Email Alerts



17
















ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Vince is the Chief Product O�cer and Co-founder at VisitPay. He has nearly 20 years’ experience leading product development, operations, and marketing. He was formerly COO of Balihoo and Director of Operations and Analysis for the Credit Recovery Services division at Capital One.




Drive patient satisfaction by giving consumers

the two things they want: choice and control.

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

6 Tips from Intermountain Healthcareto Create a Consumer-centric Financial Experience

Stabilizing the consumer experience in an ever-changing environment is never easy. However, it is what every health system wants, and

what patients deserve. Here are six of the key takeaways

from Intermountain Healthcare’s experience:

1. GO STEADY SO YOU CAN GO FASTStage what you do. Roll out your pilots to your own health system employees. Monitor adoption and use, solicit feedback, and find out where the “gotchas” are before implementing any changes intended for patient use.

2. BUILD A SINGLE, INTEGRATED EXPERIENCE FOR YOUR CONSUMERSIf you can build a single, integrated experience, you will have better outcomes–at a lower cost. Rather than sending five bills, your patients will see their information electronically. Creating a single experience enables patients to make payments through one vehicle versus payments on every one of those bills.

3. IDENTIFY THE BEST WAY TO ENGAGE YOUR CONSUMERSFind opportunities to tailor the experience to each unique patient’s needs. Every patient’s outlook and perception is di�erent. Find out what’s important to each of them. Consider how di�erent options can be constructed so that it is easy for patients to use the technology available to them. Make the financial experience meaningful and consolidated.

4. TAKE A MARKETING APPROACHTest how things work. How long could the plans be? Can you engage the consumer in a certain way based on some of the information you know about them? Could you tailor any kind of o�ering, or a payment plan, or recommendations around how they engage the system based their specific needs?

Get feedback and find out what’s working, and what isn’t. Watch and observe how accounts transition and resolve. Then go back and ask the consumer, “Was that a good experience or a bad experience? Tell us about your experience.” Engaging with employees in your staged deployment is a great way to solicit user feedback.

5. OPTIMIZE AND TROUBLESHOOTAS YOU GO ALONGWhile no project is free of challenges, the Intermountain Healthcare team and its partners navigated through them to deliver a unified experience to its patients.

Key to their success was the ability to passively expose users to new features such as the online payment module.

By bringing accounts in from everywhere so patients could see a single billing experience, Intermountain ramped up to tens of thousands of users within a 10-month period.

6. LEVERAGE INTERNAL RESOURCESAND EXTERNAL TOOLS TO UNDERSTANDAND MEASURE FINANCIAL IMPACTSSince implementing the VisitPay platform, Intermountain is tracking towards a 20-30% increase in overall yield, while also experiencing cost reductions.

Leveraging tools from VisitPay enables Intermountain to assess and classify where patients stand regarding their ability to pay, enabling them to identify and create a pathway for each individual based on their circumstances.

In addition to improving patient yield, Intermountain lowered the cost of managing the process by limiting sta� calls to patients that were experiencing challenges. 18

$7.2B not-for-profit health system

22 hospitals/180 medical clinics

Located in Utah & Idaho

Deployed VisitPay in 2017

Stabilizing the consumer experience in an ever-changing environment is never easy. However, it is what every health system wants, and

what patients deserve. Here are six of the key takeaways

from Intermountain Healthcare’s experience:

1. GO STEADY SO YOU CAN GO FASTStage what you do. Roll out your pilots to your own health system employees. Monitor adoption and use, solicit feedback, and find out where the “gotchas” are before implementing any changes intended for patient use.

2. BUILD A SINGLE, INTEGRATED EXPERIENCE FOR YOUR CONSUMERSIf you can build a single, integrated experience, you will have better outcomes–at a lower cost. Rather than sending five bills, your patients will see their information electronically. Creating a single experience enables patients to make payments through one vehicle versus payments on every one of those bills.

3. IDENTIFY THE BEST WAY TO ENGAGE YOUR CONSUMERSFind opportunities to tailor the experience to each unique patient’s needs. Every patient’s outlook and perception is di�erent. Find out what’s important to each of them. Consider how di�erent options can be constructed so that it is easy for patients to use the technology available to them. Make the financial experience meaningful and consolidated.

4. TAKE A MARKETING APPROACHTest how things work. How long could the plans be? Can you engage the consumer in a certain way based on some of the information you know about them? Could you tailor any kind of o�ering, or a payment plan, or recommendations around how they engage the system based their specific needs?

Get feedback and find out what’s working, and what isn’t. Watch and observe how accounts transition and resolve. Then go back and ask the consumer, “Was that a good experience or a bad experience? Tell us about your experience.” Engaging with employees in your staged deployment is a great way to solicit user feedback.

5. OPTIMIZE AND TROUBLESHOOTAS YOU GO ALONGWhile no project is free of challenges, the Intermountain Healthcare team and its partners navigated through them to deliver a unified experience to its patients.

Key to their success was the ability to passively expose users to new features such as the online payment module.

By bringing accounts in from everywhere so patients could see a single billing experience, Intermountain ramped up to tens of thousands of users within a 10-month period.

6. LEVERAGE INTERNAL RESOURCESAND EXTERNAL TOOLS TO UNDERSTANDAND MEASURE FINANCIAL IMPACTSSince implementing the VisitPay platform, Intermountain is tracking towards a 20-30% increase in overall yield, while also experiencing cost reductions.

