Why To Offer Patient Payment Plans (& How To Start)

Offering a patient payment plan with convenient bill payment options can support any healthcare professional in helping their patients maintain healthy living habits by making regular doctor visits affordable. When a patient doesn’t have a health insurance plan, your office can offer health services financing. 

Learn how a payment plan agreement option helps patients manage healthcare costs and how you can start offering these options to your patients.

Why Offer Patient Payment Plans

Patient payment plans offer several benefits for both patients and healthcare providers. Providers offering financial assistance or recurring payments have a better chance of receiving payment in full. At the same time, patients can break up the balance they owe and pay on the monthly payment due date for an early payoff before the deferment period ends.

How It Can Benefit Patients

Healthcare providers often have to send a medical bill to a collection agency to receive payment for a procedure or treatment. This can negatively impact a patient’s credit score for years as they try to juggle monthly payments with their other costs of living.

These payment plans benefit patients by providing a way to pay off their medical bill before it goes to collections and hurting their credit score.

Certain plans and credit cards may work as a general loan or line of credit after a patient pays down the initial procedure or begins paying annual dues. By offering financing for their procedure or a family member’s procedure, patients may be more likely to get the care they need.

Patients should be aware of hard credit checks when applying for a line of credit for healthcare financing pricing estimates. Credit reporting agencies often lower credit scores after a credit check, which could increase application fees, interest rates, and other costs when purchasing a car or home.

How It Can Benefit Your Healthcare Practice

By offering financing with a set payment day each month, your office can collect payments through your third-party financing company. Instead of losing revenue when patients don’t pay their bill, your practice has an easy way to let patients pay their bills over time. 

When an insurance carrier doesn’t cover the cost of a procedure, or when a patient doesn’t have a plan with an approved insurance company, providers can offer financing options, like a medical credit card or payment plan option. These will carry an outstanding balance and allow patients to pay in installments to a credit card company or commerce bank financer.

How Weave Makes It Easy

Weave Payment Plans help automate charges for payment plans, streamlining collections and allowing you to offer flexible payment options to your customers. You can create Payment Plans in the Weave Portal in just a few minutes, as well as track and manage existing plans with ease. 

You can edit, pause, and resume plans as well as allow customers to make one-time payments. With 90% of customers being willing to consider one and over 50% saying they’ll use one for an unexpected bill, adding Payment Plans to your payment options is a great way to drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Plan Creation: Configure Payment Plans based on amounts due, payment cadence, payment term, first payment date, and billing method.
• Reporting Dashboard: See an overview of your existing Payment Plans, including customer name, amount due, payment amount, next payment, and plan status.
• Plan Details: See details, history, and status on individual Payment Plans and modify a plan as needed.
• Plan Management: Edit, pause, and resume plans or allow customers to make one-time payments.

Other Considerations for Payment Plans

What else should you consider when selecting a payment plan provider for your healthcare office? Unexpected conditions can lead patients to seek emergency care without insurance. How do you serve people in need while managing your office costs? Membership fees for patient management software and system downtime can lead to high costs in switching. What makes those costs worthwhile for your practice?

Two of the most important factors in choosing a new payment plan provider are how well a new payment system can integrate with your existing patient portal software as well as if the payment plans available can help you attract new patients to your practice. But what does a good payment plan provider and system offer?

Integrating Payment Plans With Your Current Software

Your new patient payment plan software should integrate seamlessly with your current patient management system. You shouldn’t have to manually transfer patient files and histories into the new system. Instead, the new system should offer several intuitive integrations.

Whether the new patient payment software adds a financing tab to your current system or automatically imports essential payment information from your main record-keeping system, you should be able to install the new software and begin using it in a few minutes.

Systems that aren’t as simple to integrate can result in downtime that can back up your office appointments for days or even weeks. A fast, easy-to-use system that installs on your devices in just a few minutes keeps you up and running to continue processing patient appointments and payments.

Marketing Your Payment Plans To Attract Patients

A good system doesn’t mean much if the payment plans available don’t offer affordable interest rates or reasonable deferment periods. You can attract new patients by marketing your new plans and available payment methods you can take. Whether you want to offer to keep their payment cards on file, take payments over the phone, or accept mobile payments, make sure patients know their options.

With a range of payment plans and payment methods, your office will likely stand out to local patients looking for a healthcare provider who can serve them. Don’t forget to advertise which insurance plans your office accepts, as well as alternative payment methods available for uninsured patients.

Weave: Your Comprehensive Healthcare Patient Payment Plan Software

Payment plans enable you to streamline collections and unlock access to services by allowing customers to pay through automated, monthly charges spread over time. Weave Payments offers a wide range of integrated bill pay and patient payment plan options that work with popular healthcare office management software.

More than just payments and billing, Weave includes several physician-favorite features, including phones, missed-call text, review management, practice analytics, and so much more. Call Weave today at 866-308-2039 or book a free demo and see how Weave can elevate your office.