How One CEO Has Seen 'Huge Returns' on Implementing Digital Payments

Lake Washington Physical Therapy CEO Ben Wobker shares his approach to pursuing technology.

For CEOs at provider organizations, choosing where to put your technology investments is often a difficult decision.

Improving the patient billing experience, however, can be a surefire way to ensure payments are coming in a timely, efficient manner, leading to a healthier bottom line.

That's been the case for Kirkland, Washington-based Lake Washington Physical Therapy (LWPT), which has benefited from implanting electronic billing and mobile payment strategies.

Specifically, the rehabilitation facility has brought on PatientPay for convenient bill pay and Luma Health to coordinate the patient journey, and the investments are paying dividends, founder CEO Ben Wobker told HealthLeaders.

Wobker has always been someone who likes to be an early adopter and he's pushed his teams to beta test most of their technologies. For example, when many providers were still using paper for documentation, LWPT went online with HTML5.

"I've kind of always pushed our team, sometimes with the little resistance because there's always going to be mistakes and pitfalls and learning that occurs when you adopt a new technology," Wobker said. "But what we've seen across the board on everything that we've adopted, we've seen huge returns on that."

LWPT's experience with implementing PatientPay has been "shockingly awesome," with Wobker noting that the organization has decreased their accounts receivable by 47% in the first month.

"The way our staff is paid is they get a percentage of what they bring in, so this was a very welcomed change for them as well," he said.

When LWPT introduced Luma to improve their online waitlist text reminder system, cancellations decreased by 1.5% while capacity went up 11%.

"We saw more volume, better margins, and less open spaces," Wobker said. "PatientPay and our billing services have helped us get a best-in-class payment per visit, which is really important. We don't have to see as many people because we're getting what we actually are billing."

While LWPT's investments have led to ROI, that isn't necessarily happening for most provider organizations.

According to a recent survey by Ernst & Young, 71% of payer and provider executives said the implementation of new technologies hasn't lowered hospital expenses. Nonetheless, nearly all the respondents (96%) agreed that investment in new technology is still worth the cost.

The patient billing experience is an area CEOs should have near the top of their list as an area ripe for early ROI if there are identifiable processes to clean up.