Personalizing Healthcare: Strategies to Drive Patient Engagement and Financial Impact [PODCAST]
In this episode, Casey Williams, SVP of Patient Engagement at RevSpring, discusses personalizing healthcare, strategies to drive patient engagement, and financial impact.
Highlights of this episode include:
- What RevSpring does and the difference it makes for healthcare organizations
- Biggest challenges healthcare organizations face when trying to protect their finances while also helping patients
- Personalization and how it impacts patients and providers
- Practical strategies for meeting patients where they are financially
- RevSpring’s approach
- What trends or innovations that will shape healthcare communications and finance
Kelly Wisness: Hi, this is Kelly Wisness. Welcome back to the award-winning Hospital Finance Podcast. We’re pleased to welcome Casey Williams. Casey leads solution consulting and sales efforts for new direct healthcare customers at RevSpring. He has 20 years of experience in developing customized patient engagement and payment solutions for over 100 healthcare revenue cycle clients. His knowledge of patient engagement strategies, including self-service optimization, has made him an advocate for change for RevSpring clients and the wide healthcare revenue cycle market.
In this episode, we’re discussing personalizing healthcare, strategies to drive patient engagement, and financial impact. Welcome, and thank you for joining us, Casey.
Casey Williams: Kelly, thanks for having us. We appreciate it.
Kelly: Yeah, we’re glad to have you here. So, let’s go ahead and jump in. So, Casey, can you tell us about your background? And how did you end up in your position at RevSpring?
Casey: Yeah, it’s a great question, Kelly. I think by default is probably the most honest answer. Coming out of Bowling Green State University, studying interpersonal communication, there was nothing that screamed healthcare finance from that background. But actually, I think kind of started as most people start their jobs or their careers where I had a friend working in a company, a smaller company, at that time called Data Image. And they had just had some transition in their sales environment. And the owner, founder had asked me to join. And that kind of began the path into communication, payments, and engagement overall. And really started at that smaller company involved in the hospitals in and around central Ohio and then expanded into the greater Midwest. But really got a great appreciation for when you’re a small company at that time, you not only position what the value is, but when you do that successfully, then you actually do the setup or the implementation, and then you service it. And then when there’s a billing question, you’re actually the finance arm as well. So, I was very blessed to be able to have such exposure at such a young time in my career to where I got a lot of different experiences within that and have just enjoyed it ever since. And we at RevSpring, which Data Image then sold into what then became RevSpring in 2010– and we’ve continued to acquire value across the market in how we are trying to build our technology stack today. So, by happenstance, I got into it, but I have been fully immersed and fully engaged ever since.
Kelly: That’s awesome. It’s great how those things happen. For someone who isn’t– for someone who isn’t familiar, how would you describe what RevSpring does and the difference it makes for healthcare organizations?
Casey: Yeah, Kelly, it’s a great question. I think the most simplistic answer to that question and one that I get from my kids all the time is they see me going into hospitals and thought for many years that I was a doctor. And then at one time, we had an office inside a bank, and then they thought I was a banker. So, I practiced this answer a lot over the years. But primarily, we are a patient engagement and communication company with an emphasis on payments. And the sense of this is that when patients need services, we handle everything from the intake to the scheduling to the registration at time of service to estimating the balance that that patient would owe, do our absolute very best in terms of trying to capture payment at that time or a method of payment so that autopay could be performed. Once that individual service, if not collected in full at time of service, goes to be billed from an insurance standpoint and that amount is adjudicated, then there’s a self-pay after insurance balance. We are then engaging within that patient population to let them know that there is a balance to meet them where they are, meaning that if they are unable to pay that balance in full, we have predictive analytics that address how much that patient can afford to pay on a monthly basis.
And so, whether that engagement is print, we produce about a billion and a half communications a year from that standpoint, or we engage digitally within that to be able to facilitate payment and those outcomes. And so, I think that’s probably the simplistic answer to that question. And I think why that matters is…is you look at healthcare in terms of the ecosystem in which everything is operating today, there’s a great strain in healthcare. As high-deductible healthcare plans continue to progress, patients continue to pay more for the health insurance, continue to be pushed off from their employers of having to pay more themselves within that. That then puts a strain within healthcare, is that 20, 25% now of the receivables that are within the total revenues of healthcare are now to the patient, meaning self-pay/self-pay after insurance. And so, without our technologies, without our sophistication, without our intelligence, it becomes very tough to engage, as well as getting patients to respond to what they owe.
Kelly: Wow, that’s very fascinating. Thanks for sharing that with us, Casey. Yeah. So, what are some of the biggest challenges healthcare organizations face when trying to protect their finances while also helping patients?
