Customer
As one of the largest safety net health systems in the state, Broward Health has consistently served South Florida’s low-income population over the last 82 years. Without their support, many of the community’s citizens would not have consistent access to healthcare services. As a result, Medicaid plays a significant role in maintaining the financial viability of the public health system. Broward Health currently helps over 4,000 uninsured patients apply for coverage every year.
Challenge
The rapid onset of COVID-19 brought an influx of new protocols that limited the hospitals’ financial counselors from engaging with many patients using their traditional workflow. This combined with higher admission rates had a significant financial impact due to increased uncompensated care.
For 2019, the health system had an annualized conversion rate of 81% for all inpatients who passed an initial eligibility assessment. By April 2020, the growing crisis had caused a decrease in conversion to a 68% across the system with some facilities falling as low as 53%.
Decision
To address this issue, Broward Health needed to rapidly implement a touchless, digital solution that would allow its staff to engage patients remotely if needed. After evaluating their options, they made the decision to utilize PatientClear’s Medicaid Connect product. The solution would address the staffs’ issues with collecting signatures and documents at point-of-care in a way that maximized the patient financial experience. PatientClear was able to complete integration and training across all 4 hospitals within a matter of weeks.
Outcome
The solution had an almost immediate improvement on the Medicaid application process and KPIs. A SaaS based strategy allowed for a quick deployment across the entire health system in a way that leveraged the health system’s existing infrastructure as well as patient’s own devices such as tablets and mobile phones. During the first 4 months of engagement with PatientClear, Broward Health had improved its conversion of new Medicaid applications by over 19%. This brought its overall conversion rate up to 87%. This was a full 6% higher than before COVID-19 started. The health system was able to recognize $2M in recaptured revenue in just a few months and is expected to add another $2M to their bottom line over the coming year.
Goals
- Improve Medicaid application conversions
- Increase Patient Engagement & Satisfaction
Solutions
- Document capture
- Financial reports
- Business intelligence tools
- E-signatures
Results
- 19% conversion improvement
- $2M revenue recaptured in 4 months
- Additional $2M projected for 2021
“When COVID-19 hit, it had a major impact on our Medicaid numbers. We had to act fast to find a digital solution that could address our dropping conversion numbers. PatientClear’s touchless solution was the perfect fit for what we needed, and now our approval rates are higher than before the pandemic started.”
Alexander Fernandez, Broward Health CFO