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more, visit carecredit.com
forward slash beckerspodcast.
This is Gracelyn Keller with the Becker's Healthcare
Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in
to the podcast series.
Today, we're going to be talking about how
financial transparency helps transform the patient and patient
experience.
Joining me today to discuss this is Claude
Royster, who is the vice president and general
manager, health and wellness at CareCredit.
Claude, thank you for being here today. Thank
you for having me. I appreciate it.
Wonderful. Well, let's jump right into our conversation.
To start us off, can you please share
a little bit more about yourself, your role,
and your organization?
Absolutely.
I'm the vice president and general manager of
the health and wellness for CareCredit.
It's a Synchrony solution.
I've had more than thirty years of sales
and operation experience, and my primary responsibilities are
to work with our partners in the wellness
space to provide,
company strategies
and ways that they can introduce our market
leading health care health and wellness, financial solutions
to their patients as well as identifying health
care market expansion opportunities for for our business.
Wonderful. Well, thanks for being here. And I
kinda wanna start off broad strokes. So what
trends or shifts are you seeing right now
in orthopedics that you think are most important
for industry leaders to pay attention to?
I think the most important thing that we've
we've paid attention to is
some of the stresses that are, affecting the,
orthopedic
space and as well as staffing issues, turnover,
you know, anesthesiologist
shortage. Those are things that we we
want to watch very closely because they have
impacts on whether a patient will be able
to
get the cure. Our job is to ensure
that we are trying to make
that process as frictionless
as possible,
giving patients the choice of,
being able to offer different financial solutions, but
more importantly, also trying to educate the orthopedic
space and that the administrators, the doctors on
the importance of having that financial conversation
with patients to ensure that they understand some
of the options that they have, before they
get the care.
And let's talk about staffing and workforce challenges
as these continue to be a concern across
health care. So how is your organization navigating
these pressures, and what strategies have you seen
work well?
We do a lot of extensive studies in
this space to truly really try to understand,
the workforce challenges. And one of the ways
that we try to
educate,
and,
bring awareness
is by
really bringing forth
capabilities
that are going to allow
the practices, the administrators to be able to
focus on the patient and focus on the
care.
Examples of that are, you know, through our
financial solutions, we try to offer digital products
which are frictionless.
You can use them from your your instead
of using your computers, you can use the
the patient can actually
complete the information,
at their fingertips, which,
eases the burden.
We also, within our our CareCredit credit card,
have a prequalification
process, which helps to ease the burden because
patients will will know that they are prequalified
for the CareCredit credit card, which they can
use to make monthly payments and be able
to afford the care.
And many organizations are exploring new technologies,
partnerships, and care models to improve efficiency outcomes.
So are there any innovations or
initiatives you found particularly promising?
Yes. I I there there are many,
what we call ISVs in in the marketplace
right now that are really integrating in with
providers,
PMS or EHR.
And that is a that is a great
way
for CareCredit to partner
and provide innovative solutions.
And with within that platform, it allows us
to be able to integrate and have our
financial products,
sitting on that platform. So, therefore, when patients
and or the practice are having that financial
discussion,
the the ease of that, the the user
experience is excellent because they're using their their
their their software, their platform to be able
to support,
having those conversations and and getting customers financial
solutions.
And what role does financing, whether in house
or through a third party like
CareCredits
credit card play in how patients seek care
and view their care teams?
It's it's very important. As we all know,
one of the biggest burdens with getting care
is cost.
There are a lot of out of pocket
patient responsibilities
associated with getting health care. There's the understanding
of, you know, cost can change whether you're
in network or out of network. So where
the CareCredit credit card comes in is it
allows patients to be able to get the
care, but it's also the utility of our
card because
we have providers in our network that patients
can go to and within 50 different industries.
So whether it's orthopedic, whether it's, the dentist,
or
taking your pet to the vet. We have
solutions, and and our car creates that utility
so it eases the burden for patients to
know that they can get care by using
the CareCredit credit card.
And for practice leaders aiming to improve financial
transparency and patient communication, what role can CareCredit
play in making those cost of care conversations
easier and more productive?
Absolutely.
One of one of the ways that we
try to help support the practices in in
transparency
is we provide everything
from payment estimators.
We provide our promotional financing
and we provide the tools
that help the providers and administrators explain these
products to the patients so that they're fully
aware, they have full understanding of how these
products work, and it helps them to make
financial decisions.
We also,
really focus on having that conversation earlier in
the in in the patient journey.
That way it eases the burden.
It's always a difficult decision to decide to
have care, but the one
area that we wanna ensure is is that
patients at least understand some of the financial
options that are out there for them to
get the care.
And as we wrap up our conversation today,
we've heard a lot in this series about
administrative burden. So how can CareCredit help address
those day to day pressures
for front of office and billing teams? Totally.
I I think we try to focus
on, again, digital capabilities
ensuring that we can provide a better user
experience so the the practices can focus on
the patient.
So
by using those capabilities,
it's it's going to help
expedite some of the,
the conversations with that patient and ease that
burden.
Well, thank you, Claude, for your time and
insights today, and we also wanna thank our
podcast sponsor, CareCredit. You can tune in to
more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by visiting our
podcast page, beckershospitalreview.com.
Thank you for being here.