Labs and Patients: Moving from Faceless to Engaged

Across healthcare today, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in patient responsibility, subsequently driving patients to demand more transparency between their providers and around the cost of their healthcare interactions. Unfortunately, the pathology industry has lagged on implementing methods to proactively engage and educate patients with patient-centered care, leaving them frustrated and feeling like they’re in the dark.

Pathologists and labs are critical components in diagnosing patients and providing pertinent clinical data management information that directs their treatment, but in today’s healthcare environment of increased deductibles and co-insurance, patients are the ones taking the brunt of resulting costs. In fact, today patients are responsible for more than 30% of the healthcare industry’s total revenue.

The first step towards initiating patient engagement is realizing that as a non-patient facing community, we must work harder and more creatively than patient-facing physicians in order to achieve better outcomes for the patient and their own financial stability. The industry needs to make greater efforts to improve patient engagement through methods such as more effective patient education including courtesy letters, offering multiple communication options including text, web portals, email, and transparency through easy to understand patient statements. All of these efforts move to shift labs from being a “hidden cost of healthcare” to a provider that’s more open and connected to the community they serve

This said engagement efforts will only succeed if the provider has the capabilities and commitment to follow-up on those communications and interact on a human level. This would include flexible payment plans and full-service call centers that are staffed appropriately to handle patient calls with sensitivity and effectiveness. Front-end processes, such as eligibility checks, offer a conduit of confirming patient information before claims are submitted, preventing denials, and patient frustrations, on the back-end.

There are numerous solutions to improving patient engagement. At the foundation of it all is the systematic ability to implement new solutions quickly and often, and then monitor for ROI. As regulations and patient demographics change, labs will need to adopt and adapt to new technologies and processes that can help them succeed in a tumultuous market.

Learn how our revenue cycle management system, XiFin RPM 9,  leverages the power of patient and physician engagement in this blog post.