Navicure, a cloud-based healthcare billing and payment solutions provider, conducted a national survey on patient collections and challenges for ambulatory surgery centers in conjunction with Becker's Healthcare.
The survey was conducted in the third quarter of 2015 to better understand patient payment trends and technologies ASCs use today. The respondents included ASC administrators and executives, owners and billing managers of both small and large ASCs. Here are five key findings:
1. Patient payments represent 21 percent to 40 percent of overall revenue in 72 percent of the responding surgery centers.
2. Only one-third of the surgery center respondents felt patient collections was a high priority.
3. Patient payments were estimated to represent around $1.4 million to $2.7 million of overall revenue for an individual ASC.
4. Among ASCs performing more than 100 procedures per month, many still rely on manual processes for collecting patient payments; 38 percent collect patient payments by mail and 41 percent take credit/debit card payments via phone.
5. There 32 percent of respondents who identified patients who are unable to pay as their top challenge, followed by 30 percent who said patients were slow to pay.
"As more and more patients are paying out-of-pocket, it's important for ASCs to evaluate payment processes and determine how technology can enable a better collection model," said Navicure CEO and Co-founder Jim Denny. "The results of this survey confirm it's crucial for ASCs to recognize they cannot ignore one of their top payers — patients. With more than a third of ASCs still leveraging manual payment collections processes, there's a great opportunity for ASCs to improve their patient revenue with the help of effective, automated technology."