What is a patient statement?
If you don’t work within the healthcare space, you’ve probably asked yourself that question before. That’s not an uncommon question. However, you’ve seen one if you’ve ever gone to the doctor.
In the simplest terms, a patient statement is a medical bill. They come in two main forms…
Paper
Electronic
You can also receive them in many different ways…
In-person
Mail
Email
SMS
Practices and hospitals spend a lot of time and money on patient statements. Some hire full-time employees whose sole responsibilities include printing, mailing and managing the logistics of their medical bills. Others outsource this process to technology companies such as ourselves.
Beyond how patient statements get sent and received, healthcare organizations also spend a lot of time on their design and format to ensure that they’re easy to understand.
But from a higher level why is a patient statement important?
Table of Contents
Keeps Practices Running
The number one reason why patient statements are important is that they get healthcare organizations paid. All of the services and treatments you receive while visiting a hospital or doctor has a cost associated with it. We’re all familiar with that.
After you’re done with your appointment, the front-office tells your health insurance provider what happened during your appointment. From there, your insurance analyzes each prodecure and treatment to determine what they’ll cover.
They’ll then communicate back to your doctor’s office with what costs they’ll pay for. At that point, any outstanding balances are your responsibility.
But in order for your doctor to get that payment from you. They need to tell communicate it to you. That’s where your patient statement comes in.
Tells You What You Owe
How can a doctor expect you to pay anything if you don’t know that you owe anything in the first place?
In order for you to pay anything, the doctor needs to communicate with you the amount of money you owe. Think of patient statements as your internet bill. When you pay for your internet, your services and charges get detailed in a monthly bill.
Sometimes, internet providers have sales going on for their services. When this happens, a minus charge gets added to your bill. For this scenario, think of your different service charges from your internet provider as different treatments and the minus charges from their sale as the amount your insurance covers.
It’s important that statements clearly indicate what patients owe to minimize any confusion or questions. That way your doctor can get a quicker return on revenue and you won’t have to spend time talking to their support trying to figure out why you owe them money.
Informs You About Your Insurance
As a patient, you want the right health insurance provider based on your needs. If you need to go to a specialist and the insurance you currently have covers less than a different one, you’re going to switch. Healthcare is expensive and you want to do everything you can to keep those costs down.
Unfortunately, the only true way to test the effectiveness of your current health insurance is to visit the doctor. Luckily, your patient statement will help you evaluate your insurance’s effectiveness. They can better keep track of the breakdown of costs when they see what insurance has already paid for, and what they still owe.
Although we’re moving toward price transparency within healthcare, we’re still a long way from it being the everyday norm. Until then, your bill is the best option to evaluate your insurance.
Explains How to Pay
So you receive a patient statement and know how much money you owe your doctor for the treatment you’re receiving. The next most important step is figuring out how to pay it.
Statements are necessary for explaining to patients how to make payment. Different practices offer a variety of ways to pay. Some accept check only, some will accept certain credit cards, and some even have online payment methods.
If what you received doesn’t clearly define how you can pay off the debt you owe your doctor, they’ve failed. How can they expect you to pay anything if you don’t know what payment methods they accept?
After all, Americans spend about 2 minutes per day managing their finances. So if you have other bills to worry about on top of the statement you just received, you’re going to have to call the practice’s support team. That costs them money and makes things more confusing on your end.
Tells You When to Pay
At this point, you know why you received your patient statement and how much you owe. However, maybe you want to wait a little bit before you make a payment. You could be between paychecks or want to hold off to discuss what you owe with your healthcare organization.
Whatever the reason, the bill needs to clearly define when your payment is due. What we’ve seen is that having the total in at least two different areas on the statement makes it easier to understand what you owe.
Gives You Contact Information
Patients may sometimes have questions about their bill. This could be about any of the above: why they received a bill, what the charges were for, how to pay, or its due date.
Anytime an organization wants to collect payment from their client, regardless of the industry they serve, there’s a customer support factor to it. In order to have the least amount of patient frustration, contact information needs to have some real estate on their statement.
That way, all of the contacting capabilities and information is in one place and easy to access. And if they ever need to contact the organization in the future, they can easily find it.
Shows Where to Send Payment
Even though the digital payment industry reached $3885.57 billion in 2019, not everyone feels comfortable using this method of payment.
That’s because different generations prefer different experiences for their healthcare. Even though Millennials and Generation Z patients would gladly pay digitally for their medical bills, Baby Boomers might not.
For this reason, patient statements include where you can send payment. Since most doctor’s offices accept both digital and check reimbursement methods, both of these methods will have their own areas on the bill.
Statements let you know where exactly to send payment so that all cash flow stays organized.
It Reminds You
Let’s say you put your payment off on your patient statement and time gets ahead of you. As time goes on, eventually your statement’s due date passes and your payment is now overdue.
At this point, your doctor’s office would also realize that they haven’t received any payment from you. Due to this, they’d send you another statement as a reminder.
However, if they take their patient collections process seriously, your new bill would look a little bit different than the first on you received.
Unless created manually in-house, patient statements contain dynamic design areas within them where your healthcare provider can change the content. One of the most important dynamic areas that your doctor can change is the dunning message. In a nutshell, this is a section on a statement above the details box that gives the reader important information about the status of their bill.
In the scenario I mentioned at the beginning of this section, your dunning message would have a red-colored heading and remind you that payment for your statement is overdue. You’ll want to pay it before it reaches a collections agency.
Keeps You Updated
Not everyone wants to subscribe to a monthly newsletter from their doctor. Although they can be helpful, more than 300 billion emails get sent each day across the world. That can really bog down patient inboxes.
However, a statement also serves as a great way to stay updated with the latest developments at your doctor’s office. Your doctor can include any changes such as payment method options, phone number, mailing address, who to make checks payable to, etc.
If there’s a big update at the practice, such as introducing a new physician or announcing a retirement, they might attach an insert with the bill. If you’re new to the practice, they may also send you a patient welcome letter.
Conclusion
Patient statements are important for so many reasons.
At first, it may seem like they’re just a bill. However, there’s a lot of consideration more that goes into them that you wouldn’t think of off the top of your head. But they’re an essential part of healthcare.
Each section is methodically designed in order to make it easier for patients to understand what they’re receiving and why. The next time you receive a medical bill after reading this blog post, take a look at it and determine if it accomplishes everything we’ve listed. If it doesn't, that organization needs to reconsider a few things.
