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Patient Financing Services 2023
A Winning Formula for Patients and Provider Organizations
Author
Mac Boyter
Author
Alex McIntosh
Author
Tyler Sycamore
Patients face many difficulties when paying for healthcare services due to the cost of care as well as increasingly high deductibles and co-pays. The majority of hospitals offer payment plans that last an average of six months, and the limited time frames lead to higher rates of bad debt. Patient financing services firms provide flexible, long-term payment plans (i.e., longer than six months) that can generate increased revenue for provider organizations and improve the patient experience. This report is KLAS’ first to focus on patient financing services, the associated successes and challenges, and clients’ perspectives of their firms.
What Are Patient Financing Services ?
Patient financing services are firm-provided services offered through provider organizations that give patients additional healthcare financing options, as patients can’t always pay their account balances in full within six months. Provider organizations who work with patient financing services firms do so to provide flexible payment options without carrying large patient account balances or financing patient debt for extensive periods of time.
Client Perceptions of Patient Financing Services Firms
Measured patient financing services firms perform extremely well with minor differentiation across their overall performance scores. While interviewed clients of all firms praise their firm’s performance and results, clients tend to point out unique strengths for each firm.
AccessOne: Highlighted by clients for being innovative and strategically using technology to improve collections and the patient experience. Clients feel the firm continually evolves their technology to further enhance results.
“AccessOne finds innovative solutions to further streamline the process and reduce work for our staff. In general, working with AccessOne has improved our cash flow and has been received very positively in terms of enabling the community to afford healthcare services that maybe they wouldn’t have been able to afford.” —Manager
CarePayment: Clients praise the strong relationships the firm cultivates with patients. The firm is noted for working with patients whenever possible, leading to high patient satisfaction.
“We aren’t getting complaints from patients. Patients complain when they have bad service but never complain when they have good service. With CarePayment Patient Financing, we don’t get complaints that the patients have been treated unfairly. Thanks to CarePayment Patient Financing, we have been able to help patients. With CarePayment Patient Financing, patients can set up a financially clear payment plan prior to the actual service.” —Director
ClearBalance HealthCare: Client organizations highlight the financial results the firm brings. Respondents cite flexible patient options, account consolidation, and long-term payment plans as drivers of increased revenue, reduced bad debt, and minimized recourse.
“The patients truly love the firm’s services because, through the services, we can give the patients an interest-free loan to cover high-dollar balances, so the patients’ loans don’t accrue any interest. We can have multiple accounts tied to one guarantor, so the ease of use is convenient and good. ClearBalance HealthCare’s services are wonderful. I was skeptical at first, but the patients really elect the service. We have a very low default rate. ClearBalance HealthCare is awesome to work with.” —Manager
Patient Satisfaction Is the Most Common & Most Important Measure of a Successful Patient Financing Services Firm
While healthcare organizations often consider financial metrics when using patient financing services, they are most likely to prioritize patient satisfaction in measuring their firm’s performance. Among interviewed customers (who range in job title and level), 84% use patient satisfaction surveys to gauge success, and 64% say that patient satisfaction is the most important performance metric. Organizations using CarePayment most often report that their firm’s services have had a highly positive impact on the patient experience; clients cite the customer service and how well CarePayment interacts with patients. AccessOne’s strong EMR integration and customer portal drive patient satisfaction by streamlining and simplifying the payment process. ClearBalance HealthCare clients reference the availability of multiple financing options (especially the zero-interest loans) as a key strength that improves the patient experience.
Patient Adoption Is the Biggest Hurdle to Success with Patient Financing Services
When patient financing options are offered, adoption is generally high, but further increased adoption is hindered by several issues—including a lack of education about the services, fear the firm may be a collections agency or credit card company, and a perceived lack of outreach efforts from firms to encourage patients to sign up. Clients of ClearBalance HealthCare and AccessOne note that communication (especially regarding patient education) is the main issue that limits increased patient adoption. Respondents feel their firms could more clearly inform patients about what the financing services do and don’t provide; client organizations also want their firms to more assertively reach out to patients who could benefit from financing services. Many CarePayment clients have seen enhancements to the firm’s technology offerings and would like to see further improvements that drive patient adoption. Respondents also want additional reach-out methods (beyond physical mail, email, and phone calls), better marketing materials and collateral, and more robust data on patients and collections.
While Patient Satisfaction Is Most Important Metric, Financial Outcomes Are Still Important to Success
Although patient satisfaction is provider organizations’ highest concern, financial outcomes are also vital and a key consideration when working with a patient financing services firm. 76% of respondents include increased revenue as a measure of success, and 29% view it as the most important measure. ClearBalance HealthCare is rated highest for effectively helping clients meet financial metrics; as previously mentioned, respondents praise the zero-interest loans as well as the low recourse rates—both of which have led to a high percentage of patients being current with their payment plans. CarePayment has the highest percentage (46%) of respondents who state financial outcomes are the top measure of success. The firm stands out to clients by reducing staff burden related to patient payments while also helping organizations collect more than they could on their own. Clients of AccessOne note an increase in patient engagement with payments, and they also highlight that the firm’s technology (especially the patient portal) helps drive financial results. One interviewed client noted the firm could have done more to enroll patients in the services and maximize revenue.
About This Report
Each year, KLAS interviews thousands of healthcare professionals about the IT solutions and services their organizations use. For this report, interviews were conducted over the last 18 months using KLAS’ standard quantitative evaluation for healthcare services, which is composed of 9 numeric ratings questions and 3 yes/no questions, all weighted equally. Combined, the ratings for these questions make up the overall performance score, which is measured on a 100-point scale. The questions are organized into five customer experience pillars—loyalty, operations, relationship, services, and value.
To supplement the customer satisfaction data gathered with the standard evaluation, KLAS created a supplemental evaluation to understand the outcomes provider organizations have received from their patient financing services firms. KLAS asked interviewed participants (1) how well their firm services patient accounts, (2) how the services have impacted the patient experience, (3) how their organization measures success with their firm, (4) which measure is most important to their organization, and (5) how effectively their firm helps with that measure. Data was collected from December 2021 to December 2022.
Sample Sizes
Unless otherwise noted, sample sizes displayed throughout this report (e.g., n=16) represent the total number of unique client organizations interviewed for a given firm or service. However, it should be noted that to allow for the representation of differing perspectives within any one client organization, samples may include surveys from different individuals at the same organization. The table below shows the total number of unique organizations interviewed for each firm or service as well as the total number of individual respondents.
Some respondents choose not to answer particular questions, meaning the sample size for any given firm or service can change from question to question. When the number of unique organization responses for a particular question is less than 6, the score for that question is marked with an asterisk (*) or otherwise designated as “limited data.” If the sample size is less than 3, no score is shown. Note that when a firm has a low number of reporting sites, the possibility exists for KLAS scores to change significantly as new surveys are collected.
Writer
Natalie Hopkins
Designer
Bronson Allgood
This material is copyrighted. Any organization gaining unauthorized access to this report will be liable to compensate KLAS for the full retail price. Please see the KLAS DATA USE POLICY for information regarding use of this report. © 2025 KLAS Research, LLC. All Rights Reserved. NOTE: Performance scores may change significantly when including newly interviewed provider organizations, especially when added to a smaller sample size like in emerging markets with a small number of live clients. The findings presented are not meant to be conclusive data for an entire client base.