90% of Americans use the Internet, but only 25% use the patient portals offered by most hospitals. This digital disconnect impacts patient experiences and provider performance, but there is good news for providers who act to deliver rewarding online experiences.

Patients are setting the bar higher than ever. They are demanding not only more transparency into hospitals’ clinical performance, but also greater convenience in all aspects of how they plan and pay for care. The shift to patient-driven revenue streams has introduced many new challenges for providers—but it has also created opportunities for...

Improving the financial dimension of the patient experience wasn’t a lifelong goal for me, and I didn’t start as a result of one single event. In fact, it was something of an accident that I took my career in this direction. But after I found myself on this path, I realized it was a goal to which I would be proud to commit my life. Here’s how...

The increase in patients’ individual financial responsibility poses a serious challenge to hospitals’ billing and collections practices, because institutional payers and individual patients behave in very different ways. Insurance companies and government payers require a lot of data in a structured, standardized process. Patients are much more...

The partnership between UCSF and Dignity Healthcare in the development of a patient engagement platform is an exciting leap in the realization of Holistic Patient Engagement Models and Partner Based Collaborations. 

We've seen the risks revenue cycle leaders take by not treating patients like consumers (Consumerism is the New Ball Game), and we’ve learned about how offering payment options (Solving the Patient Pay Challenge) and creating a digital engagement platform (Mastering the Art of Digital Patient Engagement) can set an organization on a path to...

4 Best Practices for Patient Responsibility Portfolio Management 

A healthcare provider’s patient accounts receivable is like any financial asset: it has a face value on paper that may not reflect how much money it is actually worth. Regrettably, in many cases as little as 40 cents of every dollar is actually collected, with 52% written off and...

In 2015, nearly a quarter of employees with healthcare coverage had high deductible plans, up from just 4 percent in 2006. That means they’re paying for healthcare the way they pay for everything else … like a real customer. What does that mean for providers?

I admit it. I hate to shop. But when I have to shop, I go to Nordstrom’s, not Macy’s. When I’m feeling like someone special and want to stay at a hotel I go with the Ritz Carlton instead of a Marriott or a Hilton. If traveling internationally, rather than regretting th at I don’t have my own jet I’ll choose  Emirates over American or United....