With patient payment responsibility increasing each year, medical practices need to be extra diligent in collecting patient payments. This includes sending accounts to collections when necessary. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to make collections easier and more effective—both of which contribute to more revenue for your practice.
Here are three ways to improve your medical billing collections.
1. Be clear about your payment expectations
Make sure patients know when they will be expected to pay, and what payment methods you accept. Collecting copays before each visit is one of the best ways to avoid having accounts sent to collections, so making payment a part of the check-in process is a good idea. Post signs throughout the office to keep bills top of mind for patients. The more reminders you give patients about their payment responsibility, the less you will have to deal with collections.
2. Reach out to patients who have stopped paying
Keep an eye on delinquent accounts. If an account is approaching 30-60 days past due, it’s time to reach out to the patient. Try to have an empathetic conversation to see what you can do to help them pay off their bill. If they are experiencing financial difficulties, offer to adjust the payment terms to something more suitable to their situation. Even if it means you are only collecting part of their payment now, both the practice and the patient will be better off in the long run.
3. Automate what you can
The collections process is slow and cumbersome—if you’re doing everything manually. Software like BillFlashIntegrated Collection Services saves your staff a lot of time by handling the manual processing for you. After that, all you need to do is approve which accounts to send to collections, based on the aging and amounts you prefer, and a collections expert will get to work collecting your revenue.
ABOUT EZCLAIM: As a medical billing expert, EZClaim can help the medical practice improve its revenues since it is a medical billing and scheduling software company. EZClaim provides a best-in-class product, with correspondingly exceptional service and support. Combined, EZClaim helps improve medical billing revenues. To learn more, visit EZClaim’s website, email them, or call them today at 877.650.0904.
[ Contribution from the marketing team at BillFlash ]
How to Modernize Your Medical Billing Payments Now
It is now very important to modernize medical billing payments capabilities since upwards of 80% of medical services that don’t get paid by insurance, never get paid!
Are you tired of providing medical services and not getting paid? Have you billed patients for their medical visit or co-pay just to find out that the bill showed up in collections? Are you looking for a better way to use modern technology to increase the number of medical claims being paid on time? If you own a medical practice or work in the medical billing industry, then chances are you have answered each question with a hearty “Yes!”
Last month, medical billing industry leaders came together to discuss how medical practices can streamline their paymentsystems and integrate credit card processing into their billing system. [ Participants: Dan Loch (VP of Sales & Marketing, EZClaim), Tony Peterson (VP of Business Development, BillFlash), and Michael Jones (Payment Services Analyst, FullSteam) all joined host Susan Martinez (Sales Consultant, EZClaim) ].
• CHANGING SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES: The practices that are winning in the payment collections game, and seeing the highest percentage of claims paid, are the offices that have updated their systems from the old school and traditional forms of payment collection to the modern, state-of-the-art systems with payment integration. Plain and simple, this means first educating the patient from the moment they walk in the door and streamlining your payments into one medical billing system to prevent human error. [ Click here to LEARN MORE ].
• STREAMLINING CREDIT CARD PROCESSING: Practices often have jumped headlong into credit card processing by using simple systems with variable fees like Square or Stripe. The problem with that is two-fold: First, understanding processing fees, and secondly, avoiding the errors that occur in the steps of processing those purchases over to the billing record. However, now EZClaim’s medical billing software has an integrated payment feature—which streamlines the billing and simplifies the fees. [ Click here to LEARN MORE ].
These are only a few of the very informational topics that were discussed during this podcast. If you are interested in learning how your practice can put these systems in place, increase patient payments, and simplify your billing process in your office, then click here to listen to the podcast and prepare to learn some new, up-to-the-minute ‘insights’ on modern medical billing systems.
ABOUT EZCLAIM:
EZClaim is a medical billing and scheduling software company that provides a best-in-class product, with correspondingly exceptional service and support. Combined, they help improve medical billing revenues. To learn more, visitEZClaim’s website,e-mail them, or call them today at 877.650.0904.
