Healthcare providers and the revenue cycle management (RCM) firms that support their patient billing operations are under real pressure to modernize how patients receive and pay their bills. Digital options haven’t replaced paper statements; they sit right alongside. The providers and RCM partners seeing the best financial performance are the ones actively managing both within one customer communication management (CCM) platform.
That balance is harder to strike than it sounds. Patient populations are diverse, billing cycles are long and compliance requirements apply no matter which channel a statement travels through. Here’s what the current data says about why digital is accelerating, why print still matters and how providers and RCM firms can evaluate the mix instead of guessing at it.
Why is healthcare billing shifting to digital?
The pull toward digital patient communications is showing up in the data. E-statement transactions in healthcare rose 136% from 2022 to 2025, according to InstaMed. What’s behind that growth?
Automation and electronic billing are expanding as providers:
- Work to cut manual effort and inefficient workflows
- Free up staff capacity
- Shorten the time it takes to get paid
Healthcare consumers are pulling in the same direction, expecting flexible, mobile-enabled billing notifications and ways to pay.
For providers and RCM firms, that shift shows up as pressure to offer patient portals, text and email reminders and e-statements patients can act on immediately, rather than waiting for paper statements to arrive.
Why hasn’t paper disappeared from patient billing?
Despite that pull, paper is still doing real work in patient billing, and for many providers, patient statement printing and mailing remains a core part of the collections workflow, an active channel with its own measurable response rates.
There’s a concerning gap between where consumer preference is heading and where provider practice actually sits. While digital adoption in the billing process is growing, 41% of providers say mailed paper statements remain their primary method for collecting from patients, according to J.P. Morgan’s 2025 Trends in Healthcare Payments Report.
Consumers lean more digital, according to ACI Speedpay Pulse research:
- 57% prefer digital billing statements
- 16% prefer paper
- 28% want both
These findings suggest paper isn’t a fallback for a shrinking sliver of holdouts. Older patients, caregivers managing bills for a family member and anyone who finds a printed statement more trustworthy or easier to act on tend to prefer traditional paper touchpoints.
The takeaway isn’t that print is outdated or that digital is unproven. It’s that both channels carry significant volume, and for valid reasons.
Dive deeper: Download our white paper, Making Medical Bills a Higher Payment Priority for Consumers.
What should RCM companies look for in partner offering patient statement services?
This is where some organizations run into trouble, not because they’ve chosen the wrong channel, but because they’re managing channels separately. They have a print vendor handling mailed statements, separate tools to send email and text communications, and none of them sharing the same data, timing rules or reporting.
The most effective RCM organizations don’t treat print and digital as different vendor relationships to juggle. They partner with an experienced firm providing patient statement services that include an omnichannel CCM platform to cost-effectively manage the entire cycle of communications and payments for their clients. From one intelligent hub, a well-designed CCM solution keeps branding, timing and content consistent no matter which channel is used, and it gives revenue cycle teams one place to see what went out, when, what happened and what should happen next.
That kind of unification is where fragmented or siloed approaches tend to break down: an uneven customer experience between channels, delayed reporting and compliance gaps that are hard to catch when no single system has the full picture.
Where do HIPAA-compliant printing and mailing services fit in?
Whichever channel a statement travels through, it has to meet the same bar. HIPAA-compliant printing and mailing services aren’t a separate consideration from digital compliance. They’re the print-side equivalent of the same privacy and security standard that applies to a patient portal or a text message. The channel doesn’t lower the requirement.
For a closer look at what HIPAA compliance requires in practice, see How HIPAA-Compliant Printing and Mailing Improves Patient Trust and What’s Going on with the HIPAA Security Rule Update? Here’s What to Know.
How should healthcare providers and RCM firms decide the right communications mix?
There isn’t a universal ratio of print to digital that works for every provider or every patient population; each organization’s own data holds the answer. A few questions worth asking internally:
- Where in the healthcare billing cycle does each channel see the greatest response — initial statement, reminder, final notice?
- Which patients have opted out of digital communications and is that preference still current?
- What does the cost comparison look like once staff time, paper and postage are tallied beside digital delivery costs?
- Where do compliance and audit requirements weigh on the decision, regardless of channel?
Answering these requires visibility into channel-level performance, combining internal data with CCM platform data.
How does orchestration affect patient collections?
The stakes here go beyond convenience. Hospitals and health systems collected just 42% of what insured patients owed them in 2025, down from 45% the year before, according to Kodiak Solutions’ 2026 revenue cycle benchmarking analysis. That decline should put a spotlight on every part of the patient financial experience, including how clearly and consistently providers communicate what’s owed.
Organizations that align communication channels to patient preference see stronger engagement and faster resolution cycles. Patients who receive a billing reminder through their preferred channel are twice as likely to pay promptly according to Cedar’s 2026 Healthcare Financial Experience Study.
Orchestration between print and digital improves customer satisfaction, enhances operational efficiency and connects directly to a patient collection problem that hospitals and RCM firms are working to solve.
Nordis Technologies helps healthcare providers and the RCM firms that support them orchestrate HIPAA-compliant print and digital patient communications from a single CCM platform, Expresso®. Request a demo to see how Expresso® brings digital and print together.
Key takeaways
- Is print or digital better for patient statements? Neither is universally better. The right channel depends on the individual patient, the point in the billing cycle and what the provider’s own data shows about response rates.
- Do HIPAA rules apply differently to print versus digital statements? No. Both channels have to meet the same privacy and security standard.
- Will digital billing eventually eliminate paper statements? Not anytime soon. Digital preference is rising, but a meaningful share of patients still respond to, and prefer, paper.
- What is the most effective way to manage both print and digital patient statements? Through an experienced partner that offers patient statement services combined with an omnichannel CCM platform, so all patient communications are handled in one secure place.
