Psychology Tricks Behind an Effective Patient Statement Design
Did you know that many people delay paying their medical bills because they’re confused by the patient statement? How many hours does your staff spend on the phone answering billing questions from your patients?
There are many things to juggle when you’re running a medical practice, and redesigning your patient billing statement probably isn’t at the top of your priority list.
But don’t underestimate what a good patient statement design can do for your practice. It’s the little hinge that moves a big door!
A visually appealing patient statement can help you get more patients to pay their bills on time, lower operating costs, and improve cash flow – you can’t afford to ignore your patient statement design.
How Patient Statement Design Can Benefit Your Medical Practice
When you invest in creating an effective patient statement design, you can reap the benefits right away:
Reduce Late or Default Payments
Patient statements that are designed to highlight important information help reduce confusion, which is one of the main reasons for late or default payment.
Patients who don’t understand a statement right away often put it aside or have to find the time to call your office before they can complete the payment. This extends the length of time for collection and impacts your cash flow.
A clutter-free statement design highlights important billing information so that patients can easily understand their responsibilities and the next step they need to take, e.g., payment options available to them, the amount they need to pay, and how to send the payment.
You can use color and graphic elements to connect financial data and incorporate contextual information to connect a billing event to the patient’s experience. This is particularly helpful for patients who have visited multiple departments within a medical facility as they may not recall all the treatments they received, leading to confusion and late payments.
Consolidate Billing Information
A well-designed patient statement can clearly present all the treatments a patient receives from your medical facility on one bill with minimal confusion.
Patients can easily see all the costs of an entire visit or treatment in one integrated statement. The itemization allows them to understand the providers and services associated with the charges, while the clutter-free layout minimizes confusion and facilitates payment.
In addition, an integrated statement reduces the chances that patients will overlook a bill or two because they need to deal with multiple statements. This will help your facility collect as many payments as possible in a timely manner.
Consolidating billing information into one easy-to-use patient statement also helps streamline your back-office operation and reduce overhead cost. Fewer patients will require assistance to understand their statements or make payments, fewer invoices will have to be sent out, and fewer payments will need to be processed.
Improve the Patient Experience
A visually appealing statement offers the opportunity to incorporate relevant information that can be helpful to your patients.
For example, you can include a section on insurance coverage to illustrate patients’ responsibilities and help them navigate complicated insurance policies. Besides improving your patients’ experience, you can also reduce the chances that they delay payment because they don’t understand their coverage.
When fewer patients have questions about their insurance coverage or billing statement, you will not only get paid faster but also reduce patient frustration, improve customer service, and deliver a better patient experience.
Clean visual design also makes it possible to incorporate marketing communications or announcements so you can improve transparency, enhance communication, foster trust, and build patient relationships.
Patient Statement Design: The Little Hinge that Moves a Big Door
A visually appealing patient statement design delivers a branded experience (e.g., by incorporating your logo and a unique color palette) that increases brand affinity and helps you stand out from your competition.
A clutter-free design presents information and instruction clearly, allowing you to reduce frustration or confusion and minimize delays or defaults in payment.
In addition, an easy-to-use patient statement enables you to communicate relevant and helpful information more effectively so you can improve the patient experience, increase retention rates, and boost your revenue.
Is your billing statement keeping up with today’s patient expectations?
Here’s the good news – you don’t have to design your patient statement from scratch, nor do you have to figure it out on your own.
Simply customize one of our patient statement templates, which are developed based on extensive research and best practices. You can have a visually appealing billing statement in no time!
See how we can help improve your patient experience and streamline your billing process here.
LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW OUR SOLUTIONS CAN SAVE YOU TIME AND MONEY!