With all the incessant talk in the air about Accountable Care Organizations and the like, many clinics today have been forced to look inwards all the time, concentrating mainly on PQRS, meaningful use, and such. Nothing wrong in that, but we at BillingParadise feel that by overtly concentrating only on these new paradigms, some of the smaller independent clinics are losing focus on how they actually will be making their dough in the future.
Besides sending obsequious electronic messages to the various Payers including mother (or father if you prefer) CMS, clinics are supposed to follow up on their patients to collect the patient balances. But what with the heavy focus on the science of healthcare (including appropriateness of treatment given etc), some clinics have totally lost touch with the economic side of their clinical setups, including not having a proper system in place to collect the patient balances. As the below statistics ironically show collecting patients now are more important than ever due to the rising popularity of high-deductible plans.
The Rise of High-Deductible Plans :
1. A survey of 500 patients showed a clear-defined link between their billing experiences (including collection of their patient balance) and their overall satisfaction with the provider. Of course, only satisfied patients of clinics (those falling above the 90th percentile) will surely return.
2. About 14 million Americans are now covered by Health Savings Account plans and the number is constantly rising.
3. Around one in seven employers offer HSA as their sole medical benefit option and the percentage may touch 40% by the end of next year. That means more patients are going to be very cognizant of where they get treated, unlike the indemnity scene of yesteryears where a patient paid $20 as a copay and then left it all up to you (not worrying whether you were in-network or out of it).
4. With healthcare costs in general rising at around 6% a year, a significant portion (around 30%) of the premiums will be borne by the employees, which might mean many of those walking into your clinic may already be low on cash with a high-deductible plan to boot. A confirmed case of a write-off unless you are careful.
The Plan :
The plan first of all, is to decide to have a plan in place, rather than the adhoc processes used in collecting meager copays. A medical billing company or a revenue cycle specialist may be of special use in such a scenario. They may be able to draw up a patient collection model for you based on parameters such as:
a. The patient’s plan.
b. Whether Deductible Is Still Ongoing.
c. The co-pay and co-insurance status.
d. The negotiated rates for each procedure with variances taken into consideration.
All of these data should exist within your billing system or EHR; but not knowing how to use them might prove to be a very costly error, as knowing upfront what to collect from patients might prove critical in improving your bottomline. Trying to strong-arm your way with patients to collect their balances is your other option, but as it has been frequently observed, patients with bad billing experiences never return, and they also readily help in tarnishing your clinic’s reputation in the local community.
BILLING PARADISE CAN HELP YOU COLLECT PATIENT BALANCES QUIETLY AND EFFECTIVELY :
With a decade of hands-on experience in servicing over 500 clients when it comes to the RCM Cycle, BillingParadise can draw up for you that plan for collecting patient balances. That is because we clearly understand, that when it comes to managing medical billing, the process begins much before that first patient visit and runs right through till the patient balance is effectively collected. Call BillingParadise at 888-571-9069 and allow us to help you to keep your patients happy, their balances collected, and thus consequently keep you in business.
