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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – The ongoing global pandemic has negatively affected multiple industries around the world. The health care sector is one of them. A report from physician portal MDLinx revealed most doctors have seen a huge dip in patient visits. This unfortunately translates to a major drop in practice revenue.
With the decrease in earnings, private health care practices are doing everything they can to stay afloat during these times of uncertainty. One strategy that can help these doctors is to improve patient payment collections.
If your practice has yet to assess its payment collection process, now is the right time to revisit it. Poor patient billing and collection can negatively impact your revenue and aggravate financial losses caused by the pandemic.
Here are seven strategies that could improve your patient collections processes:
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Gather Contact Details and Patient Information before the Scheduled Appointment
When a patient calls your private practice for an appointment, your front desk staff should use practice management software to collect complete, current, and correct information on your system.
If your patients are not comfortable providing their personal or contact information over the phone, give them two options. First, you may direct them to your clinic’s patient portal and have them schedule an appointment online. Second, they can request an appointment via email.
Keeping contact and insurance information accurate and up to date will enable your staff to verify insurance coverage and perform payment follow-ups throughout the entire medical treatment and collection process.
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Make Bills Payment Part of Your Appointment Reminder
When sending appointment reminders, include the patient’s unpaid or outstanding balance as part of your notice. If your health care staff will get in touch with your patient to confirm an appointment, have your employee bring up the unsettled balances.
Your staff may also take the time to explain your practice’s payment options in detail. Before you end the call, set the expectation that patients need to pay their outstanding balance when they visit your clinic.
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Keep the Prices of Your Medical Services Transparent
A major reason patients don’t pay their health care bills is that they end up with a cost they can’t afford. Some patients, for instance, may have a hard time budgeting for out-of-pocket medical expenses.
If you want to decrease the likelihood of patients ending up with an expense they can’t pay for, be upfront with your practice’s medical procedure costs. Check if the patient has the insurance that could cover the medical cost before you begin the consultation. Then, factor that coverage in your one-on-one discussion. If your patients are on a high-deductible plan, inform them that they’ll likely be shelling out cash to pay for the medical procedure.
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Hire a Collection Agency
Some patients choose not to settle their outstanding balance even though they’re financially capable of paying the bill. If you have patients like these, hire a collections agency instead of asking your staff to make consistent but futile follow-ups.
Before you refer past-due bills to a collections service provider, establish period limit for nonpaying customers. If the patient hasn’t paid within three months, despite receiving constant payment reminders, get a collections agent to take care of the unsettled balance. Notifying your patients with the help of a third-party agency shows the seriousness of the matter.
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Reach Out to Slow Payers More Often
Although some patients opt not to pay their bills, others settle their balances whenever they feel like it. You need patients to pay regularly and on time to sustain your practice. This entails contacting slow payers more frequently.
Start by evaluating how your staff contacts patients with unsettled balances. If your employees have enough bandwidth to make outbound calls, call past-due patients every week instead of once per month. Periodic contact demonstrates your persistence and tells patients that they need to pay what they owe.
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Implement Other Payment Options
If your physician practice is only accepting cash as your out-of-pocket payment method, you’re clearly behind the times. You need to be more flexible by accepting other payment options. You could accept credit cards to collect open balances, deductibles, and co-pays.
Alternatively, consider setting up installment plans for your patients. This is ideal for people who may not have the funds to settle the outstanding balance, but are willing to make staggered payments to pay off what they owe.
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Meet with Your Staff Regularly to Review Finances
You can’t drive improvement or boost patient payments effectively unless you track the results properly. Review your patient payment collections with your health care staff and accounting team as part of your regular meetings. Based on the figures, determine the payment processes that are working and brainstorm new collection strategies. Do this every month.
These strategies should improve your collection efforts and get the cash flow you need to get you through the year. When contacting patients for payment reminders, always be courteous and respectful. The goal of payment collection is to encourage patients to pay up without harming your patient-doctor relationship.