Chris Watanabe, a former executive of The Regional Emergency Medical Services Authority (REMSA), an EMS provider in Nevada, recently participated in HFMA's Voices in Healthcare Finance podcast, in a segment entitled First, Last and Only: Seizing the Opportunity for Patient Financial Conversations.
Emergency services are in a unique situation, just as in an emergency room, in that they must provide service to anyone in the community who calls 911. Often this means they don’t immediately have information about the person’s coverage – in fact sometimes they don’t even know the person’s name.
Chris talks with HFMA about why this makes the speed and accuracy of identification so important and how stratifying the patient’s propensity to pay is vital in their billing process.
REMSA relies on AR Boost to automate the patient insurance verification and discovery process. This helps them quickly find coverage on patients that are typically categorized as self-pay.
The podcast also offers best practices on how to alleviate tension in dealing with self-pay customers, and some real word tips on how to have productive and positive conversations to optimize collections.
Listen to the segment here: