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Leverage Patient Engagement: The Best Practices for Increasing and Improving Patient Collections

At the start of the pandemic, a few medical practices assumed that this would mean a boom in profits for them. Even so, many suffered losses with most patients opting out of elective surgeries and in-person visits. According to an impact study, ambulatory practices reported a drop of about 60% in-patient volumes from mid-February to April 2020.

Though medical practices are now experiencing an increase in such volumes, some still have low visits. You, however, can still maximize your revenue, increase visits and maintain medical cash flow and bring patient balances to zero by improving your upfront payment collections. This also helps you minimize medical debt, which is currently crippling medical practices as more insurers pass medical expenses to patients.

According to a recent study, the annual family healthcare deductible was over $8,000 in 2020, while the average annual individual healthcare deductible was above $4,000. These high deductibles cause about 30% of self-payers to default on their medical care balances.

Below are a few strategies that can help you increase upfront payments:

Collect a Patient’s Contact Information and Insurance before an Appointment

When your clients make an appointment over the phone or online, have your registration staff collect their current complete information. Alternatively, you can have patients fill in this information on your online appointment tool or patient portal. 

Getting accurate contact and insurance information beforehand allows your staff to easily verify a patient’s insurance coverage with the insurance provider, then follow up with him/her through the medical billing and treatment process. This will also allow the front desk staff to pinpoint any patient collection changes that an insurer might have instituted.

When contacting the insurer, your staff can also ascertain how much a patient is meant to pay out-of-pocket and the portion an insurer covers.

The Right Approach: Implement a Policy That Mandates Patient Responsibility During Check-In

Undoubtedly, the best time to collect payment from patients is during their appointment so that you don’t waste resources chasing them to settle their bills after they leave. Introduce a system where a patient pays his/her copay during check-in. 

Include this requirement in your office payment policy so that all clients are aware of the payment required during check-in. You can also get a messaging solution that sends automated appointment reminders detailing what patients should pay at check-in. The reminders should also emphasize that a client should pay for services before appointment day or during check-in.

Create a Special Patient Portal to Accept Multiple Payment Alternatives and Credit Cards

Payment for your service should be stress-free to negate high default rates. Accept a variety of payment options to cater to the needs of different clients. You can offer clients different payment methods like paying in cash, checks, and credit/debit cards, utilizing an online payment tool or accepting mobile payments. Furthermore, rely on a medical billing service like NCDS to collect outstanding payments. When investing in this technology, adequately train your staff to manage the billing process using it. Other than billing, there are now technology tools like online payment portals you can use to track the clients who owe you money and send late payment reminders through secure emails to collect on unpaid claims.

Provide Flexible Payment Options and Keep Track Of Them with the Right Billing Software

According to a survey on medical bills by the Kaiser Family Foundation, people are more likely to shop for healthcare and negotiate prices when they find medical bills too high for their budgets. With an increased focus on healthcare consumerism, payment plans will improve your overall customer experiences.

For patients with large outstanding balances and charges, offer payment plans that will work for both of you. Flexible payment plans will not only increase the collection rate in your practice but also your numbers. Your clients will undoubtedly appreciate the peace of mind associated with knowing they can easily pay for their treatments even if the costs are high. This will also increase loyalty to your practice.

Submit Error-Free Claims

According to Park Medical Billing, about 80% of medical claims have errors. Owing to the stringent claim checking practice that most insurance providers have, they will deny claims that have even slight errors. In fact, errors in medical billing and coding of claims are among the leading reasons for late-payments and claim denials by insurance companies. To ensure claim errors do not affect your collections, invest in an efficient billing system.

Transparency is Important: Educate Your Patients and Leverage Patient Engagement

According to a recent survey conducted by Waystar, 21% of patients sought help from hospital staff to manage their healthcare costs and bills. Don't adopt a passive approach; handling medical bills is not as straightforward as you might assume, and most patients have no financial literacy skills to handle theirs. Offer some education on your financial policies and the available options for paying bills and financial agreements before the patient seeks a service.

Moreover, have clear and concise billing statements so that patients can easily understand them. This will easily streamline communication for your practice. Even after educating patients on how to handle their bills, it is important to understand that some might still make mistakes. Therefore, before you call them to settle their bills, make sure that the bill is error-free.

Incentivize Your Billing Staff

Understandably, constantly chasing unresponsive patients to settle their past-due accounts can be physically and emotionally exhausting. Therefore, consider giving incentives to employees in your billing department. You, for instance, can offer a gift when a staff member reaches a certain percentage of patient collections. This will also motivate staff to meet your established goals and aggressively pursue patient collections.

To ensure the collection process is not abused, periodically evaluate your employees to see if they are compliant to set rules on collecting patient bills. These include instructions on the best ways of addressing patients and setting the right expectations from a conversation’s onset.

Medical billing collections remain a key part of healthcare providers. Even so, most providers face considerable challenges in collecting their payments from patients and insurers because of the increased demands for patients who co-pay for services. The above strategies will help guarantee maximum collections in the face of different hurdles that might make it a challenge. This way, you are sure to keep the doors of your practice open for a long time by maximizing profits.

Consider Contracting NCDS: The Medical Billing Industry Experts

Maintaining the financial health of your medical practice is challenging. You should know how to collect your payments, handle claim denials, and collect outstanding medical payments. To increase your practice revenue and fulfill your financial goals, consider hiring revenue cycle management experts like NCDS Medical Billing.

Some of the ways in which your practice can benefit from our partnership include:

• Accurate payment posting so that you don’t foster mistrust among clients with erroneous billing statements.
• Tracking and lowering your A/R days. This is the time it takes to collect an outstanding invoice. By tracking this metric, you reduce the number of bills you write off because of their prolonged A/R. The ideal target in A/R should be 30-40 days.
• Reworking medical claims. If an insurance company rejects your medical claim, a revenue cycle management partner can give it a follow-up/denial reason code, correct it then resubmit the corrected claim. He/she will also identify the source of your rejections so that you develop the best practices to minimize future claim denials.
• Reducing the turnaround time for claim submissions. A medical billing service ensures your claims are submitted correctly so that you get reimbursement quickly.
• Offering training on how to handle your insurance claims.
• Preparing you for any anticipated changes in the rapidly evolving world of healthcare economics.

Since 1985, NCDS has provided superior third-party medical billing services. We have proven knowledge of ways to cut costs and minimize risks without compromising patient relationships. 

To learn more about our commitment to excellence and performance for organizations in the healthcare industry, medical practices and healthcare providers or for questions regarding our tailored revenue cycle management solutions or other medical billing services, connect with us today. 

It may be the first of many financial decisions that increase profits while you focus on ensuring a positive patient experience.

Questions?