Salud Revenue Partners Introduces PayVow

Salud Revenue Partners introduces PayVow, a solution to healthcare's growing self-pay problem.

According to a media release, an integration of telecommunications technology, customer service and best practice processes, PayVow allows a hospital or physician office to get patients quickly "on the record," creating a context of commitment to paying. It also applies proprietary, Patient Friendly Billing practices to resolve accounts based on patients' intention regarding payment.

Changes under way in healthcare make PayVow especially timely. Health insurance premiums have doubled since 2003, and deductibles have shot up 146 percent, according to the Commonwealth Fund, resulting in patients paying a much larger share of medical bills. Hundreds of new insurance plans have arisen since passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, leaving patients unaware of their out- of-pocket costs.

"Most hospitals focus on high-charge bills, but even people with higher incomes pay late or won't pay at all," said Jesse Ford, Salud's President and CEO. "Small balances are easier to collect, but there is a diminishing return on investment in pursuing them. We invented PayVow to solve this dilemma."

An array of research has cast light on the power of verbal or written statements in influencing future behavior. Robert Cialdini, Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing, Arizona State University, and the author of the 2006 book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, wrote: "Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment." PayVow is designed to obtain that personal commitment from the patient.

"This approach is new to healthcare but it has been successfully applied in other industries," said Richard DeSoto, Salud's Vice President of Consulting Services, who leads the PayVow project. DeSoto has worked on such applications previously. "PayVow changes the nature of the interaction from a collections approach to customer service outreach, where you can have a dialogue about the patient's available insurance coverage, ability to pay and charity care options."

Salud Revenue Partners provides hospitals, health systems and physician practices with revenue cycle management, extended business office support coding solutions and patient access services.

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