New Year Resolutions for Improved Collections

Are patient collection issues eating up a lot of revenue for your practice?

According to the ACA International, at least 29% adults experience trouble in paying their medical bills or they have medical debt. If your practice isn’t doing something to improve collections, you will have to leave a lot of money on the table. Not acceptable, right?

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So if you want to improve patient collections for your practice in 2019, then here a few easy resolutions that you need to make:          

  1. The easiest and smartest resolution would be to adjust the way you handle collections at your practice. Don’t just spend time and money on Medical Billing practices and in keeping up with regulatory changes. Start focusing on collecting fees from your patients directly.
  2. Make sure your front desk staff is verifying insurance of patients at every visit. This will help them know what the patent’s responsibility is. Every patient’s plan might be different with one carrier and not all providers in a practice accept the same plans. Therefore, verifying the insurance plans is very important. Patients need to know how much they are responsible for paying and also what’s covered by their plan. Agreement is meant to avoid sticker shock and prepare patients for costs.
  3. Set a clear and standard payment policy and make the patients aware of the same. This policy will provide a good backing if there are any difficult payment discussions happening with the patients and also give patients a set of consequences if they don’t pay. There is less or no wiggle room for patients if your practice has a standard policy in place.
  4. Your staff will have to be proactive about patient collections, without coming across as a collection agency. Ensure that your staff is reminding patients of their outstanding balance whenever they call them for appointment reminders. Also, they need to be offered different payment options, such as debit card, credit card, cash or cheque.
  5. To make 2019 profitable and to collect sufficient payments, it is very important to plan in advance. Your practice can set up a payment plan in advance if a patient has a large bill. Co-pay for the procedure needs to be communicated to the patients. They also need to be told about the figures that don’t include other charges. To pay the deductible in installment, it is recommended to get the patients to sign an agreement.