Leveraging tools from VisitPay enables Intermountain to assess and classify where patients stand regarding their ability to pay, enabling them to identify and create a pathway for each individual based on their circumstances.

In addition to improving patient yield, Intermountain lowered the cost of managing the process by limiting sta� calls to patients that were experiencing challenges. 19

Boosting ROI

As a result, we generate very high ROI for our clients, most of whom are large, complex health systems. Typically, our clients see an improvement in patient payment rate (yield) of over 30%, an increase in top-two box patient satisfaction of 40-50%, and a significant decrease in operational cost due to the low cost of originating and administering consumer receivables. For example, typically 50,000 patient consumers on VisitPay can be managed by as few as 2.5 FTEs in the provider call center.

Patient payment performance is not about collections, it’s about creating a better experience built on trust and insights. That trust comes through the transparency, choice and control VisitPay a�ords our clients and their patients. Our solution o�ers the contemporary experience patients expect while generating dramatically better economics for health systems.

Great ConsumerExperiences Drive GreatFinancial Outcomes

Having the most accurate patient propensity to pay scores in any local market is not enough to improve overall financial performance. Those insights need to be brought to life in a digital platform that o�ers an intuitive, user-friendly consumer experience.

Machine learning algorithms are at the core of our analytical approach. Our analysts and data scientists use our infrastructure to model hundreds of variables, resulting in consumer scores that are easy to test and operationalize, and are tailored to the provider’s specific market. We use data and other proprietary sources to build our scores and we can easily incorporate multiple years of historical data into our models.

20

By Will Reilly

Re-thinking Credit Risk

When coupled with the VisitPay platform for patient payments, a provider can programmatically deploy an advanced, consistent, and fully compliant credit risk management policy that is relevant to each consumer, with incredible e�ciency. The provider can choose to o�er one set of strategies for all its consumers or o�er a refined, fully automated strategy specific to each consumer’s needs. Most of our clients are testing di�erent approaches and measuring outcomes along the way, in close collaboration with our client services team.

Various financial o�ers and terms can be presented to consumers based on VisitPay scores, and di�erent strategies can be tested in parallel to optimize the approach over time. Additionally, providers are using VisitPay’s scores to tailor consumer servicing strategies using any number of factors such as balance due, insurance carrier, employer, and others. This leads to dramatic performance improvements in the call center.


Boosting ROI

As a result, we generate very high ROI for our clients, most of whom are large, complex health systems. Typically, our clients see an improvement in patient payment rate (yield) of over 30%, an increase in top-two box patient satisfaction of 40-50%, and a significant decrease in operational cost due to the low cost of originating and administering consumer receivables. For example, typically 50,000 patient consumers on VisitPay can be managed by as few as 2.5 FTEs in the provider call center.

Patient payment performance is not about collections, it’s about creating a better experience built on trust and insights. That trust comes through the transparency, choice and control VisitPay a�ords our clients and their patients. Our solution o�ers the contemporary experience patients expect while generating dramatically better economics for health systems.

Having the most accurate patient propensity to pay scores in any local market is not enough to improve overall financial performance. Those insights need to be brought to life in a digital platform that o�ers an intuitive, user-friendly consumer experience.

Machine learning algorithms are at the core of our analytical approach. Our analysts and data scientists use our infrastructure to model hundreds of variables, resulting in consumer scores that are easy to test and operationalize, and are tailored to the provider’s specific market. We use data and other proprietary sources to build our scores and we can easily incorporate multiple years of historical data into our models.

Re-thinking Credit Risk

When coupled with the VisitPay platform for patient payments, a provider can programmatically deploy an advanced, consistent, and fully compliant credit risk management policy that is relevant to each consumer, with incredible e�ciency. The provider can choose to o�er one set of strategies for all its consumers or o�er a refined, fully automated strategy specific to each consumer’s needs. Most of our clients are testing di�erent approaches and measuring outcomes along the way, in close collaboration with our client services team.

Various financial o�ers and terms can be presented to consumers based on VisitPay scores, and di�erent strategies can be tested in parallel to optimize the approach over time. Additionally, providers are using VisitPay’s scores to tailor consumer servicing strategies using any number of factors such as balance due, insurance carrier, employer, and others. This leads to dramatic performance improvements in the call center.

21

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Will is the VP of Consumer and Client Marketing at VisitPay.A former marketing VP at IBM, he’s now turning his twenty years marketing and consulting experience to help push the envelope of financial health for both health systems and patients.


YIELD30%+

TOP-TWO BOX

PATIENTSMANAGED BY

PATIENTSATISFACTION

40-50%50K

2.5 FTEs

22

VisitPay is a dedicated group of consumer

finance people working for the good of the

healthcare industry.

Our company was established after our

founders discovered an entire industry that

was using outdated and inadequate systems

to manage patient revenue—leading to

frustrated providers, dissatisfied and confused

patients, and, ultimately, fewer payments.

Something had to change.

So we decided to fix it. In doing so, we

didn’t only make patient billing easier, we

rethought patient financial relationships

from end to end.

Let’s explore how your health system can

rethink things, too. Whether you have a

question or you’d like to schedule a demo

to see VisitPay in action, we look forward

to showing you how this powerful platform

makes patient financial engagement

easier than ever.

LEARN MORE:

VisitPay.com [email protected]

©2018 VisitPay All rights reserved. This content is copyrighted by VisitPay, Inc. and cannot be reproduced or shared without prior expressed written permission from VisitPay, Inc.

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