W
ith their $40 monthly premiums and $4,500
deductibles, high-deductible plans are sweeping
the nation. Just 10 years ago, only 10% of
Americans who got health insurance through
their employers had a high-deductible plan,
according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's 2014 Employer Health
Benefits Survey (the IRS considers a plan to be high deductible if it
has a minimum annual deductible of $1,300 for self-coverage and
$2,600 for family coverage). Today, 1 in 5 U.S. residents are covered
by high-deductible plans, and that number is expected to rise. This
makes your job of ensuring good cash flow at your facility that much
more challenging. From having conversations with patients on their
out-of-pocket responsibilities well before the day of surgery to making
a business office staff member responsible for day-of-surgery collec-
tions, there's much you can do to prevent high-deductible plans from
taking too big a bite out of your case volume and revenue.
Putting off surgery
High-deductible plans took off about 10 to 15 years ago, after employ-
ers looked to tighten their belts and push rising premium costs onto
employees, says Gail Wilensky, PhD, senior fellow at Project HOPE
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M A Y 2 0 1 5 | O U T P A T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T
InstaPoll
How are high-deductible health plans impacting your case volume?
Hurting it a lot 40%
Hurting it somewhat 45%
No change either way 14%
Helping it somewhat 1%
Helping it a lot 0%
SOURCE: Outpatient Surgery Magazine InstaPoll, April 2015, n=148