Casey: Yeah, that’s another great follow-up to that, Kelly. And I think probably the number one answer you would get within a healthcare finance type of roundtable would be insurance denials. And so when you, when you look at the ecosystem and the landscape of healthcare, about 75, 80 percent of all revenue that comes into an IDN/hospital provider is generally on the commercial Medicare and Medicaid side. And then about 20 to 25 percent of that revenue comes in on the patient responsibility. And what that means is, is after their insurance is paid, what is their responsibility? Or if they’re uninsured, what is their responsibility? And so, denials continue to play a large part in that 80% of the revenue stream. But if we’re looking at the 20, 25% of revenue, it is around the patients continue to owe more, but yet the wages have not continued to go up at the same levels in which they’re either paying for their healthcare or their healthcare insurance. And so that creates kind of that massive strain that I was mentioning in terms of how do they collect? How do they give pathways for those individual patients to be able to engage in order to pay their balances? And if that doesn’t happen, we look at rural healthcare as an example, continued consolidation, even closures within that environment, when that doesn’t happen.
Kelly: Well, yeah, there are quite a few challenges in healthcare right now, that’s for sure. We hear a lot about personalization these days, but how does it actually impact patients and providers in terms of engagement and financial outcomes?
Casey: I oftentimes give bad examples or metaphors. And for those of you that are old enough listening to this, know the old TV show Cheers is that kind of the opening song is, “Everybody wants to know your name.” I think it’s a…I think it’s a really good illustration in the sense of what personalization means to any commercial engagement that we have as a patient, as a human, from a commerce perspective. And the more that the business knows about me and can perfect that engagement, can perfect that pathway, to where I don’t have to continue to repeat myself. Once I’ve answered a question, I don’t have to answer it again, or meeting me where I am, meaning that if I if I don’t have $1,000 in my bank or if I’m like 50% of Americans that do not have $500 in their account to pay for a surprise bill, that you’re not just sticking a $2,500 bill in my face and saying, “Pay me.” So, the personalization really gets down to meeting the patient where they are. To give you a couple of practical examples of that is if I am a patient, let’s even say I’m a millennial to where I do not like to receive paper and all I receive is paper. But if you send me a text, I’m going to pay within 15 seconds as long as I can afford that. That’s a good example of meeting the patient where they are, as well as personalizing that.
If you have, let’s say a person like me that is midlife, I think 47 is midlife. Maybe that’s on the older side of the life. I’m not sure. But I actually still like paper. Now maybe that’s because we print and mail a billion and a half communications. But let’s say I’m one of those individual patients that cannot afford $2,500. So am I receiving a communication in printed form to where I can touch, feel, and interact with that, but yet see a pathway to where I can potentially hit a QR code taken into a payment application where it’s giving me the option of 10 payments of $250. That is where the dynamic of patient engagement is massively changing and it has been massively changing over the last two to three years to where we can utilize intelligence and technology to meet patients where they are and then give them pathways to engage and respond.
Kelly: Yeah, I mean, personalization is key. I think in all industries now, as a marketer, it’s important for me too. And I really loved what you said about meeting the patient where they are, because that is so true. When it comes to meeting patients where they are financially, what are some practical strategies or tools that you see work really well?
Casey: It’s a great question, and this is probably a little bit challenging, hopefully, for the audience that you have. So, if you’re a healthcare executive within the revenue cycle or in finance as a whole, I think the number one thing to understand is what is the affordability of your demographic? So I give you a great example of this is that when we look to healthcare is as healthcare is continuing to go from the towers out to the strip malls in terms of urgent cares, pop up health clinics and all of these pieces, you’re starting to see kind of the retail experience happening within healthcare. And what retail does better than anybody else does is that they truly understand their customer. And so, when we look at standalone IDNs, large health systems, is there an understanding of the affordability within their customer market? The answer to that generally is no. If you were to say, what is the affordability of our patients or my patients within my individual demographic? I don’t think there’s an understanding of that, nor is there any kind of view into that?
And here’s the example that I’ll give in terms of explaining that. If you are a not-for-profit, large IDN or health system or even rule, for that matter, and you have a financial assistance policy, is that meeting your needs of your community? Furthermore, if you have a payment or collections policy that says we do not accept payment plans greater than 12 months, but yet your patient population with their accounts receivable, meaning the AR that is actually outstanding, many times we get into these data studies. And the answer to that question is that greater than 60% of all their patient AR, meaning accounts receivables or balances do, cannot engage within their collections policy. So just stop and think about that for a second. Greater than 60% of your customer base cannot afford to pay you. Now, if you’re a retail environment, if you’re a dollars and cents type of business, maybe even brick and mortar, I don’t think you would go into business for that. And so, the opportunity that you have by understanding what your actual demographic is, what your affordability is, and what your reality is, is now our policies or their policies can actually bend themselves to actually meeting the needs of that demographic.
So whether that is, hey, we’re going from a 6-month policy to a 36-month policy, whether that is we’re going to create intelligence to be able to meet patients where they are, or whether that is we’re going to offer up additional relief valves to patients that are not necessarily qualifying for financial assistance, but yet we’re not just pushing them into bad debt because our policies do not meet them where they are. So I think that is something that I highly encourage in terms of any healthcare executive that is sitting in a position of authority or power, actually having that data to be able to guide decisions versus just what our gut opinion is or what our experience has been over the last 20 years because our experiences over the last 20 years are not indicative of what today’s market is.
Kelly: Definitely not. Thanks for sharing all of those strategies and tools. Those were great. Can you share a story or example of a healthcare organization that saw results using RevSpring’s approach?
