Healthcare price transparency only works if patients understand rising healthcare costs

Providing patients with up-front price estimates not only helps medical practices comply with the federal regulatory requirements to reduce surprise medical bills; it also helps improve patient collections and even generate more business. Seventy percent of patients are more likely to seek care when up-front pricing is provided, a recent study found. However, healthcare price transparency alone doesn’t drive payment—patient understanding does. When patients understand what they owe, why they owe it, and how to pay, practices are more likely to collect outstanding balances and reduce bad debt.

Why information delivery alone doesn’t solve the problem

We live and work in a time of rising healthcare costs when access to healthcare information is abundant. Want to see your latest lab results? Check your patient portal. Want to learn more about your medical condition? Ask a chatbot. Looking for a price estimate? Use your provider’s online healthcare price transparency tool or ask for a printed statement.

What’s potentially absent in each of these scenarios? Patient comprehension. Just because a patient sees their lab result or reads about their signs and symptoms doesn’t mean they know what to do next. The same is true for good faith estimates. Simply seeing the numbers doesn’t mean patients know why a procedure or service costs what it does. Static estimates and confusing statements often create friction instead of clarity.

Patient understanding, on the other hand, drives patient payments, accelerates cashflow, and reduces the cost to collect. Understanding is what drives action, and action is what drives payment.

Addressing barriers to patient understanding

Today’s medical practices face many barriers to addressing patient confusion and helping patients understand rising healthcare costs more effectively. Here are three of the most common ones:

1. Limited staff bandwidth. Staff don’t have time to proactively educate patients about the nuances of rising healthcare costs because they’re already stretched thin from focusing on high call volumes, prior authorization demands, and denial management. Promoting patient understanding becomes a reactive task rather than a proactive step built into workflows.
2. Inconsistent patient engagement channels. Some practices still rely on phone calls and mail to communicate with patients even though patients increasingly expect text, chat, and mobile-first experiences. When modern communication channels are not available, some patients disengage from the financial experience and are less likely to pay.
3. Static, one-way communication. Some practices rely on printed estimates and paper or PDF statements without giving patients the ability to ask questions about rising healthcare costs in the moment. The outcome of delayed responses from providers? Stalled payments.

Combine these challenges with ever-evolving healthcare regulatory changes, and most practices face a recipe for disaster unless they choose to pivot.

How technology sets practices up for success

Although technology greatly expands access to information, which at times may be overwhelming, it also offers significant opportunities to enhance patient comprehension. That’s because the right technology:

• Connects fragmented systems. Technology integrates seamlessly with the most popular practice management systems, giving patients access to the most accurate and up-to-date information for healthcare price transparency.
• Delivers information at the right time. Smart workflows trigger automated patient statements using the patient’s preferred method of communication.
• Enables real-time, two-way communication. Technology supports text-based and chat-based support that provides immediate answers to patients’ questions and promotes an overall positive patient financial experience.
• Personalizes the financial journey. Technology automates reminders and education but without losing the human touch, when needed.

The right technology transforms overwhelming financial information about rising healthcare costs into clear, timely, and personalized communication—connecting systems, enabling real-time patient engagement, and delivering the right information when it matters most.

Making the business case for patient engagement technology

Practices can make the case for investing in patient billing and engagement technology by taking these three steps:

1. Quantify the financial impact of poor patient understanding. Look at metrics like aging patient A/R, patient collection rates, cost to collect, and bad debt to reveal where revenue is leaking.
2. Identify internal challenges and barriers. Why hasn’t the practice been able to move the needle on patient understanding of healthcare price transparency and rising healthcare costs to date?
3. Establish key performance indicators that link the technology to measurable outcomes. Define how the practice will track improvements such as faster balance resolution resulting from real-time communication and reduced staff burden resulting from automation.

Upon implementation, practices quickly realize the right patient billing and engagement platform turns complex financial information into clear, real-time conversations patients can act on—making the business case by directly driving faster payments, improving collection rates, and lowering the cost to collect.

Looking ahead: Prioritizing patient understanding for financial sustainability

As providers continue to engage patients in the financial aspects of their healthcare journeys, Inbox Health closes the gap between healthcare price transparency and payment by turning financial information into ongoing, two-way patient communication. Inbox Health doesn’t just deliver financial information—it ensures patients comprehend it in real time, turning transparency into actual collections. Learn how Inbox Health provides patient support by explaining rising healthcare costs and balances in plain language, engaging patients in real time, answering questions instantly, and reducing confusion-driven nonpayment.

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