For many medical offices, chasing due payments can be an exhausting task, and more exhausting are those missing claims that get your money tied up.
As a professional who runs a medical practice, you’ll always have to deal with patients’ A/R. The good news for the collections industry is that electronic communication has come to the rescue as a highly effective and seamless way to master and manage patient’s A/R in the modern healthcare era. But first, let’s get the real meaning of patient A/R.
What is Patient A/R?
Patient A/R, or patients account receivables, are the money owed by a patient to a physician or medical practice after administering healthcare.
Why You Should Automate Patient’s A/R
According to data from InstaMed, 73% of providers report that it takes one month or longer to collect payment from patients. This data is almost five years old, collected in June 2017. The pandemic and the ongoing rise of medical costs for many individuals and families have added even more financial strain.
- To quickly recover overdue payments: Automating patient A/R means that you’re ready to quickly recover and reduce due payments to the barest minimum. Because if you’re still manually recovering debts, you’ll miss out on some.
In the last year, 44% of consumers paid their bill at the doctor’s office, 28% paid through an online portal, and 23% paid via a mobile app—but still, over 32% paid by mail, and 21% paid via phone (U.S. Bank). This goes to show you that making the mobile payment feature available to your patients signifies that you’re on top of the latest technology.
- Makes your practice look credible and trustworthy: If patients don’t trust your payment process enough, then they’ll go elsewhere. Having a solid billing system in place portrays you as a credible medical practice.
- Your establishment is guaranteed financial stability: The financial stability of any medical practice hinges on their promptness in recovering due payments. When debts are more than the profits you’re making, you risk heading for a crash.
- Helps you keep the right records: Proper management of the patient’s A/R entails collecting and keeping the right data. Having an automated record keeping system in place helps you backup your claims in the case of the claims being denied.
- Follow-up on denied or missing claims: Insurance companies are out to make profit and so are you. Which is a pointer that you need an automated patient’s A/R system to follow-up on missing and denied claims until they are fully paid.
Now that you have solid reasons to automate patient A/R, the next big question is how to do it.
Obtain and verify patients’ data
First, you must obtain data from patients before verification. Verification of data is necessary because without the right data, there’ll be stumbling blocks in recovering due payments.
Your claims can be denied if you fail to do the most important thing — obtain and provide the right data. Through verification, you confirm that the patient, provider, or guarantor aren’t only correct but up-to-date.
How to obtain and verify data
1. Enter patient, provider or guarantor’s information and see if the details are correct.
2. Keep records of all patients’ visits and consultations.
3. Double-check patient’s billing information before keying them into the billing system.
4. Send bills to guarantors, providers, or patients based on the information you have.
5. Quickly post and adjust resulting payments.
Spell out patients’ responsibilities
This is where many health providers miss it — they fail to effectively communicate patients’ responsibilities. The next step after data verification is to clearly spell out what’s expected of the patient and payment options.
The thing is, verification tends to unravel so much about patient’s bill payment which many patients aren’t even fully abreast of. It’s expedient that you communicate their parts to them — inform patients of the expectations regarding what they and their insurance company/guarantor are to pay.
And see to it that the patient fulfills their part of the payment. If you fail to do this, you’ll find it difficult to recover all patient A/R due to you.
How to communicate patient’s responsibilities
1. In clear sentences, verbally communicate patients’ responsibilities to them when you see them in person.
2. Send follow-up text messages. People may not pick up their calls, but they do read their text messages and emails. For this reason, it’s recommended to use an automated patient support system that sends follow-up messages to your patients.
3. Answer every question patients might have and ensure they understand and accept your terms.
4. Prepare an agreement with all the necessary information that spells out the patient’s duties and that of your establishment for both parties to sign.
Carefully monitor payers and look out for payment issues that may arise
This point is the main reason why you’re still in business. Full recovery of patient A/R is unachievable if payers aren’t closely monitored, and payment issues remain unaddressed.
When it comes to debt recovery, companies should remain vigilant in monitoring whoever is responsible for paying the patient’s A/R. Let’s be honest — it can be very unclear, especially when you’re dealing with insurance companies.
Parties involved in paying patient’s A/R are looking out for their interest, and so should you.
Get started with these recommended steps:
1. Set up an automated patient billing system: With 15 minutes being the average amount of time spent on each patient statement, you must automate this process in order to focus on other aspects. An automated patient billing system helps you communicate, correct and collect payments from patients and their guarantors.
2. Ensure to follow up on all denied claims: If the insurance companies are denying the healthcare claims, find out why and where the problem is coming from. This stage requires looking into every possible cause of the consumer’s denial. Keep in mind that it could be your fault or that of the insurance company.