Regina Medical Center

SurePayHealth® Helps Regina MC Increase Point-of- Service Collections

SurePayHealth™ helps hospitals and clinics accelerate collections and control the revenue cycle.

Regina Medical Center in Hastings, Minnesota recognized that higher co-payments, higher deductibles, and soaring coinsurance create much higher patient financial responsibility.

Regina decided to take a proactive approach to patient collections. Norma Lowell, Patient Financial Services Manager, led the way, gaining facility-wide support and purchasing SurePayHealth from Recondo Technology.

Getting Off the Ground

Regina began the POS collection initiative by moving from passive co-pay collections to pro-active co-pay and deductible collections. The team implemented a pre-registration unit with a goal to verify insurance eligibility and identify patient co-pay and/or deductible information by logging on to insurance websites for 95% of scheduled services three days prior to the visit.

By informing patients of financial responsibility prior to their visit, many patients are prepared to pay at registration. Uninsured or underinsured patients are also identified at pre-registration and referred to the Patient Financial Counselor for assistance in completing a Medicaid Application, Uncompensated Care Form, or establishing a payment schedule.

The team ramped up over a one-month period to create scripts, establish collection goals, and educate staff. The team also created a rudimentary price estimator, which included the average price of common services and average contractual discounts and adjustments for major payers.

"Combining SurePayHealth with an organized program to collect from patients prior to service, Regina Medical Center collected $275,000 over plan in the first 11 months."

Norma Lowell
Patient Financial Services Manager
Regina Medical Center

At the end of the first month, Regina increased POS collections $5,500, representing 24% of available dollars and 39% of qualifying visits. The top five performers and the overall results were recognized at the monthly staff meeting, and the successful collectors shared techniques that worked and didn’t work. The team delivered results to the hospital Board of Directors, who immediately became engaged and supported the initiative.

Going forward, the team drafted policies and procedures and presented to the Board and to physicians for approval. Monthly recognition for top performers continued, and four months into the initiative, the monthly POS collections reached $8,600, representing 53% of both available dollars and visits.

Activating SurePayHealth

Regina also activated SurePayHealth, loading the facility chargemaster, claims, provider insurance contracts, and patient insurance coverage information.

Using SurePayHealth, patient access staff could present an accurate statement of patient financial responsibility prior to service and ask for payment. Using SurePayHealth worklists, the team could report on exceptions and manage them before patients presented for service, and could report on all calculations and collections in real-time.

Over Achieving

At the beginning of month seven, Norma Lowell set what seemed to be an unattainable goal: by month 11 Regina would reach a POS monthly collection goal of $65,000. At that time, Vera Schumann, Regina Controller, stated that if collections reached that amount, she would... "do a cartwheel."

In month eight, $49,000 was collected; in month nine, $64,554; month 10, $82,069. The team exceeded the goal one month early and by more than $17,000.

To see a video of Vera Schumann performing her cartwheel, click here.

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