How Deaconess Health System Reconciles Patient and Non-Patient Transactions Using HealthPay24
Background
Based in Evansville, Indiana, Deaconess Health System is the premier provider of health care services to thirty-five counties in Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. After 125 years, Deaconess continues to provide high-quality healthcare with a commitment to progressive, patient-centered care with a local focus and direction.
Objective
In 2016, Deaconess was looking for a patient payment solution that could reduce the number of manual steps that existed in their collection process. Their current workflow included manually recording credit card information on a form and sending it to the posting department to run through their processor EPX, then manually posting the receivable.
Choosing HealthPay24 was a joint decision between Deaconess and HealthCare Resource Solution (HRS) – Deaconess’ third-party billing office. “Our relationship with HealthPay24 originally began because we were looking for a way to manage and reconcile non-operational payments more efficiently,” says Autumn Link, Director of Finance for Deaconess. “Once we implemented their non-patient general ledger solution, we continued to build our relationship on the patient payments side.”
Our Solution
Deaconess has Epic MyChart* for their primary EMR and patient engagement solution and uses HealthPay24 as an alternate patient payment solution for their patients. “MyChart is the number one way our patients pay but we want to give them every opportunity to pay. HealthPay24 gives us what we need to process payments securely over the phone, online, with Papaya via statements, through PayPal, and soon using GooglePay and ApplePay” says Kristy Perkins, Patient Financial Experience Manager at HRS.
“The benefit of using HealthPay24 in addition to Epic MyChart is that HealthPay24 has a simple online payment center, a good user interface, and we can process our non-operational transactions,” Autumn remarks.
In addition to managing patient payments, Deaconess also processes approximately 186 separate non-operational services via HealthPay24’s non-patient general ledger solution. These services are being processed from roughly 291 internal and external Deaconess locations and transactions like employee benefits, a variety of wellness classes, event registrations, durable medical equipment, and donations to the foundation.
“HealthPay24’s general ledger solution allows us to track and reconcile our non-operational transactions much easier. Instead of having to manually create and record journal entries, the transactions are automatically posted through a file we receive every day that interfaces directly into our general ledger system,” says Autumn.
HealthPay24 is unique in offering provider organizations a full healthcare payment platform, providing industry leading solutions for both patient and non-patient transactions.
Recently, HRS began utilizing HealthPay24 to take payments off patient estimates during pre-service conversations and post them directly back to their accounts receivable.
Prior to January 2022, HRS had one staff member that was taking these pre-service payments, however after implementing payments off an estimate, it now has four staff members taking pre-service payments as part of an entire pre-service department.
“Being able to collect off the estimate has been a big benefit for us because we are working on collecting payments and explaining benefits prior to patients coming into the office. With HealthPay24, we can take payments off the estimate and post immediately to our A/R,” says Kristy.
*Epic and MyChart are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Systems Corporation.
The Results
Payments made off the estimate
Collected $2.6M in payments off the estimate
(between January – July 2022)
Patient payment collections
$6.8M in total payments collected with 61% payments made through HealthPay24’s online payment portal.
Customer satisfaction score
4.26/5.0
(from patient portal users)
Non-patient general ledger transactions
$37.4M collected on 186 non-operational services
(between January – July 2022)
The Future of the Patient Financial Experience
For the last few years, Deaconess and HRS have strived to embed automation elements into their payments, processes and workflows, payment plans, and even added a live chat feature to increase staff efficiency and enhance patient engagement.
“One focus will be on technology and automation,” says Autumn. “Zeroing in on collectability and streamlining our current solutions will be key for our team.”
Autumn said the team is excited to move forward with HealthPay24 as they dive into the functionality and features offered by the new SaaS platform which will also allow them to enhance the management of their non-patient transactions.
HealthPay24’s SaaS platform offers providers an omni-channel patient experience that includes an intuitive portal, text, IVR, and app payment selections. Affordability options offer patient’s financial peace-of-mind through customized payment plans, financial counseling, and non-recourse loans. The general ledger solution allows providers to easily process and reconcile non-patient payments to help reduce administrative burden and scale with an organization’s needs.
“Working with team at HealthPay24 has been great…always. They are easy to work with, very responsive, and the support is top notch. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve never looked for another partner because we’ve always appreciated the support and collaboration we get from them.”
– Autumn Link
Director of Finance at Deaconess Health System
