If you reside firmly in the 21st century you are likely very familiar with bundling. You can bundle your car insurance with your home and life insurance policies, your cable with internet and phone services – even your soda with your pizza. Hospital billing is picking up on the trend, and soon bundled hospital bills may become the norm.
Typical hospital billing involves individual charges for each element of a given stay or procedure, down to individual doses of ibuprofen. Provider services are billed separately. In a bundled billing plan, however, hospitals would consolidate these charges to a single fee for everything involved in a typical procedure.
Not only do bundled payments offer savings to patients, but they also provide an incentive to hospitals to provide efficient, high-quality care. Hospitals would keep the net funds remaining after a procedure completed under cost, but would be required to absorb any additional costs for extra care or complications.
Medicare is working with more than 300 health care organizations to provide bundled hospital payments for large-scale procedures such as heart surgeries, and other facilities are expected to follow. In the future bundled payments may include those for chronic conditions as well. Rob Lazerow of Advisory Board Co. points out bundled price tags can help hospitals “compete on cost and quality” for patients shopping around.
Hospitals that shift toward bundled payments will need to work with high-quality vendors to provide the best care to their patients. If you want to expand your healthcare company to work with these hospitals, PRN Funding’s healthcare factoring programs can provide the working capital you need to get everything in order. Contact PRN Funding to learn more about healthcare factoring in every sector and to get started today!
