Inside Aesthetics Ep 101 What Patient Finance Is, How It Works & Why You Might Choose to Utilise It to Fund Your Medical Procedure | Tim Boon
Episode 101 hosts Tim Boon (Director of Total Lifestyle Credit from Southern Highlands, Australia)
Tim has over 14 years of experience working in the patient finance world and has helped finance nearly a billion dollars worth of procedures.
Patient finance in it's simplest form involves helping patients fund their medical procedures via loans. We find out just how affordable this can be, with payments typically broken down into weekly amounts to help people budget and manage their cash flow. This allows for people to have life changing surgeries (both cosmetic and medical) whereas in the past these may well have been cost prohibitive.
We learn about what protections are in place for customers and how TLC acts as a middle man between the surgeon and the patient when it comes to the financial arrangements.
We also discuss how clinics can access finance to refurbish or perhaps upgrade their lasers or devices, traditionally an extremely expensive and prohibitive barrier to most clinic owners.
00:00 Introduction 01:03 Meet Tim Boon 04:15 Entering the Medical Finance Industry 06:33 The Gap Between Treatment Cost and Patient Affordability 08:40 Early Challenges Getting Banks to Support Medical Lending 11:31 Building the First Medical Funding Platform 15:48 Why Doctors Struggle to Talk About Money 20:23 How Patient Finance Changed Access to Treatment 22:42 Understanding Unsecured Medical Loans 25:41 Interest Rates Risk and Credit Assessment 31:55 Why Payment Plans Make Treatments More Accessible 38:47 Supporting Patients Without Private Health Insurance 43:22 Step by Step Patient Application Process 45:17 How Clinics and Patients Work With Funding Providers 47:10 Managing Financial Risk and Responsible Lending 49:17 What Happens If Patients Cannot Repay 52:13 Payment Holidays and Hardship Support 54:29 Impact of COVID on Medical Finance 57:34 Financing Medical Devices and Clinic Equipment 59:34 Avoiding Poor Investment Decisions in New Technology 01:04:36 Differences Between Medical Finance and Buy Now Pay Later 01:07:12 Ethical Concerns Around Cosmetic Treatment Financing 01:09:40 Safeguards Against Impulsive Procedures 01:17:48 Supporting Patients Through Multi Stage Treatments 01:20:18 Future Trends in Medical and Aesthetic Financing 01:23:30 Building Awareness of Payment Options 01:25:10 Final Advice and Wrap Up