Bad debt write offs – an example of digging deeper

If you are a Practice Administrator, one of your duties is to require a report of every account that is requested to be written off and review each one of them. But do you dig deeper before approving the write off? Here is an example.

A recent patient of a client of mine requested a write off an out-of-network fee of $362 for physician care while he was in the hospital for 3 days.  The Administrator checked his address in the local property tax records and guess what? He had a home with a tax value of well over $1M. The Administrator then looked up the address on Google Earth and guess what? The house was located on a golf course with a golf cart in the driveway.

No write off for this person! While I don’t recommend digging this deep for every write off, it does make sense whenever you are suspicious of one’s ability to pay.