Successful revenue cycle management, or RCM, can mean a lot of different things: financial stability, increased revenue, and reportable data. From submitting claims to collecting payments to reporting, practices rely on this process and its resulting data to help them identify trends and make important business decisions. But there is one essential factor to the success of RCM that is often overlooked and that’s the patient experience. We don’t inherently lump patient experience with financial upside, so why is it so important to RCM?
The patient experience cycle
When we think about the patient experience, we often limit its range to the visit itself or the care received. But what we don’t realize is that, more or less, there are multiple points of interaction outside of just the face-to-face encounter with a provider. From the time an appointment is scheduled to when the patient pays their bills, the quality of the patient experience depends on how smooth the process is at every point of the cycle.
The patient payment process can be a particularly challenging one to navigate for many reasons. In some instances, patients are faced with paper statements that may arrive late in the mail or are possibly overlooked. Then, the patient would still be required to call the doctor’s office to make the actual payment via credit card or worse, would have to mail a check. Now imagine being able to receive statements via text or email and having the option to pay directly from there, or even at the point of service. Patients aren’t concerned with whether or not the practice is using an in-house versus outsourced biller nor do they really have visibility into such things on the backend. So, when it comes time for a patient to pay their medical bills, if the front end process is disorganized, unclear, or difficult in any way, you can bet the patient's experience suffers and the onus of that bad experience often falls squarely onto the practice, undoing all the hard work and thought put into providing great medical care.
Keeping the patient experience top-of-mind
Every step of the patient cycle plays a key role in providing a positive patient experience - appointment reminders, patient intake, gathering financial and insurance information, the encounter with the provider, the payment process - all of these combined make a strong case for a good experience, should everything go smoothly. Things like no-shows due to a lack of appointment reminders or sending paper statements that cause delays in timely payments can hinder not only a good patient experience but also the chances of collecting payments in a timely manner, if at all.
As a practice, it’s easier to provide that seamless experience when everything you need is in one place. At pMD, we care about what you care about. We’re a team that’s invested in the things you’re invested in. So naturally, your patients are our top priority. Our revenue cycle management service allows you to provide that top-notch patient experience while also seeing your revenue increase. Let us take care of the administrative work so you can focus on what matters most.
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