Profitable Practices: Maximizing Point-of-Service Collections to Drive Revenue 

By Chloe From Clearwave | June 6 , 2024

Imagine going into a restaurant, eating your meal and then having the option to pay at a later date. It sounds absurd, right? Why, then, is post-service payment collections not only accepted but extremely common, in healthcare? That’s the million-dollar question – especially when the healthcare industry has made such advances in digital point-of-sale (POS) payment technology. 

It’s time to put profits back into practice by increasing your co-pay collections rate. 

Many healthcare practices continue to follow traditional collections processes, which rely on front office staff to collect payment. These employees are responsible for determining co-pays and past-due balances and either asking for payment at check-in or tracking down patients after care is rendered. Yet, front-office workers are not bill collectors. When managing a busy waiting room and a high volume of scheduling requests, payment collections can fall to the wayside. If you’re facing constant churn and have new, less experienced staff, they may feel too uncomfortable to ask for payment. 

These scenarios leave payment to be collected post-service, which can be hit or miss, as research reveals the probability of collecting after a patient leaves the office is only 30%. 

Complicating matters, if patient data on file is inaccurate or outdated, staff might not even be able to get in touch with patients after they’ve received care—delaying collections, if they even come in at all. The bottom line is manual and after-the-fact collection processes not only consume the time and effort of your already overburdened staff, but also result in slow or non-payments, which leads to write-offs, missed revenue and profit loss for your practice.  

See How Leveling Up Your Point-of-Service Collections Process Pays Off.

High-growth practices don’t leave opportunities for collections to be second priority or forgotten. Rather, they use smart, patient check-in systems to accelerate collections by prompting payment at the POS.  

What’s the secret to immediate improvements to point-of-service collections? Patient check-in kiosks.  

Patient self-service kiosks make it simple for patients to update their information and pay co-pays and past-due balances all in one fail swoop, without staff intervention. As a result, your practice collects more at check-in, reduces accounts receivables due and streamlines any post-billing communications, with more accurate data.  

Practices have seen a 112% increase in point-of-service collections on average, after adding self-service kiosks to their registration process.

One practice drives a monthly co-pay collection rate of 80%, their billing manager shares the impact, “The kiosk prompts patients to pay their co-pays and any outstanding balances every time a patient checks in. Nearly every time patients will pay in full, taking care of their co-pays and past-due balances.” Read the story here. 

The Proven Way to Boost Collections Before Seeing Patients

It’s time for leaders to prioritize the experience today’s patients want by offering personalized payment options that build loyalty and improve financial performance for specialty practices of all sizes. Clearwave is modernizing collections and delivering advanced payment features through our partnership with InstaMed, an innovative payment and billing solution.  

Clearwave’s patient check-in software can prompt payment at the point-of-service and enable patients to pay what’s due via their smartphone or at the kiosk – making payment quick and easy. Simplifying the process even further, InstaMed’s technology enables our digital check-in solutions to capture patients’ consent to keep a card-on-file and use it for future transactions.  

By combining the power of Clearwave and InstaMed, our specialty practices can: 

• Increase collections before care – Collect co-pays, settle outstanding financial responsibilities and even provide care estimates during check-in and registration – ensuring your practice gets paid for services rendered.  
• Offer cost transparency – According to an InstaMed report, nine in 10 consumers want to know payment responsibility upfront. Practices can leverage real-time patient eligibility tools to provide patients with accurate care estimates and financial transparency, so they know their cost responsibility before coming into the office – increasing their propensity to pay.  
• Improve patient data capture – When patients enter their own insurance and license screenshots, patient demographics, and compliance and medical intake information, the risk of manual data entry errors is drastically reduced – allowing you to process cleaner claims. 
• Reduce staff workloads – With patient-led automated processes, front office workers no longer need to worry about mundane data entry and collections, giving them time back to focus on genuine patient interaction and high-value administrative and billing tasks. 
• Deliver a better patient experience – Making the payment process simple, quick and private for every patient meets their needs and gives them the experience they demand.   

This digital approach is proven to accelerate cash flow and optimize revenue for your practice, provide a better patient experience and keep employees happy. With benefits practice-wide, why would you wait another day to modernize your collections processes?  

Contact us today to see how Clearwave can help your practice or learn more about our partnership with InstaMed, and how we’re transforming patient collections for growing practices.