Patients in the US struggle to understand their medical bills today at great cost to everyone in the health care system. To reduce those costs we need to improve both the design of billing documents and the overall medical billing process. Join this session to share your interest in solving this important problem and learn about an exciting two-part national design challenge that will bring together innovative partners in the health care field.
Current medical bills generate confusion, ill will and lost revenue. Patients rarely know the cost of healthcare at the time of service, then receive bills from multiple sources for the same episode of care, often long after the encounter. When the bill arrives it is often incomprehensible. Patients are surprised at cost, unsure the bill is correct or complete, which results in anxiety, frustration, and frequently inaction, non-payment, or incorrect payment of bills. Confusion and surprise leads patient to avoid additional necessary treatment. This contributes to confusion around how their specific insurance plan works as patients learn too late that they have gone out of network or received care that is not covered, the cost of a high deductible health plan, or missed opportunities for proactive financial planning. All this undermines patient satisfaction with both payers and providers. It hurts patients through negative experience, financial hardship and barriers to necessary treatment. Providers directly lose revenue for unpaid bills and unsought treatment.
We will share ideas that can help shape the design challenge that will launch later this year.
