athenahealth’s More Disruption Please (MDP) Network has the stated goal of “disrupting the status quo in healthcare” through partnerships in their Marketplace. athenahealth’s MDP process ensures seamless integration and implementation with each customer.
Epic River Patient Lending began discussions w/the MDP team in 2017 and a few short months later went live in the Marketplace. Not surprisingly, a bank paying providers in full, upfront for their patients’ outstanding balances with the bank then leveraging their success in collecting consumer debt was deemed sufficiently “disruptive”. The provider accelerates their cash flow and offloads the collection burden all while the patient receives a manageable monthly payment at a low, simple interest rate.
Prior solutions require patients’ credit to be pulled, high interest, revolving credit lines and significant discounts off the patient balance being paid to providers. In today’s world of skyrocketing patient responsibility and those in need rarely qualifying for a traditional credit vehicle, something had to give.
In Michael Evans and Kevin Fleming’s June, 2017 article in Forbes entitled What We Can All Do About Rising Healthcare Costs they report the shocking state of patient responsibility. “In a striking shift of healthcare costs, patient payments now account for 35% of provider revenue, the third largest source of provider income behind only Medicare and Medicaid. By comparison, in 2000 patients paid just 5% of healthcare provider revenue. This trend is expected to continue, with patients bearing a growing portion of the financial responsibility for their care.” They go on to detail 10 critical “best practices for a healthcare industry that relies on patients for a significant portion of its revenue” including:
“Reasonable financing options - As in other industries, healthcare providers need to partner with lenders who understand the healthcare receivables market and whose interest rates are commensurate with the risk they bear. They must also adapt to the patient’s ability to pay and conduct their collections in a way that honors the patient-provider relationship.”
Epic River didn’t have a time machine, but through our extensive work with healthcare providers and financial institutions, it became clear in 2011 that without “disruption”, a major void would exist. Something is needed to bridge the gap between providers need for collection of earned revenue to survive and patients’ need for a viable option to pay their bills and stay out of collections.
About Epic River
Since its inception in 2005, Epic River has been providing financial institutions with software and services for process and revenue improvement. MyLoans, our Patient Lending solution, partners financial institutions and healthcare providers to offer low interest loans to cover patient balances. Practices, surgery centers and hospitals get immediate funding of their patient’s outstanding balances and patients avoid financial harm.
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