Spring Hills Speeds Time to Revenue with Nearly 98% of Residents Paying Digitally through Zego
About Spring Hills
Spring Hills is a family of 20 (and growing) successful assisted living, home care services, and memory care communities across the country. Dedicated to Caring with a Commitment to Quality by providing the highest level of care, health services, comfort, and encouraging independence, the Spring Hills team focuses on meeting every individual’s current and future needs.
“We are focused on the individual, and making sure we’re meeting each person’s needs,” shared Toni Salo, Director of Business Office Development, “Our communities are home-like and not cookie-cutter.”
- Location: Communities across 6 states
- Portfolio: Senior Living, Assisted Living, Memory Care, Home Care
- Zego Products: Zego Pay
- Accounting Software: PointClickCare
Key Highlights
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Tailored for senior care:
The Spring Hills and Zego teams collaborated to meet the unique needs of senior care, such as power-of-attorney or weekly payments for the home care division
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Improved productivity:
In combination with PointClickCare, manual data entry is drastically reduced
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Faster time to revenue:
No more snail mail or manual payments, combined with features like AutoPay, all help ensure payments are on time
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Better resident experience:
Residents and their loved ones can pay anytime, anywhere, with more peace of mind
The Challenge
Rapid growth was the driving factor leading Spring Hills to investigate digital payment options. What began with one assisted living community grew through acquisition as well as expansion into home care and memory care. Processing rental and service payments manually became a growing drain on associates’ time and productivity, and created security concerns for some residents.
“We needed to streamline accepting payments and getting revenue in an efficient manner. We have a check scanner in the office, but it’s 2022. Before Zego we were taking ACH and credit card payments manually. People were filling out a form and giving us a voided check or a copy of their credit card. Everything was manually keyed in. Not only did we spend a lot of time processing these payments, which wasn’t effective as we grew, but there was also a level of uneasiness from the residents and families who did not want to give us that information.”
Accepting recurring payments was an even bigger operational hassle, shared Toni “We were only accepting recurring ACH payments because our CFO was individually processing those. That was very costly.”
The approach and solution
Working with Zego, Spring Hills now offer residents the flexibility to pay online via ACH, Credit Card, Debit Card or PayPal. The improved process with Zego saves Spring Hills Associates time and is better for their residents, who can pay anytime, anywhere, and benefit from setting up recurring payments. While checks are still accepted, as Toni shared those numbers are dwindling.
“One of our communities is at 98% Zego payments. They only have a few people left that still pay by check. Overall we haven’t needed to do any promotions or incentives. We’ve naturally seen a shift to more and more people jumping on board with Zego.”
The Spring Hills team has been thoughtful in helping their Associates and residents understand the new online payment options and the benefits. When onboarding their properties to Zego, they identified two communities that would kick start their rollout. One of the benefits of this approach was that the Executive Directors of these communities then became group leaders to guide new communities through their rollouts.
“The Executive Directors helped guide the new teams on how to best present Zego to residents. For incoming residents, they send out flyers with information about Zego and a link to sign up. Our Business Office Managers email out invite links as well. Residents can just open their email click on the link and they’re set. We’ve also done training with our sales team to talk about explaining online payments as a benefit during the sales process.”
The Spring Hills and Zego teams worked closely together to ensure that the product and service all fit their unique needs. "I am very very thankful that the Zego team listens to our needs because obviously healthcare is different from regular apartments. The team has been absolutely wonderful. They really listened to what we needed as a company and made sure we were set up correctly. For example, we’ve set up our Home Care for online payments now and that’s different because the payments are weekly.”
Results
Faster time to revenue: Working with Zego the Spring Hills team is able to manage their revenue more effectively. “Zego ensures we have a good, quicker stream of revenue. Our goal is to be totally electronic with payments and get rid of all of the paper so that we know exactly when our revenue is going to come in. This helps us go beyond meeting payroll to provide great benefits and added programs for our associates. Happy associates means happy residents” shared Toni.
Reduced late payments: In addition, Zego has helped reduce late payments. This reduces the burden on Associates for managing payments and collections, and helps residents who don’t get charged late fees. “If a resident has a late payment our Business Office Managers help them get enrolled in Zego automatic payments as a way to prevent late payments and fees. I’ve been able to cancel our aging calls with some of our communities since Zego was implemented. I’ve personally seen a reduction in late payments at more than one of our communities from Zego.”
Improved productivity and efficiency: Spring Hills’ assisted living communities use PointClickCare as their management software. Zego’s product works with PointClickCare to improve the overall process and save Spring Hills Associates time. “We export our aging and upload directly to Zego to create the accounts. It is great, not a lot of keying entries into Zego, which is perfect.”
Simpler, more secure resident experience: With the addition of Zego, Spring Hills Residents and their loved ones no longer have to spend time filling out paperwork manually, mailing in checks, or providing copies of their payment methods. They save time with an easy, secure online workflow and can even use AutoPay to set and forget their payments. “We can now accept one time or recurring payments at any time, any hour of the day. It’s a lot more efficient. And it gives the families, whether it’s the resident or their power of attorney, more control over the process and peace of mind.”
The move to Zego has helped Spring Hills financially and operationally. As Toni shared “The biggest benefit we’ve had is in the time and money that’s been given back to us from all the effort it took to manually process our payments. We were dealing with corporate staff doing all the processing. One person was keying in credit card payments for the entire company and one person was keying in ACH. That on top of the hours from on-site folks doing the paperwork and sending it in [...] Working with Zego has been great for us and it keeps getting better.”
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