Success Story
Methodist Health System Increases Patient Payments by Nearly 50% Amid a Global Pandemic
Business Challenge
Methodist Health System’s wholly owned subsidiary Prime Financial Services concentrates on in-house collections for the health system in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. After recovering patient accounts for over 30 years, Mitch Taylor, Director of Collections, knew there had to be a way to increase the organization’s recovery rate, focusing on the quality of account representative performance. After many productive years using Finvi’s workflow tools, Methodist Health System implemented Finvi’s voice solution in February 2020 – a serendipitous decision, as the COVID-19 global pandemic forced the business to move to remote work just a month later.
If you look at the statistics, the increase in our recovery rate really begins in March 2020, and I believe it is no coincidence that it’s the same month we implemented Finvi’s voice solution.”
Strategy & Goals
Because Finvi’s voice solution is cloud-based, Methodist was able to refine their inbound and outbound dialing strategies even as representatives shifted to a work-from-home environment. The transition took just 30 days for representatives to get up and running, and since then, roughly 2/3 of the staff continue to enjoy the productivity that comes with working remotely. Now with the question of where to work answered, it was time to improve how they worked.
Taylor began by setting KPIs that would demonstrate the metrics of success for account recovery. Fortunately, all the data Taylor would need for these metrics (Promise-to-Pay percentage, number of payment plans created, and percentage of kept Promise-to-Pays) are available within Finvi’s ecosystem.
After these metrics were established, the collections administrators used Finvi’s call recording and analytics solution—using this tool, the account representative supervisors could analyze calls against a scorecard, creating a standard of quality where account representatives could be scored. Once armed with this performance data, supervisors held one[1]hour sessions to coach representatives on how to meet KPIs—all possible through Finvi’s workflow platform, in conjunction with the cloud-based voice solution.
“With this platform, account representatives receive constant feedback on what they do well and where they can improve,” Taylor said. “These tools allow us to coach account representatives strategically to meet KPIs.”
This strategy worked. The account representatives’ quality assurance scorecard is now averaging a score of 96.7—an improvement of over 20 points from when they first began coaching representatives using Finvi’s platform.
Results
Better prepared representatives were just what Methodist needed to reap the rewards of their new vision for account recovery. Within the first year expanding their Finvi platform to include the voice solution, the average representative monthly Promise-to-Pay rate increased 35%. In addition, Methodist saw remarkable success in the patient pay area. Methodist's patient pay collection rate went from 2.9% to 4.3% during fiscal year 2020 to 2021. This metric continues to climb—today their total recovery rate is up to 6.8% in their 24-month record.
“If you look at the statistics, the increase in our recovery rate really begins in March 2020, and I believe it is no coincidence that is the same month we implemented Finvi’s voice solution,” Taylor said.
As for the future, Taylor plans to continue investing in Finvi solutions. “Our results have proven that Finvi provides an excellent product, especially when you consider its effectiveness to enable our staff to transition to working from home and simultaneously increase productivity.”
About Methodist Health System
Founded as Dallas Methodist Hospital in 1927, Methodist Health System has grown to become a premier healthcare provider with 1,500+ licensed beds serving more than three million North Texas residents. Prime Financial Services, a d/b/a of Methodist, has served as the provider’s in-house accounts receivable (A/R) operation for more than three decades.
