The Situation
Several years ago, the healthcare provider struggled with pure self-pay and self-pay balances after insurance payment accounts. With limited staff to serve these patients, wait times for inquiry calls averaged 20 minutes and abandonment rates were high. This resulted in significant concerns over patient satisfaction the provider wanted to resolve quickly.
Convergent had already worked with the healthcare provider in a different capacity as the provider of either primary or secondary collection services over the past 13 years. Recognizing an opportunity to help the large health system improve self-pay collection service levels and raise much-needed revenue, the team recommended that the provider consider Convergent RCM as a partner in reducing self-pay receivables, while increasing patient collections and improving patient satisfaction with the business office experience.
Pleased with its existing relationship and Convergent’s performance, the healthcare provider turned to Convergent for full collections support on all primary self-pay accounts. “The quality of service that we receive and the compassion shown to our patients made Convergent a natural choice for our self-pay receivables,” said the organization’s Director of Patient Financial Services.
The Solution
For the healthcare provider, the transition to outsourced accounts receivable management for self-pay balances was near-instant. Convergent immediately placed two representatives onsite to begin the collections work as it continued to build its off-site team. “Convergent’s on-=site staff quickly adapted to our culture and became part of our bigger team. As liaisons between the two companies, they really help to minimize our involvement in this portion of the business. We’re able to keep our focus on third-party receivables,” said the Director.
Convergent operates as a true call center for the provider, helping patients resolve their issues. Its robust off-site customer service department includes a predictive dialer for more productive and cost-effective outbound calling to patients. “We do have a dialer, but it didn’t function well for us and we stopped using it. With Convergent, we have a more advanced system for reaching out to patients without the cost, complication and worry of running it,” said the Director.
Convergent also handles in-bound calls from patients, giving the provider the ability to listen in on live calls. “We listen to calls every two weeks, which helps us work together to continually improve the quality of calls. It also confirms that Convergent treats our patients with the same level of compassion that we do as a Catholic organization,” said the Director.
The Result
Convergent has helped the provider recover self-pay accounts to allocate to other areas of the business and raise the quality of service extended to patients with self-pay balances. Phone metrics also demonstrate a tremendous improvement in customer service levels. For inbound calls, the wait time to speak to a representative dropped from an average of 20 minutes to just 30 seconds 70% of the time. Call abandonment rates were reduced to under 5%.
By continually working together to uncover and resolve issues standing in the way of greater productivity, the provider and Convergent have exceeded their original goals for both collections and call response by 100%. “Convergent is a true part of our business office. To me, they are us,” said the Director.
Since teaming up in 2005, Convergent has helped the provider to more than triple its self-pay collections rate. “Not only have we generated revenue, we’ve also reduced expenses. From a system and staffing perspective, we just can’t do what Convergent does for the cost, said the Director
Derek Pickell, CEO, Convergent RCM, explained Convergent’s position, “Convergent understands that a steady cash flow is essential for any healthcare organization committed to serving patients in need. Our primary focus is to help our client partners improve their financial position from the very start of the relationship while strengthening relationships with patients and the community. We always strive to be a true partner and an extension of our client’s management staff. We have invested literally millions of dollars in our state of the art Patient Contact Centers to ensure our client partners are provided the highest level of financial and patient satisfaction performance possible in the industry today. In addition to the ability of our client partners to remotely listen to live calls in our Patient Contact Center, the recent implementation of our proprietary CEScore (Convergent Employee Scorecard) software enables management and our associates to monitor individual performance as compared to client key performance indicators in real time. We know if we can’t measure performance, we can’t expect to achieve industry leading performance across our business. CEScore is another example of the leading edge technology we now utilize to differentiate ourselves from our competition.”
