A new HFMA report highlights a national healthcare affordability crisis with significant implications for your revenue cycle.
The U.S. Healthcare Consumer Vitals Tracks, a new tool from HFMA, has found that affordability issues puts the healthcare system in serious condition. While issues like rising insurance premiums and patient dissatisfaction are national in scope, they create direct, on-the-ground consequences for provider finances.
Read more here, or see the infographic below to see three ways the affordability crisis is impacting the revenue cycle, translating high-level trends into specific threats to key performance indicators like bad debt and the cost to collect.
Luke Gale is the revenue cycle editor for HealthLeaders.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The trend toward high-deductible health plans increases bad debt risk by shifting a larger portion of the bill directly to patients.
Complex billing and insurance processing practices create administrative waste, which drives up out-of-pocket costs for patients and forces providers to expand collection efforts.
Patient dissatisfaction with healthcare finances, now at its lowest point since 1997, leads to payment delays and disputes that directly increase the cost to collect.