Patient Intake & RCM: How Intake Drives Cash Flow and Revenue Operations

Patient intake is the first major step in the financial journey. It’s an opportunity to collect accurate and comprehensive data. When optimized, the intake process is a strong foundation that supports the rest of the revenue cycle management (RCM) workflow.

What is Patient Intake?

Patient intake is the process healthcare providers use to collect essential information from patients prior to their visit. This includes demographic, social, and clinical data, as well as consent forms, insurance details, and payment information.

The patient intake process applies not only to new patients, but also returning patients, who may need to update contact info, insurance details, or recent health history. By following a consistent and efficient intake procedure, providers can regularly collect and update patient information to prevent costly delays and denials later on in the RCM process.

Data collection is essential — but patient intake is more than an administrative step. As the initial point of contact, it sets the stage for the patient's financial interactions with the healthcare provider.

The patient intake process includes:

• Patient check-in and demographic collection
• Insurance verification and eligibility checks
• Cost estimation and patient payment processing
• Consent and compliance paperwork
• Referral documentation and prior authorizations

Efficient intake means more accurate records, less repeating information, and shorter wait times for patients. For providers, effective intake means more accurate and timely data upfront – preventing later financial losses due to inaccurate records, missing info, or insurance eligibility issues. Moreover, a better financial experience for patients increases trust, a key element of patient retention and revenue growth.

What is Digital Patient Intake Software?

With traditional, paper-based intake, patients fill out paperwork on arrival, then wait for staff to complete data entry — a repetitive, time-consuming, and error-prone administrative  workflow. Verifying insurance eligibility, pulling prior authorization information, and  calculating outstanding patient balances takes additional time. At best, patients are waiting several minutes. At worst, they wait hours, and may later decide to get care at another practice. With digital patient intake, providers improve patient onboarding with self-service, mobile-first, and streamlined processes.

Patient intake software platforms are digital tools designed to streamline and automate key intake steps like data collection, data entry, insurance verification, and payment collection. Digital patient intake systems often include online forms, patient portals, and mobile apps for patient use.

The Cost of Inefficient Patient Intake

Errors, delays, confusion about patient financial obligations — many common issues in the RCM workflow start with patient intake. If the intake process is ineffective, it negatively affects both patients and providers.

Consider some common challenges for Finance and A/R teams:

Problems & Solutions

Inaccurate data collection during patient registration causes billing errors. These billing errors lead to claim denials and delayed reimbursements, which all feed into Accounts Receivable (A/R), and eventually lead to write-offs (bad debt). Avoidable mistakes are the root cause of most claim denials, and they result in lost revenue and increased administrative work for staff.

• Solution: Use digital patient intake software, integrated with EHR, PM, and billing systems, to streamline the collection of essential patient info: demographics, insurance coverage details, payment info, health history, and more. Practices can templatize digital forms to standardize data, reduce typos, and address common input errors.

Manual data entry from paper forms is time-consuming and frustrating for staff. With paper-based intake, staff spend time entering data from patient forms into the EHR or PM system — often a repetitive and time-consuming process. A poor intake process also means more time spent correcting avoidable errors in patient billing statements and claims submissions. Re-billing frustrates employees and contributes to burnout among overworked healthcare staff.

• Solution: Automate data entry using digital patient intake forms that sync directly with the practice's system, eliminating the need for manual data entry. This allows staff to focus on answering complex patient billing questions; investigate outliers in RCM data to address high-priority issues; and develop patient relationships based on trust, sensitivity, and clear communication.

Lack of patient engagement leads to less accurate data collection and less involvement in their care. When patients are not actively involved in providing or updating their information, it can lead to errors and omissions in their records. Disengaged patients are less likely to understand their healthcare costs, insurance coverage, and payment options, and they are less likely to ask questions or request billing support, let alone actually pay their balances.

• Solution: Empower and engage patients with user-friendly patient portals, mobile apps, and frictionless payment processes. Automatically notify patients to review their information and verify or update it ahead of their appointment, and offer easy online forms to do so. Offer self-service resources and billing support to help patients understand healthcare costs and make informed financial decisions.

