Stay ahead of the game. Don't get stuck in a cycle where your
billing office has to play a game of catch-up to collect patient
payments. Instead, have the front office do the legwork before a
patient undergoes surgery, verifying insurance benefits and calculat-
ing what patients owe days in advance. Be sure at least one member
of the front-office staff is properly trained on how to verify patients'
insurance. Once these staffers know what's owed ahead of time, they
can inform patients of their responsibility during the pre-op phone
call, which can also give the patient the opportunity to set up a pay-
ment plan or try other options, like third-party financing. When
patients present for their procedures, your business office will have a
much greater chance to collect 100% of the co-pay and deductible. By
securing a patient's payment on the front end, it will be easier for you
to reduce your cost to collect delinquent payments, and eventually
reduce your exposure to bad debt.
Create an effective patient collection policy. All hope is not lost
if you're struggling to collect money on the front end. There's one
big reason more facilities don't have effective patient collection policies
in place: a lack of time. Most have little or no time to review outstand-
ing patient payments or to send statements. If you fail to collect from
patients on the day of surgery, your best option is to either send out
timely statements on your own, or to outsource this task to a billing
company. You'll find that sending out 3 rounds of statements is an effec-
tive way to remind patients what they owe. Space these statements out
in a time frame that works best for your facility, though to keep AR
days down, try to send a patient balance statement as soon as possible
following the procedure, and then follow up in 15- to 30-day intervals.
The important thing is to be consistent. These recurring statements are
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