Organic Growth Podcast: The Patient Is the New Payer: Rethinking Healthcare Payments
Recorded live at the McGuireWoods Healthcare Private Equity & Finance Conference, this episode of the Organic Growth Podcast explores a major shift in healthcare economics:
The patient is now one of the largest—and fastest-growing—payers in the system.
Stewart Gandolf speaks with Tom Furr of PatientPay about how the rise of high-deductible health plans is transforming revenue cycle dynamics—and why healthcare organizations must rethink how they bill and collect from patients.
Why Listen?
- Understand why patients now represent a growing share of healthcare revenue.
- Learn how high-deductible plans are reshaping cash flow and collections.
- Discover strategies to improve patient payments and reduce friction.
- See how better billing experiences can drive both revenue and satisfaction.
Key Insights and Takeaways
- Patients Are Becoming the Largest Payer in Healthcare.
A major structural shift is underway. With the rise of high-deductible health plans and changes in policy, more financial responsibility is being transferred to patients. What was once a small portion of revenue has grown significantly, making patients a critical driver of financial performance for healthcare organizations. - Traditional Billing Systems Weren’t Built for This Shift.|
Healthcare organizations historically invested heavily in claims processing and payer workflows—but not in patient payments. As a result, many providers are now trying to manage a growing share of revenue with outdated systems that create confusion, delays, and missed collections. - Friction in the Payment Process Directly Impacts Revenue.
For many patients, healthcare billing is difficult to understand and even harder to navigate. Complex statements, lack of transparency, and limited payment options create friction that delays or prevents payment. Reducing that friction is one of the most effective ways to improve collections. - Simplicity and Transparency Drive Better Outcomes.
One of the most effective strategies is making it easy for patients to understand what they owe and why. By aligning billing statements with explanations of benefits (EOBs) and presenting clear, accessible information, organizations can increase patient confidence and accelerate payment.
5. Flexible Payment Options Are Now Essential.
Patients expect the same convenience they experience in other industries. That means offering multiple payment methods, including credit cards, bank transfers, and health savings accounts, along with options like autopay and payment plans. Meeting patients where they are financially can significantly improve collection rates.
6. Mobile-First Experiences Are Driving Engagement.
With a majority of payments now happening on mobile devices, optimizing for mobile is no longer optional. A seamless, consumer-friendly interface can dramatically improve both the speed and likelihood of payment, especially when combined with intuitive design and easy-to-use features.
7. Faster Payments Improve Overall Financial Performance.
Beyond increasing collection rates, improving the patient payment experience can significantly accelerate cash flow. Reducing payment timelines from months to weeks creates a more predictable and stable financial foundation—especially important in a tightening reimbursement environment.
Tom Furr
Founder & CEO, PatientPaySubscribe for More
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Note: The following AI-generated transcript is provided as an additional resource for those who prefer not to listen to the podcast recording. It has been lightly edited and reviewed for readability and accuracy.
Read the Full Transcript
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Welcome to the Healthcare Success Podcast. I'm here at McGuire Woods broadcasting apodcast episode in cooperation with our friends over at Levin Associates. And today, or at least on this episode, more than just today, I'm talking with Tom Furr from PatientPay. Welcome, Tom.
Tom Furr (PatientPay): Stewart, thanks for having me.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So help our audience with just a quick summary of what it is you guys do that will help as a starting point.
Tom Furr (PatientPay): So we work with medical groups, senior living facilities, skilled nursing facilities, community hospitals to help them bill and collect those payments from the patient or potentially a resident if it's a senior living facility. Key kind of differentiation is we'll increase collections sometimes 50 plus percent we'll pull those dollars forward normally down to 14 days where it's down normally they're seeing 60 days and finally we'll reduce paper statements so we will normally reduce paper statements up to 50 percent so it's a pretty easy value prop collect more pull it pull the dollars forward and Don't do it having to send out a paper statement.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Got it. So today we're talking about, well, this podcast is about organic growth. And you guys obviously do a lot of things. But I think we're going to focus today, especially on privately insured patients with high deductibles. Tell us about what's going on there.