Inconsistent insurance eligibility verification leads to claim denials. Confusion around insurance coverage, especially with Medicaid redeterminations, can cause billing issues later on in the RCM workflow.

• Solution: Automate interactions with payer systems to enable real-time verification of patient information. Leverage integrations for insurance eligibility checks to minimize human error and accelerate the patient intake process.

How Digital Intake Improves Patient Access 
and Transforms RCM & Cash Flow

Inefficient revenue cycle management costs healthcare providers $262 billion annually. Streamlining patient intake — and investing in digital intake technology — is key to recapturing this lost revenue.

Digital patient intake can:

• Accelerate cash flow by increasing upfront collections of copays and balances in point 
of service (POS) interactions
• Improve patient billing journeys with better upfront cost estimates, more accurate records, and faster billing processes
• Drive patient payments with frictionless payment experiences that encourage on-time payments from any device
• Reduce claim denials & re-work via more efficient patient and insurance information collection, and tech-enabled verification and authorization processes
• Scale administrative efficiency by reducing staff workload, repetitive data entry, and 
manual intervention

Beyond improving revenue capture and RCM operations, digital intake improves patient satisfaction. Patients want personalized support and clear, timely, and accurate communication about their financial obligations. But practices can only communicate as accurately and quickly as they are able to retrieve information from payers and clearinghouses – and the less digital this process is, the more your patient experience suffers.

A digital, patient-centric intake process can deliver a better financial experience, which has proven
a critical factor for many patients as they consider churning – or the content of their next Google review.

Benefits of Digital Patient Intake

Patients submit info, complete forms, and upload ID and insurance card photos online before arrival

Key Benefits:

• Faster check-in process
• Shorter wait times
• More up to date and accurate insurance info

Info automatically syncs from online forms to EHR/PM systems

Key Benefits:

• Centralized and secure data
• Less staff time spent on manual data transfer and entry
• Fewer inaccuracies in the EHR

Automatic payer information retrieval verifies patient eligibility and benefits, and checks need for pre-authorizations

Key Benefits:

• Less re-work, denials, and eventual A/R
• Less staff time spent hopping payer portals and manually calling/emailing payers
• More timely patient care
• Fewer delayed/denied claims

Digital forms offer a guided experience with required fields, auto-corrected errors, and standardized input formats

Key Benefits:

• More consistent and accurate data collection; fewer errors
• Simpler patient experience

Automated communication tools send appointment reminders, secure messages, and post-visit surveys

Key Benefits:

• Better patient-provider communication
• Relief for front office staff
• Reduced no-shows
• Happier patients and staff

How to Optimize Patient Intake for RCM Success

Simply put, better intake means better revenue cycle management. To optimize patient intake, start with these strategies:

Centralize data and verify accuracy

Manage patient data in a single, easily accessible, user-friendly system to reduce errors and improve consistency. This fosters collaboration and working from a single source of truth, typically your EHR – a step essential to optimizing the healthcare revenue cycle.

Digitize and optimize forms

Streamline forms and patient experience with a mobile-friendly user experience (UX) and pre-populated fields that ensure required data is collected each time. Use technologies like mobile forms, check-in tablets, and digital patient billing to reduce friction during this crucial phase of the patient financial journey.

Automate eligibility verification

Use real-time insurance eligibility checks to avoid reimbursement issues that affect claims and payments in later stages of your revenue cycle. Run eligibility verification prior to patients’ arrival to eliminate insurance errors, reduce accounts receivable, and streamline in-house operations. Integrate with payer and clearinghouse systems to enable real-time verification of coverage to speed up approvals and patient payments.

Focus on patient engagement

Empower patients to manage their own information and payments via patient portals, mobile apps, and personalized text communications. Offer educational resources and reference guides patients can access any time. Use automated reminders and AI patient billing agents like Billie to improve patient engagement without adding administrative work for staff.

