With health plan designs pushing more financial responsibility on patients, hospitals and health systems are finding ways to engage patients with improved point-of-service financial solutions but the overall collection yield on the patient portion of reimbursement claims is flat, the latest analysis of proprietary data from Kodiak Solutions shows.
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Comparing the first quarters of 2026 and 2025, point-of-service collections as a percentage of total patient payments increased by more than two percentage points, driven by increases in commercial, Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare, proprietary data from Kodiak Solutions shows.
Comparing the first quarter of 2026 with the same quarter in 2025, point-of-service (POS) collections represented 24.82% of patient payments in the first quarter of 2026, compared with 22.74% in 2025’s first quarter.
Total patient responsibility across all payor categories ticked down slightly comparing these quarters, from 23.28% of allowable claim amounts in 2025 to 22.99% in 2026.
Despite these favorable trends, overall patient collection yield declined slightly, from 30.59% of the self-pay portion of claims after insurance in the first quarter of 2025 to 30.07% for that metric in 2026’s first quarter.
All figures are from the June 2026 benchmarking report analyzing data from Kodiak’s proprietary Revenue Cycle Analytics platform.
Cost-sharing schemes, payor behavior impact collectability
“Hospital revenue cycle teams are increasingly successful at collecting from patients before or at the time of service, but more complex cost-sharing arrangements and payor behavior that slows claims processing are wiping out those gains,” said Matt Szaflarski, Vice President, Revenue Cycle Intelligence, for Kodiak Solutions.
As health plans implement more complex cost-sharing arrangements, that increases uncertainty for patients about what they owe and when they should make payment, according to Kodiak’s analysis. Slower adjudication of claims and higher rates of denials (for more on denials and other revenue cycle trends, see our March 2026 benchmarking report, “State of the healthcare revenue cycle”) also serve to muddy the payment waters for patients.
Payor behavior also explains the persistent gap in bad debt between traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage (MA), as the June benchmarking report details.
Inform patients of payment options earlier
“Hospitals and health systems have strategies they can use to complement their success with point-of-service collections,” Szaflarski said. These include:
- Embedding payment plans earlier in the patient journey. During an inpatient stay or at the time of an outpatient procedure, a patient is most engaged, so that is the time to introduce structured payment plans.
- Make these conversations about affordability, not just collection. Inform patients about their payment options to increase capture without creating friction.
- Use benchmarks to identify where payment plan adoption is lagging, and then dedicate patient financial engagement in those areas.
“These front-end strategies keep the financial needs of patients centered as hospitals navigate the complexities of health plan strategies and ensure they can continue to deliver care to their communities,” Szaflarski said.
Download the report, “Untangling the patient financial responsibility web,” for more about revenue cycle strategies that mitigate these risks.
About Kodiak Solutions
Kodiak Solutions is a leading technology and tech-enabled services company that simplifies complex business problems for healthcare provider organizations. Over the past two decades, our team created and developed our proprietary net revenue reporting solution, Revenue Cycle Analytics. Kodiak also provides a broad suite of software and services in support of CFOs looking for solutions in financial reporting, reimbursement, revenue cycle, risk and compliance, and unclaimed property. Kodiak’s 450 employees engage with more than 2,300 hospitals and 375,000 practice-based physicians, across all 50 states, and serve as the unclaimed property outsourcing provider of choice for more than 2,000 companies. To learn more, visit Kodiak’s website.
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