Patient Finance… A BETTER WAY

Nobody wants to turn away patients who can’t afford care. Unfortunately, when your practice relies on insurance reimbursement or elective care to stay open, that’s often what happens.

The result is people who don’t get care, or get less care than they need — not to mention revenue lost for your practice.

High deductible insurance plans are the most affordable option for many people. Unfortunately, they also rely on liquidity that many people simply don’t have. 78% of full time workers in America live paycheck to paycheck, and many can’t afford an unexpected bill of six thousand dollars (or more).

In addition, a lot of people need care that isn’t covered by insurance providers. Unless they can secure a loan, procedures that will improve their lives are held out of reach.

Allowing your patients to independently finance all or a portion of their costs gives them access to the care they need — and ensures that you don’t have to turn away those in need.

Financing supports revenue

In situations where a patient can’t afford their deductible or their provider won’t cover a procedure, a few different medical financing options are available:

The patient can apply for a credit card or small personal loan to cover the cost. A lot of practices will partner with a loan servicer to make this easy for patients. Often this option relies on a good credit score, which immediately excludes more than 30% of the US population.

The patient can crowdfund their expenses. This option relies on their friends, family members, and network having enough money to lend a hand, often ten or twenty bucks at a time. Famously, people have died after coming up $50 short crowdfunding essential medicine.

The practice can come up with their own solution. A lot of physicians and dentists will allow patient financing to pay over time. That quickly leads to an administrative burden on staff and accounting teams. It can also lead to inconsistent revenue flows.

The alternative isn’t good — you lose revenue and your patient might not get care. What about a better way?

Enter: Patient financing

Third-party organizations like HFD take on the burden of structuring and executing payment plans outside traditional finance channels.

Partner with HFD and we work directly with your patients to deploy mature, time-tested payment plans that work. HFD handles servicing, direct debit payment, delinquency, and more. You receive regular payments on work performed.

That takes the burden off your accounting department and frees up revenue flow for your practice.

These plans are used to cover deductibles and finance elective procedures like orthodontics, Lasik vision services, hearing care, hair restoration, and more.

Supplement lending, expand care

Patient financing programs like HFD aren’t lenders in the traditional sense. We serve a very unique role in the healthcare finance ecosystem by providing alternatives to patients who don’t or can’t get approval from traditional lenders. In fact, we work with some of those lenders to help people pay cost overages that traditional loans don’t cover.

We provide many of the services a lender would do themselves, from vetting a prospect to crafting a repayment agreement and servicing payments. But we don’t charge you interest (in fact, the interest charged to a client goes to your practice).

What we do is work with data to assess the risk a practice takes on by offering payment plans. We aggregate a massive pool of data to determine approximately how many of your patients will default, then create a plan to compensate for that liability.

Relieve administrative burden

We also provide easy, low-risk payment processing by facilitating direct debit from patients to your finance department. That cuts down on the administrative burden that payment processing puts upon your team.

HFD doesn’t work against your internal finance team or lender partners — we’re more like a force multiplier for your team’s efficiency. In many verticals, our collection rate can exceed 95%.

Partnering with HFD simplifies compliance for your finance department. If you collect more than four payments from a patient, you’re a lender in the eyes of the law. Period. That means new licensing or registration requirements and compliance that will vary from state to state.

HFD takes all that off your plate so you can focus on what matters — helping people and growing your practice.

How can financing help your practice grow?

First, offering financing plans can expand your client base.

Financing also builds consistent revenue, which allows you to offer programs like a cash-pay discount. Cash discounts allow your patients to purchase additional services for a low monthly payment, adding to your bottom line.