Four Patient Friendly Practices to Increase Your Patient Collections

1
Four Patient Friendly Practices to Increase Your
Patient Collections
CureMD Healthcare
2
Increase Your Patient Collections

• Consider how a patient feels when they cant pay
  your statement
• Most will attempt to avoid your reminders and
  phone callsand avoid coming back to your
  practice. 
• So not only have you not collected what youre
  owedbut youve also lost the patient
• Having a patient friendly collection process is
  necessary for proper care and retaining existing
  patients

3
Increase Your Patient Collections

• Weve listed a few simple suggestions that will
  help you engage your patients in a friendly and
  inviting manner, help to get the statement paid
  and retain patient loyalty
• Have a financial policy and use it consistently
• Too many practices have a financial policy
  meltdown!  They dont consistently apply the
  policy. 
• Yesthere are exceptions, but few and when they
  occur, the financial policy should be updated for
  the situation

4
Increase Your Patient Collections

• Have the patient conversation early
• Start the payment discussion as early as possible
  in the patient relationship.  Ask yourself, How
  early in the patient relationship can we have the
  financial conversation? For existing patients,
  NOW would be a good time to remind them of your
  financial policy
• Display your financial policy prominently in your
  waiting room.  You might also want to print it on
  the annual privacy statement that patient signs
• Some practices print their financial policy on
  every patient statementor insert it on a
  brightly-colored piece of paper when sending
  patient statements

5
Increase Your Patient Collections

• Ask for commitment
• Asking for a financial commitment sounds
  uncomfortable to many in healthcare but think
  about this What other business can you walk in
  and out of, having received a product or service,
  without some sort of financial commitment? 
• Many doctors think of themselves as a charity and
  ignore the business side of their practicebut
  you cant exist with that mentality anymore. 
  Your practice has to meet payroll, invest in
  capital improvements, and keep the lights on just
  like any other business

6
Increase Your Patient Collections

• Without collecting all of the patient fees owed,
  it will be impossible to keep the doors open.
  Insurance reimbursements will no longer pay the
  expenses of the practice
• How can you ask for a financial commitment in a
  way that seems reasonable to the patient without
  putting undue pressure on him or her? Gather your
  team around and discuss ways to present the
  business reality without alienating your
  patients! Recent studies show that paid-up
  patients come back to their doctorbut debtors
  dont
• Once you find the right approach your practice
  will enjoy increased patient loyalty and
  decreased patient receivables!

7
Increase Your Patient Collections

• Use the right tools to enhance patient
  collections
• There are tools that enable an effective
  patient-friendly collection environment
• You may already be using enhanced billing
  statements, soft collections, discounts, and
  other methods to speed payments 
• However, experience shows that more of the same
  has diminishing returns
• One of the greatest weaknesses of these methods
  is that the patient is still in control of when
  he or she pays the bill

8
Increase Your Patient Collections

• But there is a tool that will put YOU in control
  when you get paid by the patient!
• It would be well worth your time to investigate
  card-on-file and automated payment plans to
  assure timely and cost-effective patient
  collations
• Both of these methods save the patient the hassle
  of remembering to write a check or make an
  on-line payment
• Youll reduce your billing expenses,your patient
  receivables and your stress!

9
Increase Your Patient Collections

• Since paid up patients return for more
  appointments, finding the right mix of payment
  policies and practices is crucial to your
  practices health
• With ICD-10 approaching it becomes all the more
  important to have the collection talk as early as
  possible In the patient relationship. Make them
  realize the impact of change it will have on
  their claims.
• Since RCM systems are responsible for the life of
  patient accounts from creation to payment and
  everything in between, its imperative to avoid
  any issues that could come about early on in the
  process, as this can have extreme ripple effects
  later on.

10
Read more on blog.curemd.com

• To read more on this topic, visit
• http//blog.curemd.com/increase-your-patient-colle
  ctions/

11
Thank you!
CureMD Healthcare 120 Broad Street, New York, NY
10271 Ph 212.509.6200 www.curemd.com