In this episode, Casey Williams, SVP of Patient Engagement at RevSpring, discusses personalizing healthcare, strategies to drive patient engagement, and financial impact. Highlights of this episode include: What RevSpring does and the difference it makes for healthcare organizations Biggest challenges healthcare organizations face when trying to protect their finances while also helping patients Personalization and how it impacts patients and providers Practical strategies for meeting patients where they are financially RevSpring’s approach What trends or innovations that will shape healthcare communications and finance Kelly Wisness: Hi, this is Kelly Wisness. Welcome back to the award-winning Hospital Finance Podcast. We’re pleased to welcome Casey Williams. Casey leads solution consulting and sales efforts for new direct healthcare customers at RevSpring. He has 20 years of experience in developing customized patient engagement and payment solutions for over 100 healthcare revenue cycle clients. His knowledge of patient engagement strategies, including self-service optimization, has made him an advocate for change for RevSpring clients and the wide healthcare revenue cycle market. In this episode, we’re discussing personalizing healthcare, strategies to drive patient engagement, and financial impact. Welcome, and thank you for joining us, Casey. Casey Williams: Kelly, thanks for having us. We appreciate it. Kelly: Yeah, we’re glad to have you here. So, let’s go ahead and jump in. So, Casey, can you tell us about your background? And how did you end up in your position at RevSpring? Casey: Yeah, it’s a great question, Kelly. I think by default is probably the most honest answer. Coming out of Bowling Green State University, studying interpersonal communication, there was nothing that screamed healthcare finance from that background. But actually, I think kind of started as most people start their jobs or their careers where I had a friend working in a company, a smaller company, at that time called Data Image. And they had just had some transition in their sales environment. And the owner, founder had asked me to join. And that kind of began the path into communication, payments, and engagement overall. And really started at that smaller company involved in the hospitals in and around central Ohio and then expanded into the greater Midwest. But really got a great appreciation for when you’re a small company at that time, you not only position what the value is, but when you do that successfully, then you actually do the setup or the implementation, and then you service it. And then when there’s a billing question, you’re actually the finance arm as well. So, I was very blessed to be able to have such exposure at such a young time in my career to where I got a lot of different experiences within that and have just enjoyed it ever since. And we at RevSpring, which Data Image then sold into what then became RevSpring in 2010– and we’ve continued to acquire value across the market in how we are trying to build our technology stack today. So, by happenstance, I got into it, but I have been fully immersed and fully engaged ever since. Kelly: That’s awesome. It’s great how those things happen. For someone who isn’t– for someone who isn’t familiar, how would you describe what RevSpring does and the difference it makes for healthcare organizations? Casey: Yeah, Kelly, it’s a great question. I think the most simplistic answer to that question and one that I get from my kids all the time is they see me going into hospitals and thought for many years that I was a doctor. And then at one time, we had an office inside a bank, and then they thought I was a banker. So, I practiced this answer a lot over the years. But primarily, we are a patient engagement and communication company with an emphasis on payments. And the sense of this is that when patients need services, we handle everything from the intake to the scheduling to the registration at time of service to estimating the balance that that patient would owe, do our absolute very best in terms of trying to capture payment at that time or a method of payment so that autopay could be performed. Once that individual service, if not collected in full at time of service, goes to be billed from an insurance standpoint and that amount is adjudicated, then there’s a self-pay after insurance balance. We are then engaging within that patient population to let them know that there is a balance to meet them where they are, meaning that if they are unable to pay that balance in full, we have predictive analytics that address how much that patient can afford to pay on a monthly basis. And so, whether that engagement is print, we produce about a billion and a half communications a year from that standpoint, or we engage digitally within that to be able to facilitate payment and those outcomes. And so, I think that’s probably the simplistic answer to that question. And I think why that matters is…is you look at healthcare in terms of the ecosystem in which everything is operating today, there’s a great strain in healthcare. As high-deductible healthcare plans continue to progress, patients continue to pay more for the health insurance, continue to be pushed off from their employers of having to pay more themselves within that. That then puts a strain within healthcare, is that 20, 25% now of the receivables that are within the total revenues of healthcare are now to the patient, meaning self-pay/self-pay after insurance. And so, without our technologies, without our sophistication, without our intelligence, it becomes very tough to engage, as well as getting patients to respond to what they owe. Kelly: Wow, that’s very fascinating. Thanks for sharing that with us, Casey. Yeah. So, what are some of the biggest challenges healthcare organizations face when trying to protect their finances while also helping patients? Casey: Yeah, that’s another great follow-up to that, Kelly. And I think probably the number one answer you would get within a healthcare finance type of roundtable would be insurance denials. And so when you, when you look at the ecosystem and the landscape of healthcare, about 75, 80 percent of all revenue that comes into an IDN/hospital provider is generally on the commercial Medicare and Medicaid side. And then about 20 to 25 percent of that revenue comes in on the patient responsibility. And what that means is, is after their insurance is paid, what is their responsibility? Or if they’re uninsured, what is their responsibility? And so, denials continue to play a large part in that 80% of the revenue stream. But if we’re looking at the 20, 25% of revenue, it is around the patients continue to owe more, but yet the wages have not continued to go up at the same levels in which they’re either paying for their healthcare or their healthcare insurance. And so that creates kind of that massive strain that I was mentioning in terms of how do they collect? How do they give pathways for those individual patients to be able to engage in order to pay their balances? And if that doesn’t happen, we look at rural healthcare as an example, continued consolidation, even closures within that environment, when that doesn’t happen. Kelly: Well, yeah, there are quite a few challenges in healthcare right now, that’s for sure. We hear a lot about personalization these days, but how does it actually impact patients and providers in terms of engagement and financial outcomes? Casey: I oftentimes give bad examples or metaphors. And for those of you that are old enough listening to this, know the old TV show Cheers is that kind of the opening song is, “Everybody wants to know your name.” I think it’s a…I think it’s a really good illustration in the sense of what personalization means to any commercial engagement that we have as a patient, as a human, from a commerce perspective. And the more that the business knows about me and can perfect that engagement, can perfect that pathway, to where I don’t have to continue to repeat myself. Once I’ve answered a question, I don’t have to answer it again, or meeting me where I am, meaning that if I if I don’t have $1,000 in my bank or if I’m like 50% of Americans that do not have $500 in their account to pay for a surprise bill, that you’re not just sticking a $2,500 bill in my face and saying, “Pay me.” So, the personalization really gets down to meeting the patient where they are. To give you a couple of practical examples of that is if I am a patient, let’s even say I’m a millennial to where I do not like to receive paper and all I receive is paper. But if you send me a text, I’m going to pay within 15 seconds as long as I can afford that. That’s a good example of meeting the patient where they are, as well as personalizing that. If you have, let’s say a person like me that is midlife, I think 47 is midlife. Maybe that’s on the older side of the life. I’m not sure. But I actually still like paper. Now maybe that’s because we print and mail a billion and a half communications. But let’s say I’m one of those individual patients that cannot afford $2,500. So am I receiving a communication in printed form to where I can touch, feel, and interact with that, but yet see a pathway to where I can potentially hit a QR code taken into a payment application where it’s giving me the option of 10 payments of $250. That is where the dynamic of patient engagement is massively changing and it has been massively changing over the last two to three years to where we can utilize intelligence and technology to meet patients where they are and then give them pathways to engage and respond. Kelly: Yeah, I mean, personalization is key. I think in all industr
