A Few Tips to Improve Patient Collections

Strategy for Patient Collections

Here are five tips and strategies to help improve patient collections.

Retrain front-desk staff

The most important approach is to train (or retrain) the staff that serves as the first point of contact for patients: your front-desk staff. Make sure they are able to look at patient accounts when checking in a patient. As they are confirming insurance and demographics, they can politely remind the patient about a past-due balance and ask how the patient would like to pay it. It’s crucial to not ask a yes or no question such as, “Do you want to pay your balance today?” The answer will usually be “no.” It works much better to ask if the patient would prefer to pay with a check or credit card.

Ask a staff member to step up

Make sure your front-desk person, in addition to their regular duties, is assigned to work the list of past-due balances. She can call patients about their balances in between answering phones and checking patients in and out. Make sure that the person you choose has excellent phone etiquette, but also has tenacity to not take “no” for an answer.

Don't keep chasing patients

Then, of course, there is the persistent non-paying patient. Every phone call and letter sent to the patient costs your practice money and cuts into the revenue you could receive from that delinquent payment. Don’t keep chasing a non-payer. Set very clear rules on just how many calls or letters you will send.

Make the consequences clear, and stick to them

At a minimum call two times and send two “dear patient” letters. In the letters make it very clear that failure to contact us about payment will result in dismissal from the practice and having the account turned over to collections. Remember if you must turn the account over to a collection agency, you will receive pennies on the dollar. Although, many patients will send you the entire amount once they have been sent to collections in order to have their name removed from these services.

Dismiss when necessary

When a patient does ultimately pay his past-due balance, you must decide whether you want to continue seeing him. If you think that he or she will continue to be difficult with paying his bills to you in a timely manner, you may need to terminate the doctor-patient relationship. Just remember you must give the patient a 30-day grace period in which you will see him for urgent matters (otherwise you risk being charged with patient abandonment). However, do remember that you have an ethical responsibility to care for patients even if they have a balance. Should they be very ill when coming into your office, you cannot turn them away that day because of the money they owe you. For non-urgent services such as consults or physical exams, you can postpone the appointment until the balance is paid.

You work very hard each day at your practice and your practice has bills to pay in a timely manner. Make sure you work those patient responsibility accounts receivable regularly, and collect the money due to your practice.

Additional Resources for Patient Collections

Need help with organizing patient collections? We have an extensive library of forms and checklists to help you streamlines process and stay on top of collections. Take a look here