Introduction
Holistic Health Systems (HHS) operates 39 hospital facilities and clinics. The executive team has been reviewing key metrics over the last year and identified a need to improve Point of Service Collections, or simply known as POS (pronounced "P-O-S"). POS is a patient payment that is received within 7 days of discharge. Increasing POS is important for HHS because hospitals are 60% less likely to receive payment once the patient leaves the hospital. The cost of collecting on the patient’s account continues to go up while the chance of actually collecting payment goes down if there is a delay in collecting the payment after the patient’s discharge. Therefore, it is better to not delay collecting the payment.
Increasing POS reduces bad debts, provides a better cash position, reduces expenses, and increases patient satisfaction when conducted properly.