Tom Furr (PatientPay): Yeah. So our market has been growing at a compounding annual growth rate of, call it, 22.5%. And a lot of the drivers behind that are the increase in high-deductible health plans. So last year, the high-deductible health plan was, call it, plus 33% of the market for private. It's going to be projected to grow 20% this year, so it'll be, call it, 40% with growth.
In addition to that, the changes that were made with the Affordable Care Act back in December, when they reduced the government, reduced the additional dollars they were giving to people to go to the Affordable Care Act, has also taken people down to the bronze policy, which is a high deductible plan. So they've kind of left the gold and silver. and have moved to the bronze plan.
So all of these changes are really driving more dollars to come from the patient. Right now, the patient is a standalone entity, is the largest payer into the system if you look at them compared to United Healthcare, Blue Cross, and so forth and so on.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Wow.
Tom Furr (PatientPay): So it's a big driver of payments going into healthcare, and to be honest with you, healthcare historically invested in all the claims processing and all of that and really didn't put much money into the patient payment space. And so we built a platform to enable them to, again, collect more, pull those dollars forward and reduce the amount of paper status.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): It's funny. I guess it's an unintended consequence. I remember they were talking about having patients have more skin in the game. I didn't realize they have most of the skin in the game at all. That's a big deal. Where do you see the biggest challenges with multi-location providers and hospitals? Is it bad debt? Is it just slow cash?
Tom Furr (PatientPay): It is. Dollars are tightening up.
They're tightening up from the payer. They're tightening up from Medicare. They're tightening up from Medicaid. And obviously, they need to be able to collect those dollars efficiently. And more and more of the dollars coming to them are now coming from the patients.
Ten years ago, it was 5% of it. Now it's 20% of their revenue. So they really have to put together strategies to make sure they capture those payments, they do it efficiently, and they collect as much as they can possibly do. So it's hitting them really hard based on, you know, they have a tough business running. So these can be big dollars.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): And I guess what are some of the strategies that you advocate? to help make this more digestible. What are the big levers that matter?
Tom Furr (PatientPay): So our whole philosophy is to make it so the patient can understand the bill easily and ultimately never have to touch the bill. They just pay it automatically. So we put some strategies around autopay, payment plans, all these different capabilities to allow the patient to pay in whatever manner they can.
And it could be through an HSA card. It could be through a credit card, a debit card, or even a bank account. So we built a patient pay wallet so that they can pick and choose when the bill comes in. Do I want to pay my HSA card? I have dollars on it so I could use that. Or do I want to pay some other way? And in addition to that, making it easy to pay, we also pull in a lot of data so the bills have a lot of their details on it so they can understand it. We have the capability to pull in the EOB as well, so we can put them both together. So you can look at your EOB from your payer and then look at your bill from your doctor and be comfortable enough to say, “I must owe this.” So click the tab to pay it or allow it to be paid automatically.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): So tell, as we're getting ready to wrap up here in a moment, for improving the patient experience, give me examples of how that works.
Tom Furr (PatientPay): Yeah. So right now, 73% of our payments come through the mobile device. And if you've ever, I'm sure, gotten a health care bill and tried to pay a healthcare bill, you realize it's not real easy to, one, understand and two, pay. And we've tried to take as much friction out of that process as possible. So the mobile device was designed by folks that came from Google and all that really put all of the best practices from a consumer perspective into it so that little things like the button following you up and down so you can always hit pay are all built into the the platform but but we're seeing a lot of mobile devices as a as the means for people to pay so you got to make it as easy as possible that they can they can see it read it and pay it.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): That's great; how do people get in touch with you?
Tom Furr (PatientPay): Patientpay.com come check us out we've got a number of different verticals My direct line is 919-697-1189.
Stewart Gandolf (Healthcare Success): Great. Thank you, Tom.