Casey: Yeah, I think from just, again, vast experiences within our client base, a little bit nuanced in terms of demographic. If you’re a safety net hospital, it’s not like somebody’s going to wave a magic wand and suddenly change the demographic in terms of the ability to pay, but I can tell you countless times when technology is utilized, when intelligence is utilized. And what I mean by that is, is going back to understanding how do we know as much as we possibly can about an individual patient, a guarantor, and then utilizing technology to then convey what we know and then a pathway around that. You are talking about increases in the patient pay rate, or better stated maybe as yield, of no less than 3%. We’ve had individual customers that have modified their pay rate in the low teens. And you start to think about that as people might be listening to this podcast and saying, “Well, what does that mean?” It’s a very simple math equation. If you were to take your amount billed, meaning the total dollars that you billed out to your patient population on an annual basis, and then multiply that by 3%, that is the worst-case lift that we have seen within the market when intelligence and technology have been deployed. And then, if you want to get really excited, go to the small teams and then multiply that by 11, 12, 13, 14%, then become art of the possible, right, in terms of what those response rates have been.
And then, kind of the icing on the cake or the cherry on top is that you then have these different value levers, maybe otherwise defined as cost. Postage is number two when it comes to cost centers within a revenue cycle. Labor is generally number one. Another large cost center within finance is merchant processing and that cost. Those are three mechanisms that potentially you can pull to not only increase the outcome from a yield, but also decrease your cost to collect so that maybe your two largest KPIs, you can have dramatic impacts on. And not to say that you can get rid of labor. Nobody wants to do that. But if you can increase patient self-service by utilizing intelligence and technology, then you can bring down the inbound call center. If you can allow pre-check in and take care of the intake process and the forms environment before a patient ever walks in your door, then you’re taking down the labor needs and those experiences. If you can convert to digital, not necessarily just to reduce cost, but actually reduce cost and increase yield and eliminate some postage. You’re never going to eliminate postage. Anybody tells you that you want to do a digital-only environment doesn’t understand yield. But if you can have a 40, 50, 60% reduction within postage, it’s a great outcome.
Kelly: Definitely. I think my key takeaways there were the labor, the postage, and the merchant processing are the biggest kind of expenses there. And thank you for sharing that story. That was a great one. So, Casey, what trends or innovations do you think will shape healthcare communications and finance over the next few years?
Casey: Yeah, I think that just fear is the mother of all innovation. And right now, there’s a lot of fear. There’s a lot of fear in rural healthcare, which I grew up in rural America in eastern Ohio. And so, to see hospitals on the edge of closing, to see mass consolidation where someone having a child has to drive an hour and a half to receive services, none of that is good. And then you stack whatever your political views are, not to get into any of that. But with the big, beautiful bill, there is some fear out there, right, in terms of what reimbursements are going to look like going into 2027. And so that fear is perpetuating cost reductions within healthcare today that everybody’s experiencing. If there’s any partners or vendors on the phone, whether a web or radio listening to the podcast, they know this, they’re getting calls every single day from their clients saying, “We need you to reduce cost.” And that fear is perpetuating that need for cost reduction in allowing these systems to kind of prepare for the unknown. I think that that is driving innovation. And that’s the exciting part out of any type of market change, is that it’s exciting to sit back and see the innovation work, because not all the time can you cost your way out of situations. And so, where we’re seeing the market is, how do you utilize? And again, just back to technology and intelligence, how do you utilize those two value levers to be able to increase the outcomes while pulling the other three cost levers, such as merchant labor and postage within that.
And that’s where we’re seeing breakthrough innovation and how you’re looking at how do we gain as much information in terms of a patient to truly know me, create this know-me based experience, and then to be able to guide patients through the process from a self-service perspective to where they’re not having to interact with individual labor as much as they possibly can. I know going through COVID, based on a retail experience dealing with Kroger in the Little Clinic, I had a complete check-in experience at the Little Clinic and saw a salesperson who actually had to be the or was the healthcare provider. I didn’t see a receptionist. I didn’t see a registrar. I didn’t see a customer service rep. I simply interacted in a kiosk. I sat down and a clinician came and got me. I received the testing needed to go to a conference. And I walked out, and I paid my bill. The learnings from retail, as it is extending itself into the brick-and-mortar type of healthcare, along with the fear of reimbursements and what that cash crunch is going to be in the future, is creating mass change. And it’s exciting to be in the middle of it.
Kelly: Yeah, definitely exciting times. Lots of innovation happening, too. Well, thank you, Casey, for sharing your insights with us on personalizing healthcare, strategies to drive patient engagement and financial impact. So, if a listener wants to learn more or contact you to discuss this topic further, how best can they do that?
Casey: Yeah, our website is always a plethora of information in terms of revspringinc.com. Certainly able to reach out on our socials, whether that’s LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, within that environment in terms of Rev Spring. And as always, happy to find any associate that is willing to help and engage.
Kelly: Awesome. Thank you for providing that. And thank you all for joining us for this episode of The Hospital Finance Podcast. Until next time…
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