Hatching Creativity: Conversations on Success, Innovation, and Growth

The financial and efficiency impacts of doing things the right way compared to just checking the box with Chris Wolfington of FinPay

• Hatch Compliance • Season 2 • Episode 2

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Get ready to reimagine the intersection of finance and healthcare with Chris, a serial entrepreneur on his seventh venture, who's turning the patient payment experience on its head. Forget about merely ticking off compliance checkboxes; this episode is an eye-opener on how financial transparency and literacy can revolutionize patient care. Chris, with his infectious humor and sharp insights, makes a case for integrating a 'white glove financial experience' into healthcare, ensuring it stands shoulder to shoulder with the clinical side of the service.

This conversation is a treasure trove of anecdotes and hard-hitting truths about why a patient’s last touchpoint—the billing process—can leave a lasting impression, for better or worse. Chris champions the idea that when financial interactions are as outstanding as the medical treatment, patients are more inclined to settle their bills not out of obligation but out of respect and satisfaction. Join us and discover how transforming the necessary evil of payments into a voluntary gesture of goodwill can not only enhance your brand but could very well secure patient loyalty for life.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Hatching Creativity. This isn't just another behavioral health podcast. This is the place where thought leaders converge to talk about real-life challenges, breakthroughs and pivotal aha moments.

Speaker 2:

So you could look at patient financial management as something. I have to do this. So I'm going to put in a process and some technology that checks this compliance box, because I have to. The irony, like most things, I think, in business, if I look at it opportunistically, not only can I check the compliance box and say consumer protection laws and compliance, inducement laws and compliance, but if you're going to take the time to do it, why not do it right, so that not only do you check those compliance boxes but you actually get paid the money you're owed for the services you actually provide.

Speaker 1:

And you have data to work with to understand what to expect.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I had a time.

Speaker 1:

The thing about checking the boss is bullshit, and so many people do it. By the way, I'm glad you said it because I always think that. Well it is. And you know what, doing just checking the box, what ends up happening is. And you know, I'm about to get on my soapbox, and it's kind of funny because the soapbox that I'm about to get on, you're going to see that I work in shorts and hang out and I dress in my hey man, hold on hold, on, hold on hold on your shorts.

Speaker 2:

match your top too. I got to.

Speaker 1:

That's just by chance. I'm actually no bullshit.

Speaker 2:

I just want to go that I say that didn't go unnoticed, right.

Speaker 1:

The point is is that compliance is there to protect you and to give you a tool to improve Right. So when you're trying to deal with your patient responsibility or you're trying to do with incident reports, no matter what it is if all you're doing is doing whatever you are doing to check the box, that it's done to keep somebody off your back, whether it's the payer, or whether it's the joint commission or the state or whatever it is, you completely miss the point of the value of something like this. So we're both coming at compliance from from different perspectives and but mine's slightly different.

Speaker 2:

So I believe and what's cool is, feel free to tell me I'm nuts- I just thought on my chair. Yeah, yeah, and like expose my belly.

Speaker 2:

Okay, by the way, if I expose my belly, the whole screen will be filled with belly. So I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do it. See, I'm. So.

Speaker 2:

Finpay is my seventh startup, so I think of things intuitively under in business terms, right. So I look at it, at least my end under inducement and consumer protection. Instead of going, I'm going to put in a system of the bees that's compliant and hopefully I'll collect some of that money. I'm the other way around. I say deliver a white glove financial experience. Make it a differentiator, because let everybody else be misleading and dishonest with the patient, the family be the one whose brand is associated with honesty and transparency. And so my, as good as your clinical care is, so is your financial experience. And keep in mind why I'm about to say this Remember every patient's last experience is financial, not clinical.

Speaker 2:

Care is always first, the bill's always second. So, in that context, think of it this way I'm gonna create a financial experience that involves financial literacy. People are paying because they don't understand why they owe it, so I'm gonna educate them. I'm gonna give them more payment options, I'm gonna be flexible with terms by taking the approach that I'm trying to create an experience where patients volunteer to pay me so I never have to collect them. I just wanna say that again, mike, because some people think they'll be corny or no, you just gave me a really good idea, Chris.

Speaker 2:

If the experience is great, they will volunteer to pay, so you never have to collect them. And anyone listening to this should think about their own purchases. Like when you buy something that you are, you're emotionally accepted. I want this product. The paying of the money is a secondary thought. Like I love Dunkin' Donuts coffee, when I pay for that coffee every morning, I'm never thinking about the payment, I just want my coffee right.

Speaker 2:

So if the experience is great, I'm not getting all stressed out whatever over the money, because, especially the person did it right, they explained it to me and made it affordable, and because volunteering to pay you, mike, versus you having to collect from me, it smells and tastes significantly different from when I volunteer versus when you collect. And so here's some crazy statistics. So last year we were trying to quantify this point and I took 22,000 patients out of our database and I said what was the impact on what we collected, the patient satisfaction score and the length of stay, what was the impact of those three things based on when I spoke about money with the patient? Here's crazy statistics and I'm just gonna give you the bookends.

Speaker 1:

I was just about to go there, so I'm glad you're on this page.

Speaker 2:

You'll collect 78% of what you're owed, your patient satisfaction score will be 97% and the patient will stay three days longer in an in-network in patient setting and five days longer for an outpatient center. If you wait till the back end, you collect less than 15% of what you're owed, the patient satisfaction score is less than five and they're not staying longer. In fact, you probably have some AMA risk if you are dropping the atom bomb on the patient about cost.

Speaker 2:

And so if I'm talking about business, Senator Michael, yes, compliance is important, but why would those three things be the main reason you're smarter about this and if you get to check those compliance boxes as even a byproduct of doing it the right?

Speaker 1:

way, hello. So check this out, chris. This is you take a look at the amount of money that treatment centers put into the patient experience, right into the client's experience. They'll put remove the front desk so there's no barrier between you and the admissions person, right, they'll put in great food. They'll make the environment of care beautiful, right, they do these patient satisfaction surveys and in fact, in the patient satisfaction surveys client satisfaction surveys in Hatch, we're going to be adding the patient financial side to it, because I think it's really important.

Speaker 1:

The point being is, these people is that a very big part of the experience has to do with their finance and at the end of the day, it's your NPS score. Would you be willing to recommend treatment and this facility? And it has to do with how you were treated. And I go to the hospital every once in a while or go to a clinic or something like that, and you get out and you think that everything is done. When you pay, whatever you do, when you walk in the door, and then you end up a month later getting a bill for a ridiculous amount of money. Yeah, pisses you off.

Speaker 2:

You want to hear crazy statistics, so we were trying to. So when we do our surveys we traditionally like to do it before they're actually admitted, so we know their clinical care does not influence the answers, right? But we created a new score where we highlight one specific question and we do this because the answer or the results we get are nuts. So the question says to the patient did your patient, your financial experience prior to admission positively influence your decision to admit? Here's the question. The answers were strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree, no opinion. There's the five answers. Guess what the percentage with the satisfaction score was on that question. Tell me, take a shot, 88%. But think about what that says. 88% of the people said the financial experience, the thing everybody's so afraid of, was actually the thing that positively influenced their decision to admit. Not the decision to consider treatment, not decision to think about it, not to think about, like the conversation, to actually admit. That's the actual wording in the question.

Speaker 1:

So what you're saying is not only is this helping you comply with the law and what the payers are asking, this also contributes to a better feeling about people going to your treatment center and, potentially, better outcomes. Thanks for tuning into hatching creativity. We appreciate your support. Please don't forget to like and subscribe and tell all your friends about the show, and remember it's never just about one thing.

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Mike Lifshotz

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