Have you noticed your patients struggling to pay for out-of-pocket medical expenses lately?
Patients are finding themselves stuck in situations where they need to pay for their care out-of-pocket. When they are least expecting a medical procedure, they need patient financing options for their care. The good news is that your practice can start offering different healthcare financing options to your patients! With these options, your patients can receive the assistance they need to get their procedures.
When you offer healthcare patient financing options to your patients, you help them exponentially.
What Is Patient Financing?
Patient financing is when someone needs a medical procedure but can’t pay out-of-pocket expenses and need financial assistance.
There are many lenders available that offer personal/medical financing to patients who need anything medical-related. That financing type is becoming more popular because it helps get things done easier. Patient financing is popular in the medspa industry since insurance doesn’t cover many procedures. If someone wants to receive botox or plastic surgery, they usually have to pay for it out of pocket.
Insurance policies have been changing these past few years, causing people to pay enormous copays and other fees. For the dental industry, if your patient needs their wisdom teeth removed, their insurance will usually only cover a portion of the procedure.
When it is an expensive procedure, insurance policies cover a big part while the patient has to cover the rest. The remaining amount might cost anywhere from $500 to over $1,000, making it difficult for most patients to pay.
That is when patient financing is necessary because while the patient only has to pay for a portion of the procedure, they are still paying a lot. Whenever a major medical emergency pops up, patient financing is a great help to people that need it. Healthcare financing is always a huge help when care is necessary but will cost too much.
In fact, no credit check financing is one of the most popular ways of helping patients. It is where lenders help patients get the care they need regardless of their monetary situation.
Why You Should Offer Patient Financing
As insurance policies change and medical care get more expensive, your patients will require patient financing options. Your practice can benefit when you help your patients get the financing they need to succeed.
Better Turn-over
When you offer patient payment plans, you start seeing better turnover rates from leads to new patients.
Patients are more likely to visit your practice for any care they need if you have multiple payment options. That gives patients more options when it comes time to pay for anything they need. Many patients like having the opportunity to receive financing, so they know there is always a backup plan for them.
A patient looking into different healthcare providers might remember if you offer to finance or not. If you have multiple patient payment plans or options, you will help them figure out if you are the right fit for their needs or not.
Serve More Patients
When you offer patient financing, you get to serve more patients because they can get any procedure done and not worry about affording it.
It is clear that when you offer payment options to your patients, you open the door to serving more people. Those patients who fall on hard times financially benefit the most from financing because they do not have to get denied the loan they need.
Your practice should want to serve as many people as possible in your pursuit of caring for people. Financing allows you to enjoy many perks like keeping yourself productive while helping those in need.
Offer More Service
With patient financing, you get more room and opportunity to offer more services to as many patients.
For example, if you are a dentist and you offer a financing option, you can start providing more dental services to those who need them. If you do not already offer this, you can begin because it is an expense your patient’s insurance will not cover. They will have to pay for it on their own or avoid getting the care, which isn’t good for them and your practice. The more services you offer, the more money you can bring while servicing more people.
Patient Financing Options
There are multiple options available for you to offer financing to your patients to help them get the care they need and afford easily.
Traditional Lending
There are many forms of traditional financing, from credit cards to loans from multiple lenders.
The options available from different lenders include personal/medical loans and medical credit cards. These additional lenders offer more flexibility for patients because there are so many options that they can choose from to suit their financial needs.
Medical loans are excellent for your practice also because you get the money necessary to continue operating while providing care. Your office will stay consistent with appointments since you will not have to deal with them afterward. You can just focus on giving the best care possible to all your patients without being concerned if they can pay. Without medical lending, your patients cannot get the necessary care from you.
Traditional lending is a great way to help your patients get the care they need at any time.
Payment Plans
One financing option you can consistently offer your patients is payment plans.
Patient payment plans are unique compared to more traditional forms of financing that patients are used to using. Third-party lenders can help you to offer these plans, but your practice does not get paid until the patient pays it back. It still works well because you create recurring income for your practice.
Payment plans thrive against loans because they are much more flexible than traditional forms of lending. Many providers like Denefits have no credit checks for the applicants, helping every patient get medical care.
Using payment plans is quite different from traditional lending but can work with your practice better than other lenders.
What About In-house or Hybrid In-house Financing?
When choosing to offer payment plans, you can provide them internally or externally through a third-party company.
In-house Payment Plans
The most common way for healthcare providers to offer payment plans is in-house, without help from outside companies.
Many practices do this with their most trusted patients and have their office staff handle everything from collections to managing the terms. It makes financing easy because you can immediately choose to set up a plan with your patients or not, entirely upon your discretion. With payment plans, you can finance every patient that comes into your practice regardless of their financial situation.
The only issue with providing payment plans is that when you let anyone get a payment plan, there is always a chance they can default. That makes things difficult because your office staff has to track those patients down and collect their payments. If they have more important work, they might not have time to go and collect dues.
In-house financing options can perform great for your practice if you want to make the necessary effort.
Hybrid In-house financing
Another way medical practices are operating payment plans for patients is by using a hybrid in-house method by partnering with an outside lender.
Hybrid in-house financing is a great way to receive help from an outside company while securing payment plans for everyone. It allows you to have similar control as using in-house payment plans with the benefits of using a financial lender. Instead of having your staff manage it all, a third-party company can take over the tasks. That way, you can secure financing for your patients while focusing on giving them the best care.
The only downside to using a hybrid in-house system is that the company might have some requirements for your patients. While that is the case, your patients will adhere to those requirements to receive approval. Most of the time, these lenders are more relaxed, but it is something to consider when choosing a company.
Create More Payment Plans For Your Patients
You can start creating more patient payment plans immediately with Denefits!
Denefits is a payment solution software that any medical practice can start using to set up payment plans for patients. You can guarantee financing options for people regardless of their financial background since Denefits does not do any credit checks. Every patient gets the care they need because they can pay for it conveniently over time.
The best part about using Denefits is that you can set up the payment plans while Denefits handles the rest of the lending process. That way, your practice does not have to manage collections forever.
Check out the Denefits website or download the mobile app to get started!
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