Practices and providers across the country have had to deal with difficulties ensuring all their payments are collected in full and on time. Patient’s payments are a larger percentage of practice’s revenue. According to MGMA Practice Perspectives on Patient Payments, provides are collecting $1 of every $4 directly from patients, and 30% of patients walking out of the door before they’ve paid anything, this task becomes increasingly difficult. To help improve your patient collections, here are three tips your practice can put into place:
Improving Patient Collections: Tips
-
Standardize eligibility
Every patient’s insurance eligibility check should happen prior to the appointment. According to CAQH and Milliman, Inc.’s U.S. Healthcare Efficiency Index, checking patient insurance coverage manually costs an average of $6.83 per verification.
-
Collect Cash Payments
If patient do not have insurance then collect the patient’s payment at the time of service. Sending statements costs money and staff time, and you are less likely to get paid once a patient leaves your office.
-
Transition to e-statementsÂ
Enable electronic payment collection portals, so patients can submit their payments conveniently from home at any time of day, often resulting in quicker collection of payment. Online payment can also reduce paper, printing and postage costs related to sending patient invoices.Â
-
Process billing regularlyÂ
Perform patient billing on daily basis to avoid a delay in patient payments. We can help you to bill regularly for daily patient visit. We have highly qualified Medical billers.
-
Establish office billing standardsÂ
Write policies that help staff manage billing software more efficiently by establishing standards for when they should post a charge or send a patient balance statement. Completing these tasks in a timely manner can increase the chance that patient payments will be collected earlier, potentially improving your cash flow. We can assure you that our staff will follow all your policies to boost your practice revenue.
Hiring a medical billing agency can, of course, take care of all of these problems. Contact Medical Billing Management for help with improving your patient collections.
