- Clear, patient-friendly billing statements improve understanding and trust — helping patients pay faster and reducing costly follow-up work for your team.
- Electronic statements, digital payment options, and automated reminders streamline the billing process experience and significantly speed up patient collections.
- Offering multiple, easy-to-use payment pathways increases patient satisfaction and strengthens your practice’s financial performance.
Patient billing is intricately woven into the healthcare journey, yet many practices struggle with how to ensure timely payments from their patients. The prevalence of medical debt among Americans underscores the urgency of addressing this issue — with research showing that roughly 20 million people (nearly 1 in 12 adults) in the United States owe medical debt. While the factors contributing to late and unpaid medical bills are deeply rooted in the complexities of the American healthcare system, there are steps practices can take to improve patient billing statements and encourage prompt payment.
In this article, we explore common billing statement challenges and share solutions that help create simplified statements, streamline your revenue cycle, and boost positive financial outcomes for your practice.
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What is a patient statement in medical billing?
A patient statement is a medical bill that can be sent to patients via mail in paper form, or electronically through email or text. Facilitating smooth transactions with patients and promoting financial clarity starts with a clear and well-designed billing statement.
What should a billing statement to a patient include?
A patient-friendly billing statement should include:
- Practice information: Include your practice’s name, address, contact information, and the name of the healthcare provider who treated the patient.
- Patient details: Include the patient's name, address, date of birth, and any other pertinent information.
- Service breakdown: Provide a detailed description of services, including dates and corresponding medical codes.
- Charges: Outline the costs associated with each service, including fees, deductibles, and co-payments.
- Clear payment instructions: Identify the payment due date, include clear payment instructions, and provide contact information for billing-related questions.
How often should patients receive a billing statement?
The cadence of when you send patient billing statements depends on your practice's needs. To minimize time between payments, consider sending statements soon after a patient acquires a balance. For patients who have outstanding balances, send statements on a monthly basis until the balance is paid in full.
Sending email or text balance reminders can accelerate patient collections and drive online payments.
Additional patient billing statement best practices
Unclear billing statements and inconvenient delivery methods are 2 of the most common, yet often overlooked, contributors to late payments. Take steps to improve the patient billing experience by making sure statements are clear and easy to understand and pay.
And remember, as a provider you possess a level of medical knowledge that your patients don’t. Patients are more willing to promptly pay statements they understand. Make sure your billing statements clearly outline patient responsibility and are:
- Clear and concise: A patient should be able to understand their bill at a glance. Provide an itemized bill that clearly explains each charge and breaks down complex medical jargon into simpler language.
- Easy to read: Use different fonts and colors to highlight important details such as the outstanding balance, due date, and accepted payment methods.
- Delivered electronically: Provide patient statements electronically to improve efficiency and promote digital payments.
- Accessible: Everyone’s financial system is different. Offer a wide variety of payment options such as credit cards, online banking, or payment plans to accommodate different needs.
Incorporating these elements into your billing statements will enhance patient clarity, encourage prompt payments, improve your practice’s cash flow, and enhance the overall patient experience
Patient-friendly payment practices
While offering fewer payment options may be easier and more cost-effective for your practice, prioritizing your patients’ payment preferences is paramount. For example, older patients may struggle with digital payment methods, while younger patients may not have access to physical checks.
Implementing best practices around patients' billing preferences helps ensure you're providing many options to encourage timely payment.
- Verify patient balance: A recent study found that 20% of respondents reported receiving a medical bill within the last 12 months that they disagreed with or could not afford. To ensure transparency and promote trust around out-of-pocket costs, always double-check patient bills for accuracy and clarity before sending.
- Offer payment options: Tebra’s Patient Perspectives survey found that more than half of patients prefer digital payment options. By providing flexible payment options that cater to your patient demographic, you can increase collection rates by over 20%.
- Provide clear payment instructions: Make sure your patient billing statements provide easy-to-follow payment directions — including accepted payment methods, associated deadlines (or instructions for setting up payment plans), and contact information for any billing inquiries.
While effective billing practices can reduce common payment obstacles, managing billing can be time consuming for your team. With an all-in-one patient management solution, you can enhance your practice’s billing efficiency, simplify the payment process for your patients, and minimize the time your team spends following up on outstanding balances.
The state of medical debt
Overcoming challenges of patient collections
Patient billing poses significant challenges for both healthcare providers and patients. Providers must navigate time-consuming processes like maintaining accurate billing and following up on outstanding balances. And patients often struggle to understand complicated bills, claim denials, and shoulder the financial burden of medical care — despite many having insurance coverage. Consequently, patients remain confused and financially-strained, while providers struggle to maintain clear and prompt billing and payment practices.
“Transparency around patient financial responsibility — including what they owe, why, and when — directly impacts payment behavior.”
According to Tebra research, transparency around patient financial responsibility — including what they owe, why, and when — directly impacts payment behavior. And with a few strategic tweaks to your billing statements, you can simultaneously boost patient satisfaction and improve financial outcomes for your practice.
FAQs
Frequently asked questions
- Faster delivery than mailed statements
- Direct links to online payment portals
- Automatic reminders that reduce manual staff follow-up
- Better tracking of who viewed or opened the statement
- Review patient age trends (older patients may prefer checks, while younger patients prefer mobile pay)
- Consider frequency of recurring visits that benefit from a card-on-file policy
- Identify friction points — including long phone hold times or unreturned mailed statements
- Refer to your practice’s own payment analytics
- Run eligibility verification before every appointment
- Confirm coding accuracy immediately after visits
- Match insurer adjudication against posted charges
- Review recurring balance errors tied to common services
- Automate statement generation to avoid manual entry mistakes
- Using plain-language descriptions, (i.e. a clear “What you owe” summary box, and larger fonts for due dates and payment options )
- Prominently displaying the patient balance at the top of the statement
- Using bold text or color for visibility
- Clearly separating insurer adjustments from what the patient owes
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Crack the code for beating medical billing challenges with this free workbook — which provides tips around improving patient collections, streamlining claims submissions, and reducing rejections and denials.
- Current Version – Dec 08, 2025Written by: Erica FalknerChanges: This article was updated to include the most relevant and up-to-date information.
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