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Transforming the Patient Payment Experience for a Mississippi Health System

Healthcare has undergone a seismic shift in recent years. As more of the financial burden falls on patients, traditional billing systems, office workflows, and early-out vendors have struggled to keep up. A Mississippi Health System’s patients often received multiple, confusing bills for a single visit—each from different systems, vendors, or departments. Internally, this complexity drove up costs, slowed collections, and overwhelmed customer service teams.

The rising cost of recovering a single patient dollar—estimated at 10x that of collecting from payers—only compounded the problem. Add in labor shortages, inflation, and fractured billing systems, and the result was a cycle of inefficiency and patient dissatisfaction.

A Mississippi Health System partnered with HealthWorks to streamline and simplify the patient financial experience using the HealthWorks platform. The goal: turn multiple touchpoints and billing headaches into a single, intuitive process—for both patients and providers.

Key Enhancements:

  • One Bill, One Experience: The platform aggregates all visits and services into a single guarantor-based bill.
  • Fully Automated Collections: AI-driven messaging and payment options allow patients to self-serve, accelerating collections while reducing administrative labor.
  • Integrated Financing: For larger balances, financing options are seamlessly offered within the same interface.
  • Posting and Reconciliation: Payments are posted back into each billing system according to the provider’s rules, including batch processing and refund management.
  • Consolidated Support: A single point of contact for patients replaces multiple departments and vendors, dramatically reducing confusion.

Implementation Timeline: 30–45 days, customized by provider complexity.


The HealthWorks platform delivered measurable results across multiple specialties and services:

  • Anesthesiology: 9% of active patient A/R collected within 11 days
  • Orthopedics: 12% of guarantors paid within two hours of first message
  • Plastic Surgery: 23% of patients paid within 24 hours—16% of total A/R
  • Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine: 59 payments within 24 hours of 714 messages sent (8% response rate)
  • Weekend Response: 5% of anesthesiology guarantors paid between Friday afternoon and Monday morning
  • Billing Office Impact: Overall client collections increased by 20–25%
  • Customer Service Relief: One hospital saw a 40% drop in inbound call volume

By replacing confusion with clarity and labor-intensive processes with intelligent automation, HealthWorks helped a Mississippi Health System unlock higher collections, faster payments, and a dramatically improved patient experience. Most importantly, the solution empowers patients to take control of their healthcare finances—without the frustration.

Skills

Posted on

April 1, 2025

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