Healthcare organizations has been hit hard by the global coronavirus pandemic. Now as every sector has started recovering from the pandemic, many healthcare providers are finding it difficult to bounce back and improve the cash flow and collection at their medical practices. According to recent annual report from ‘Trends in Healthcare Payments’, the average medical practice writes off over $30,000 in unpaid medical bills each year. Surprisingly, 28 percent of the practitioners have no idea how much they are or should be writing off. If you install full proof patient collection system at your office, you may able to collect more than 90 percent of your patient collections within a month. In this article, we shared guidelines that can help you in improving patient collections post this pandemic situation.
Efficient Insurance Verification Process
The first step in this process is to ensure that each patient has valid, active insurance coverage before they receive any care. A simple way to do this is through eligibility and benefits verification for all patient visits. Insurance coverage report will help you to understand whether planned services are covered under patient insurance or not. This report will also help you to find patient responsibility i.e., co-payment, deductibles. In case of non-coverage, you can communicate with patients in advance, so that they can share alternate insurance details or prepare for self-payments. With eligibility and benefits, you can provide exact estimate to the patient for every visit, explaining every detail. This ensures highest customer satisfaction and maximum collection of patient responsibility.
Send Pending Invoice
Insurance coverage report will help you to understand exact patient responsibility. Your front desk staff must ensure maximum collect of patient payments. This percentage should be more then 70 percent. For rest of the pending patient payments, you should send invoices at regular interval of times. You can email them or use billing software to send invoice at regular interval of times. Research report suggest that as more weeks passes after patient visit, more challenging it becomes to collect patient payments. So sending invoices at regular interval of time and reminder call will help to collect maximum patient collections.
Offer Payment Options
Offering multiple ways for your patients to pay is one of the easiest steps you can take to improve cash flow and collection. By offering credit card payments, checks, cash, etc., you broaden the options for your patients. Using billing software, you can send electronic statements via email or text messages containing payment options or online payment links. Additionally, offering payment plans adds an extra layer of convenience by allowing patients to take control of their healthcare costs. Offering payment assistance programs will also improve cash flow and collection within your medical practice.
Outsource Your Medical Billing
Outsource your medical billing and coding process to a medical billing company like Medisys Data Solutions will improve cash flow and collection for your business. By partnering with a qualified Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) company, you can focus on patient care while billing company will handle technicality of billing and coding operations. As per medical specialty of your practice, billing and coding experts will work on your account for various RCM operations like eligibility verification, charge entry, payment posting, denial management, and AR collection. You can also achieve better customer satisfaction by focusing only on patient care while billing company will handle all complexities of billing and coding. If you are interested in learning more about our complete RCM solutions, contact us at info@medisysdata.com/ 302-261-9187