It IS POSSIBLE to improve medical billing revenues, and here are a few ways to do just that.
Healthcare practitioners, whether established or just starting out, have many overwhelming tasks: Managing a practice; Seeing patients; Working to staying up-to-date on administrative tasks; The whole host of compliance at the federal, state, and local level; and Overseeing the billing.
One of these that can lead to loss of revenue is not properly managing the medical billing, which can also lead to HIPAA fines and rejected claims. However, there is a solution: a medical billing system that balances the budget and optimizes revenues of medical practice.
EZClaim, an expert in the medical billing software market since 1997, provides a solution that improves the efficiency of an office’s billing process in many ways. The following are the primary reasons.
Reduce Coding Errors Medical procedures become codes, codes become claims, and claims become revenue. Any error in this process can make claims to be denied, your workload can be increased, and revenue can be lost. To help in avoiding errors, it is essential to use billing software that offers the easiest implementation and access to descriptive diagnosis and treatment codes. EZClaim’s medical billing solution offers ease-of-use in coding, billing, and strong partnerships with Clearinghouses which act as an additional ‘safety net’ for catching errors.
Administrative Support Most medical practices are a small team of people tackling a wide range of tasks, so when one cannot understand the function of the billing software, accessing reliable support is very important. EZClaim prides itself on having dedicated support experts available, and that was how the company was established. Founder and President Al Nagy has said, since day one, “We are a support company that happens to sell medical billing software.”
Maintain Industry Compliance It is important to recognize that industry compliance and a practice’s revenue go hand-in-hand. Filing and batching inaccurate and non-HIPAA compliant claims can often be traced back to an outdated healthcare revenue management system. Conquering these tasks requires a focus on multiple fronts: A properly trained billing team, clear office procedures, patient payment policies, and a reliable medical billing company. These are all ways to help buttress against non-compliance and rejected claims.
Streamline Workflow Recently, a study was done that showed almost 80% of medical bills contain errors. These incorrect medical claims often end up as lost revenue originally, not to mention the additional cost of resubmissions and collections. One of the best ways to resolve this problem for your practice is to make use of both well-trained, experienced billers and coders, combined with a competent medical billing solution that aids in catching these errors. EZClaim software features a library of standard validation, the ability to add custom validation, and integrates with Alpha II for full claim scrubbing.
Follow up Errors will and do occur, so establishing a system for follow-up on all denials will close the loop and protect against lost revenue. Being consistent with the follow-up process, and having a medical billing solution that tracks these things will help close that gap.
Collections Finally, probably the most important aspect that optimizes a practice’s revenue is to get paid. Portals and payment collection systems definitely help with this, but having collections integrated into the medical billing system is, of course, the best. EZClaim has pain-free payment processing integrated into their solution, called EZClaimPay. It solves all the problems associated with payment processing: Bank deposits, reconciliation, statements, changing fees, and ‘finger-pointing’ when there is a problem. EZClaimPay’s robust platform will greatly increase a practice’s collections success, and improve their revenue.
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ABOUT EZCLAIM: EZClaim is a medical billing and scheduling software company that provides a best-in-class product, with correspondingly exceptional service and support, and can help improve medical billing revenues. To learn more, visit their website, e-mail them at sales@ezclaim.com, or call a representative today at 877.650.0904.
As Patient Payment Responsibility continues to increase, sending patients to collections efficiently & effectively is more critical to the financial health of your practice than ever before. Here are some helpful tips to optimize your patient collections process.
Communicate your collection policy upfront
Integrate your collections process with your billing
Consider offering discounts for self-pay patients
Accept multiple forms of payment
Offer multiple payment options
Require patients to make “good faith” payments
Practices that employ the following practices can help prevent sending patients to collections or make the collections process much more efficient and effective.