Reduce friction in payment experiences

When patients arrive with outstanding balances, it adds another layer to the intake process. If providers make the payment experience easy for patients, it streamlines the next intake experience for the patient. Practices can get ahead by offering the seamless billing and payment experiences that patients expect, including self-service check-in (like airline boarding passes or mobile banking apps), clear cost estimates before receiving care, no-login payment options, and mobile-friendly payment processes.

Review and improve referral management

Collect as much information as possible during the patient referral process. Document this information in a centralized system to reduce the burden on patient intake staff and the repetition of information by patients. Integrate with payer systems to enable real-time verification of patient information to speed up approvals and patient payments.

Maintain accurate eligibility and benefits information

To track down unpaid claims, healthcare providers need a clear and up-to-date view of patient coverage history. RCM solutions using the latest AI and automation technology can vastly streamline eligibility and insurance verification.

Use automation and configurable validations

Use proactive alerts that flag missing or mismatched information and automate straightforward tasks to support patient intake staff. This is especially important during deductible season, when staff are managing an increase in patient inquiries, coverage changes, and patient payments due.

Collect payments at the time of service – or quickly after

Offer frictionless digital payments at check-in. Make it easier for staff to communicate copays and outstanding balances, increasing the likelihood of full payment. This improves pre-payment and point-of-service collections and enables providers to direct patients to financial counseling and billing support earlier in the process.

If payment is not collected at the time of service, it’s still vital to reduce the time between service and collecting patient payments. This requires reviewing — and potentially adjusting — a few steps in the RCM workflow. For example, consider pre-payment processes: i.e. contacting the patient ahead of service to verify benefits, providing a cost estimate, and requesting payment. Also, review check-in procedures and equip staff to easily see payments due (deductibles, copays, and other outstanding balances) in a single place, and refer patients to personalized financial support if needed.

Train and coach patient access staff effectively

Train staff in revenue cycle management concepts, billing guidelines, payer requirements, insurance guidelines, standard operating procedures (SOPs), and the use of patient intake technology. Monitor RCM KPIs and coach staff 1:1 or in small groups to improve key skills. This not only improves the patient intake process, but also employee satisfaction and retention.

Continuously optimize the intake process

Review RCM KPIs and focus on the ones most relevant to patient intake. Use these data, plus feedback from staff and patients, to address root causes, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement.

EHR-Based Intake vs. Digital-First Intake

Some EHR systems highlight their patient intake features as an all-in-one solution. But all too often, EHR-based patient intake workflows include clunky portals, subpar UX, too much manual work for staff, and limited automations. While they may meet the basic needs for patient check-in and data collection, they are not easy to optimize for providers’ specific needs, and make it difficult for practices to scale their operations.

Compared to EHR-based intake, digital-first intake software offers more personalized, AI-driven, seamless patient experiences and faster revenue collection.

Improve Patient Intake With Collectly

An effective intake process sets the patient — and provider — up for success throughout the rest 
of the process. But when data is missing or inaccurate, it leads to costly billing errors, delays, and denials down the road.

Collectly streamlines patient intake with virtual check-in, custom forms, patient-friendly workflows, and self-service payment plans. With Collectly, providers deliver a 95% patient satisfaction rate and reduce administrative burden from patient support by 80-85%.

Improve the intake process with these Collectly features:

• Streamlined Staff Experience: Front desk staff can see which actions (if any) were completed by patients during digital check-in, right from the EHR window.
• AI-powered Image Verification: When patients upload photos of their ID and/or insurance card, Collectly uses AI to scan and verify the image, and prompt patients to upload a new photo if it is faulty or incorrect.
• App and iPad Check-In: Offer patient-friendly check-in via their preferred mobile device, 
as well as in-office check-in with the Collectly Kiosk application.

Frictionless intake, backed by digital billing and AI-enhanced patient support, improves the financial experience. See how Pyramid Health increased timely patient and client payments by 75% using Collectly.