ance without interest as long as they do so within a set number of
months — and loans, a more-traditional fixed-interest payment
spread out over several years.
How healthcare credit generally works: You enroll your facility in
the program, and the financer supplies interested patients with pro-
prietary credit cards that they can use to cover co-pays and
deductibles (or private-pay surgery). The companies take an 8% to
10% transaction fee off of each bill they finance, which is about 3
times higher than rates charged by regular credit cards.
When a patient uses a healthcare credit card to cover insurance
fees, you're paid up-front — minus the transaction fee — within a
couple days of the financing company receiving the bill. You don't
have to worry about collecting from patients before their surgery —
and trying to collect from them after their surgery. That's right: no
billing statements or collection calls.
The financing company takes it from there. Things are fine so long
as patients pay their outstanding balances on time at low or no inter-
est over months or years. But if the patient misses a payment, the
interest rate can shoot up to a ridiculous number, and it is charged
retroactively, back to the first payment.
Here are 5 key considerations when evaluating patient-financing
options for your facility:
1. Approval rate.
You want to approve as many patients as possi-
ble. But approval varies widely depending on patient population, so
you need to do your homework here. For cataract surgery patients,
a group that tends to be older and have more established credit, the
approval rate ranges from 60%-80%, says Katy Thomas, the vice pres-
ident of marketing for Alphaeon Credit, a nationwide patient financ-
ing provider. But for plastic surgery patients, who tend to be
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