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Henry Ford Health System to make customer billing simpler

Patient Access Weekly Advisor, June 6, 2007

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In response to a call for greater transparency, Henry Ford Health System in Detroit will begin using color coding on July 1 to make patient bills easier to understand, reports the Detroit Free Press.

This is not only an effort to improve customer relations; it also, in theory, will eliminate hours of work on the back end trying to recover overdue bills. Many of the bills are written off as bad debt.

But Ford officials hope the move will ultimately serve as a public relations tool in this new era of openness in healthcare.

Ford patients will also be able to pay their bills online after July 1. To accommodate this change, the system has added five customer service representatives to answer any and all questions from customers.

"More patients are inquiring about their bills," David Mazurkiewicz, Ford's vice president, told the Free Press.

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