Unless you have been living under a rock (or just in extreme denial), you have probably picked up on the fact that the insurance landscape has and will continue to undergo drastic changes. For your medical practice to continue its success, you must have a process in place to collect deductibles and co-pays. In this two-part post (Part two is coming next week!) we will look at steps you can take in order stabilize your books and implement or hone an upfront collections policy. VisionAmerica's Tara Mathias and Cynthia Coley serve on our accounts receivable leadership team in Alabama and have offered the following tips.
Understand the Changing Landscape and Patient Responsibility As a medical practice, you don't work in a vacuum. Everything that happens outside of your walls is brought inside every day. That includes the financial impact insurance and medical costs have on your patients. According to a 2015 article by Healthcare Finance News, premiums have gone up by 60% while the average income has only increased 11%. And this is in a span of 15 years! The same article notes that employee cost sharing has risen 93% and that deductibles have doubled since 2003. Needless to say, the burden on the patient and, in turn, your practice has dramatically increased. Left in the middle of all of this is you and your business. In the midst of your feelings and emotions on the state of the insurance industry, you also have a consistent wave of frustrated patients that likely don't understand their own benefits and why they have changed. Being cognizant of what your patients are experiencing is only going to better equip you and your staff to create a better practice environment. The real challenge here is the number of different plans and nuances of each of them. How could you and your staff possibly understand the differences in each and every plan and how they impact your patient? A good approach here is to master the bulk of your patient's insurance providers. If your practice is primarily Medicaid, you and your staff should understand the system and its details as well as you understand your own Facebook pages. The same can be said for Blue Cross Blue Shield, Medicare and VSP. When a patient with an unique insurance plan comes in or is scheduled, that is your staff's opportunity to get to know them and their benefits. This should be more of an 80-20 approach, but it will take some effort. The time you put in on the front end with regard to knowing your patients and their plans will save hours and hours of wasted man power on the back end. A System for Collections Once you know what you are and will be owed, the question of how you collect it will become one that the success of your practice could hinge on. There are numerous ways to figure out what both your patient and insurance company will owe you post visit, but we have found a simple spreadsheet to be one of the most effective. Attached to this email you will find an allowables spreadsheet we use in our office to help determine what will be owed. Keeping a tool like this handy will help you and your staff quickly determine what portion of the visit the patient will be responsible for. If you thoroughly understand your patient's insurance plan (see above), you should have a concrete number for what they owe you at the time of their appointment. Collecting this payment IN FULL at the time of the appointment is crucial! This will likely be a big change for some, if not most, of your patients. Your goal here is to create a culture of change with your staff and patients. You have no choice but to transition along with the requirements on your patient. You will need to be more diligent in changing your patient's expectations on the front end and holding them accountable to the new policies and procedures you put in place. Not only does this guarantee that your office is paid, but it also cuts down on the time your staff spends chasing down payments or working with collections agencies. According Elizabeth Woodcock of Woodcock and Associates, it costs twice as much to collect from patients as it does from payers. This statistic really stresses the importance of knowing what to charge and collecting on that payment at the time of the visit. There are five pieces to the puzzle when it comes to having a solid system in place for collections. Each is key and described briefly below.
Maybe you already have some of these systems and processes in place? Or perhaps you have a different approach that has worked really well for you and your practice? We are interested to learn what you have discovered and want to communicate that to our community. Contact us and let us know! Part two of this series will be in your inbox next week and will cover tips on the tone you and your staff should use with your patients and details as to how you can maximize your collections opportunities.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorThe staff and doctors at VisionAmerica are committed to providing relevant information for you, your patients and your practice. We hope you find the information in our blog post helpful. Archives
August 2019
Categories |