Why do Practices do not Collect 100% of the Revenue they Account for?

In the current healthcare scenario, if you want to run a profitable practice, then you need to do a lot more than just provide quality patient care. You need to fix all the areas that are making you lose revenue or stopping you from collecting maximum patient payments. The sooner you identify the problem areas, the better it will be for your practice.

Here are some of the reasons why your practice might be failing to collect maximum revenue:

• There are chances your financial policy is not good enough to move your staff to action. If you want point-of-service collection to work for your practice, then you will have to have a well-coordinated program approach. You will have to develop procedures and policies and provide good training to the staff.
• Your practice will also start losing money if the staff is reluctant in asking money from patients. Therefore, it is necessary to train staff, helping them develop scenarios and talking points so that they can start collecting past-due balances. Also, they need to be monitored from time to time because when the staff knows they are being monitored, they will perform better and collect more.
• Practices also fail to collect maximum revenue if they are not monitoring collections performance on a monthly basis. It is important to conduct random inquiries about the amount collected on a daily basis. Over-the-counter collections logs should be reviewed daily.
• Another reason for low collections is the fact that many practices don’t give the right tools to their staff. From software to data, if the staff doesn’t have the tools, collections will get hampered. Then need to be given data related to past-due balances and eligibility status for each patient coming for appointment at the practice. The staff should also be offered an automated recurring payment option so that they can establish a payment plan before the patient leaves the practice.
• Lastly, providers need to avoid bad billing practices as they create unnecessary financial losses. If the billing staff is incompetent, then it is recommended to outsource medical billing and coding services to a third party. Medical billing companies also offer collection assistance to providers. They have experts who make sure that the practices collect all the revenue they account for while providers focus on quality care.