Sponsored Content
By Dave Anderson, OD
Serving patients while delivering superior care and maintaining a profitable practice is a steep challenge. Fortunately, we are able to offer patients the ability to use the CareCredit credit card in our practice. This has made it easier for patients to pay for the care they need while helping our practice to remain financially strong. Here is how making CareCredit a part of our practice aids patients while boosting our per-patient revenue.
Making a Difference for Patients & Practice
Our overall revenue per patient is just under $500. By comparison, that number skews to over $600 per transaction for patients using a CareCredit credit card. The primary reason for this is patients who use CareCredit often use it for high-end services or products, such as advanced-care treatments for conditions like dry eye or for glasses with lens treatments that insurance doesn’t cover. For example, many patients are increasingly finding that they and their children need computer glasses with blue light filtering to avoid eye strain and potential ocular damage from time spent online.
Along with a higher revenue per patient for those using a CareCredit credit card, we experienced an increase in eyewear capture rate over the last couple years. So many people had greater eyecare needs during this time that we saw an increase from our typical capture rate of around 50 percent to well over 60 percent in some months. At the same time, we saw much higher usage of CareCredit. Typically, we would see the use of CareCredit a few times a week, and for a short period last summer it was being used a few times a day.
5 Insights to Impact
Offer a Solution for Both Patients & Practice. Giving patients the ability to pay over time with a CareCredit credit card makes it easier for patients to manage payment while bringing much-needed revenue into the practice.
Ensure Continuity of Care. Patient financing makes it simpler for patients to pay for the full treatment plan you have prescribed. This makes it possible for patients to accommodate their eyecare health and vision needs.
Give Patients Greater Options. The more options and flexibility you can give patients in your office the better. Patient financing with the CareCredit credit card gives you the ability to do this for patients.
Educate Patients about the Value You Provide. The flexibility and options you offer patients won’t do any good if patients don’t know about it. Deliver training to help your staff communicate the value of the services and products you are delivering, including the ability to use patient financing in your office.
Encourage Support of Local Businesses. People often like to support those in their community. Offering the option to pay for services and products with a CareCredit credit card gives people in your community another reason to choose you over an online competitor.
Let Patients Know They Have Payment Options in Your Office
In my office, there are several ways and times that CareCredit may come up as a way to pay. Sometimes it comes up in the exam room when the need for moving a patient to daily disposable contacts arises, but the patient worries about the cost. CareCredit may be used to help them discover a way to go ahead with the best choice for their eyes. Staff will bring up the use of CareCredit to pay for the necessary second pair of glasses for computer use, or to pay for a full year supply of contacts to enable that patient to also benefit from manufacturer rebates. Another common time CareCredit comes up in conversation, with both doctors and staff, is when discussing treatments that are not covered by insurance such as meibomian gland treatments like TearCare® or MiBo Thermoflo®.
Train Staff to Educate Patients
We train staff on how to discuss patient financing to maximize the benefit of CareCredit for patients and our practice. We want patients to fully understand their payment options.
Our staff works with patients to review the details for the bill and how we arrived at the total amount they owe. We then have staff ask patients if they have a preferred method to pay for the bill on that day, with a script like this: “Mrs Smith, your total is $794 today. Do you have a preference for how you would like to pay for that? And in case you didn’t know, you can use your HSA or FSA card here for anything you purchase, and we also take the CareCredit credit card and all general purpose credit cards. Have you heard of CareCredit? It’s a great way to pay for health expenses. It allows you to pay overtime with convenient monthly payments* to help you get all you need today.”
Make It Easier for Patients to Buy from a Local Business
We couple our messaging to patients about CareCredit with a reminder of the importance of buying from local businesses. We point out the many benefits of supporting a neighborhood business, including our ability to provide support after the product purchase and the opportunity to pay for purchases over time through use of a CareCredit credit card.
Make a Profitable Practice More Likely
Having a higher per patient revenue with CareCredit, and having the flexible option for patients to pay over time, has made patient financing an effective way to buoy our patient care and financial strength for long-term profitability.
|
Dave Anderson, OD, is a partner with Miamisburg Vision Care in Miamisburg, Ohio, and a partner with wEyes Guys Consulting and Chief Operating Officer with Optometric Management Group. To contact: doca@burgvision.com |
 |
*Subject to credit approval
All product and service names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners and are used for identification purposes only. Use of these names, logos, and brands does not imply endorsement.
This content is subject to change without notice and offered for informational use only. You are urged to consult with your individual business, financial, legal, tax and/or other advisors and/or medical providers with respect to any information presented. Synchrony and any of its affiliates, including CareCredit, (collectively, “Synchrony”) makes no representations or warranties regarding this content and accept no liability for any loss or harm arising from the use of the information provided. All statements and opinions in this article are the sole opinions of the author. Your receipt of this material constitutes your acceptance of these terms and conditions.
