Weave has debuted a feature to help healthcare practices collect more outstanding balances.
The experience platform for small and medium-sized medical practices has introduced Payment Reminders, a feature that lets clients turn payment invoices or text-to-pay requests into a “set-it-and-forget-it” collection campaign, the company said Tuesday (Aug. 27).
“We’re very excited to introduce Payment Reminders to our payments product suite,” Branden Neish, Weave’s chief product and technology officer, said in a news release. “With 63% of patients preferring text payment options, Weave streamlines the process, saving offices time and effort each day.”
According to the release, Payment Reminders automate payment requests after a Weave invoice or Text to Pay request is created, encouraging customers to pay their medical bills online. It follows the release of the company’s Payments Plan offering in February, and the launch of a platform for multi-location practices in June.
The launch of these tools comes at a time when organizations in the healthcare sector are struggling to get paid. Research from PYMNTS Intelligence’s “Late Payments Across Verticals: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” found that for these organizations, the average wait time was 47 days.
“The primary culprit driving these long remittance periods is the time it takes to process insurance claims,” PYMNTS wrote in May. “Those claims can be delayed due to an individual’s coverage, their financial and medical circumstances, the insurers’ approval processes and more. Unpaid claims can be further delayed when payers demand additional documentation to determine if a claim is valid. Disputes can further postpone payments.”
No matter the cause, the wait can have a substantial impact on providers simply because of the amount they are owed, with one survey showing that more than 37% of healthcare providers are waiting for sums of $25,000 to $100,000, while another 32% are waiting to recoup debts that exceed $100,000.
Meanwhile, PYMNTS spoke recently with Simon Abtalion, healthcare solutions executive at Bank of America, about the healthcare field’s struggle to modernize its payments systems.
“Historically, [as it relates to payment flows between patients, providers and payors,] healthcare has not been a leader in technology adoption nor deployment, and … for that reason, it’s been challenging to keep up with the evolving needs and expectations of patients,” he told PYMNTS, noting that the situation is worsened by the sector’s complexity and regulatory landscape.
He added that this delay has resulted in a fragmented payment ecosystem that has trouble meeting patient expectations.
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