Do Your Patients Understand Their Financial Responsibility?
Almost 40% of patients are now covered by a high deductible health plan, leaving you to collect significantly more from your patients. (Change Healthcare, 2018) One has to wonder if the majority of them can afford their soaring deductibles. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 34% of insured adults find it difficult to afford their deductibles. (KFF, 2019) As a business owner, I can see the impact this trend is having on our bottom line. Nearly 25% of practice revenue now comes directly from our patients’ pockets. (Cerruti, 2015) With this shift in responsibility, it’s time to utilize technology to streamline our patients’ financial experience in our offices.
Provide a Financial Report-of-Findings
A financial report-of-findings is the perfect opportunity to sit down with your patients, explain the cost of the care recommended, review their insurance coverage, and estimate their total out-of-pocket expenses. Providing price transparency helps to ease your patients’ fears about receiving a higher-than-expected bill once care is complete.
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Make Collections a Top Priority.
Once a patient leaves your office, your ability to collect from them diminishes rather quickly. Research has shown that practices only collect 12% of outstanding balances at the time of service, while collecting nothing at all a shocking 67% of the time. (Byers, 2017) Establishing expectations with your front desk team should be a top priority. Utilize team meetings to review scripting and rehearse asking your patients for money to help everyone become comfortable with financial conversations. In our office, when front desk collections have been an issue, we’ve printed out the schedule for the day, highlighted those who should have paid a co-pay, co-insurance, or something toward their deductibles, then reviewed it at noon and the end of the day. The team member who checked the patient out would place his or her initials by the patient’s name. This creates top of mind awareness for team members and direct accountability. If no payment was made, the team member made a note to explain why.
Streamline the Payment Process.
Today’s patients want their healthcare experience to be as convenient as other aspects of their lives. More than half of all consumers prefer to receive bills electronically, and Americans already pay more than half their bills online. (Change Healthcare, 2018) You can offer auto-debit as a payment option for your patients and break up their out-of-pocket costs into affordable monthly or bi-monthly payments. You should also offer electronic bill delivery and give your patients the ability to pay online. This option is especially handy for those times when your patients leave their wallets at home.
The average out-of-pocket healthcare costs for patients with high-deductible plans in 2017 was $1,813. More than 15% of patients covered by high-deductible plans struggle to pay medical bills. One in ten of those with high-deductible plans either delayed, or decided against, receiving care, due to cost. (Change Healthcare, 2018) As a provider and small business owner, making these small changes to your practice can help increase patient collections, decrease the risk of bad debt, and improve patient satisfaction. What could be better than happy patients and an improved bottom line?
Dr. Ray Foxworth is a certified Medical Compliance Spe¬cialist and President of ChiroHealthUSA. A practicing Chiropractor, he remains “in the trenches” facing challenges with billing, coding, documentation and compliance. He has served as president of the Mis¬sissippi Chiropractic Association, former Staff Chiro¬practor at the G.V. Sonny Montgomery VA Medical Center and is a Fellow of the International College of Chiropractic. You can contact Dr. Foxworth at 1-888-719-9990, info@chirohealthusa.com or visit the ChiroHealthUSA website at www.chirohealthusa.com. Join us for a free webinar that will give you all the details about how a DMPO can help you practice with more peace of mind. Go to www.chirohealthusa.com to register today.
