From Burden to Benefit: How One Academic Medical Center Made Patient Financial Engagement a Competitive Advantage

Patient financial engagement has become one of the most pressing operational challenges facing health systems today. Rising out-of-pocket balances, declining collection rates, and growing patient dissatisfaction with the billing experience are straining revenue cycle teams at precisely the moment when margin pressure leaves little room for error.

This session moves beyond the problem to the solution told from the perspective of a senior leader who built one. Terri Meier, Assistant Vice Chancellor at UAMS, will share how her organization identified the gaps in their existing patient payment approach, evaluated and selected AblePay Health as a no-cost, no recourse patient financial engagement partner, and built a program that now generates measurable revenue impact while improving the patient and staff experience simultaneously.

Attendees will hear directly how UAMS activated their own employees as program members and ambassadors, creating authentic point-of-service conversations that no training script could replicate. They will see real enrollment data, collection rate comparisons, and the revenue case that continues to validate the partnership decision not just at renewal, at expansion.

This is not a vendor case study. It is a revenue cycle leader's account of what it takes to evaluate, implement, sustain, and grow a patient financial engagement strategy inside a complex academic medical center environment and what the numbers look like when you get it right.

 

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this session, participants will be able to:

  • Identify the operational and financial indicators that signal a health system's current patient payment approach requires a strategic change.
  • Describe the evaluation framework, stakeholder considerations, and selection criteria one academic medical center used to choose a no-cost patient financial engagement solution.
  • Apply a multi-channel internal and external awareness strategy including an employee ambassador model to accelerate program adoption and deepen patient engagement.
  • Interpret enrollment and revenue data to build a sustainable internal business case for patient financial engagement partnerships, including how to present program performance to finance and executive leadership.
  • Assess vendor partnership quality using the accountability, reporting, and collaboration standards that distinguish a long-term strategic partner from a transactional vendor relationship.
  • Recognize the organizational conditions that determine whether a patient financial engagement program becomes embedded in the revenue cycle or stalls at pilot.

This session is designed for Chief Financial Officers and VP/Director-level Finance Leaders, Revenue Cycle Directors and Managers, Patient Financial Services Leaders, Patient Access and Registration Leadership, and Healthcare Operations and Strategy Executives.

Speakers

Take a look at our speakers scheduled for this webinar

Terri Meier

CHFP, CRCR, LSSGB
Assistant Vice Chancellor Revenue Cycle
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

John Fistner

Founder and CEO
AblePay Health

Countdown to the Event

See you in 3 days 19 hours 55 minutes
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