Hospital offering discount on balances; official: ‘50% of something is better than 0%’

“We are sensitive to the fact that a lot of people have lost their jobs or are coming out of this COVID fog just trying to get back on their feet,” RMC Assistant Vice President of Revenue Cycle Willie Brown said.

“We thought it was a good time to do it,” he said.

The offer is only valid for accounts paid in full at the 50% off rate between now and June 30, when the offer expires. The discount offer began in March.

Hospitals often provide discounts for people who pay off their account balances, although it may not be well known or advertised, Brown said.

“It helps us reduce our accounts receivable and drives cash through the door,” he said.

Brown estimates about 10% of RMC patients will take advantage of the discount. If all goes well, the hospital could receive about $20,000 more than it would otherwise.

“The program is for people that have a bill, that have been getting a bill … and they are trying to figure out ‘I have this bill my insurance has paid’ or ‘I don’t have insurance and I don’t qualify for Medicaid and I don’t qualify for charity,’” Brown said. “I am the working poor so how am I going to take care of this bill?”

“It is not for everybody walking around,” he said.

The program’s three-month timeframe and the relatively small number of customers who will be affected mean the hospital’s bottom line will not be hurt, Brown said.

“A lot of these accounts will go unpaid because folks just don’t have the financial means to do it,” he said. “A lot of these accounts will be written off to bad debt and we will never collect on them, but having a discount puts us in a position where we can get some of that money – 50% of something is better than 0%.”

Brown also noted that it costs the hospital to send out bills monthly and it costs staff time to call and follow-up regularly.

Also, people are more likely to return to RMC if they don’t have an outstanding balance, he said.

Brown said the outstanding balances being discussed are self-pay balances, meaning they are balances patients owe after insurance is processed.

“These aren’t insurance balances at all,” he said. “This is after we moved all the money and you are now getting statements and we have determined without a shadow of a doubt we have done our due diligence with the payers. These accounts are all self-pay and have already gone through our process and are trying to collect on from a bad debt perspective.”

He said most of the outstanding balances are at least 60 days old.

RMC has had a similar program – on a smaller scale of about 60 days – at least once over the past two years, he said. The discount was also about a 50% off at that time.

Brown said the program at that time went “OK.”

The hospital received about 5% more in collections than it would otherwise have, though the effort was for such a short period of time it was hard to determine whether it was just a good month or if the discount program had an impact.

“They have to pay the account off in order to receive the 50% discount,” Brown said. “Most people don’t take advantage of it. If you do get a few people that do, you are able to get the balance out of your system because some people are on payment plans that have been on for five or six years and sometimes ten years.”

For more information on the program, call 803-809-3883 or 1-800-905-5731. If the account is already in bad debt status, call 1-800-962-7561.