1.Communicate your collection policy upfront
Prior to patient appointments, clearly communicate your collection policy. This helps the patient plan ahead to pay in full in the specified time period. This is especially important for patients that must meet a deductible or coinsurance amounts towards the out of pocket expenses. When patients are aware in advance, they are more likely to make some of their payment upfront. In addition to pre-visit communications, specify your collections with signs in your office, intake forms, information documents, and on your website.
2. Integrate your collections process with your billing
The current process to send patients to collections is tedious, time-consuming, and prone to error and miscommunications. That’s because staff must constantly and manually pull lists of patients eligible for collections and send all the necessary patient information to the agency. Plus, all the complex back and forth communications, followed by posting accounting for the payments.
Leveraging an automated patient billing system like BillFlash, you can create rules based on aging and minimums that queue up patients eligible for collections and send all the necessary information to begin the collections process. Practices can manage the entire collections process right in the patient billing system including setting rules, approving accounts for collections, and reports. To learn more, call NexTrust BillFlash at 435-940-9123 or visit collections.billflash.com
3. Consider offering discounts for self-pay patients
While insured patients receive discounts through their insurance provider, self-pay patients are responsible for their full payment. As an incentive to pay bills in a timely manner, offering self-pay patients a discount to pay in a timely fashion could reduce accounts sent to collections, improve the patient payment experience, and help improve your cash flow.
4. Accept Multiple Forms of Payment
Limitations in accepted payment methods and payment options can be a liability for your practice in getting paid quickly, and sometimes, getting paid at all. You can remove these barriers by incorporating payment systems that make it easy to accept all card types as well as payment plans. The BillFlash Billing and Payment system lets you offer these payment options to your patients simply. Patient billing and payments can then be synced with EZClaim because of the existing integration with BillFlash.
5. Offer Multiple Payment Options
Patients may find themselves in collections because out of pocket expenses are often much higher than they expected and can sometimes be thousands of dollars. Offering various payment methods and payment plans improves the patient experience and overall satisfaction.
Limitations in accepted payment methods and payment options can be a liability for your practice in getting paid quickly, and sometimes, getting paid at all. You can remove these barriers by incorporating payment systems that make it easy to accept all card types as well as payment plans. The BillFlash Billing and Payment system lets you offer these payment options to your patients simply. Patient billing and payments can then be streamlined because of the existing integration with BillFlash.
6. Require patients to make ‘good faith’ payments
If a patient is not paying their balance in full, requiring them to pay a portion of the payment is a helpful first step in keeping their commitment to fully meeting their financial responsibility. These small steps not only make the debt more manageable for patients but creates payment momentum for future payments so that at 90 or 120 days they owe much less and are less likely to be candidates for collections.
With increasingly more patient payment responsibility, the risk for patients being sent collections can rise as well. So, helping your patients avoid collections and optimizing your collections process when collections become necessary, can bring big financial returns
Call NexTrust today at 435-940-9123 or email at sales@billflash.com or go to collections.billflash.com to learn how collections are now integrated with automated patient billing and payments to improve the financial health of your practice.
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Patient Payments – Written by Stephanie Cremeans of EZClaim
Why do I have a balance? The golden question regarding patient payments every physician’s office staff member dreads beginning January 1st. Unfortunately, your patients are not usually savvy when it comes to the nuts and bolts of their contract, and they are frustrated. They thought their plan was good, but now they have a bill.
68% of patients failed to fully pay off medical bill balances in 2016, up from 53 percent in 2015, and 49 percent in 2014. This number is expected to climb to 95% by 2020
So here we are, in 2020. Let’s make sure your office is equipped and able to collect patient payments for services rendered rather than becoming a part of this scary statistic.
Begin with the basics. Make sure that your staff understands these key terms and is comfortable explaining them to your patients.
Deductible – The deductible is the amount the patient has to pay for covered services before the insurance plan pays. Some insurance plans will apply an office visit to the deductible, others will not. Family plans typically have an individual and family deductible.
Copay & Coinsurance – These are both the portion the patient will be responsible for after their deductible has been met. Copays are a set, flat fee. Coinsurance is a set percentage that the patient will pay.
Max Out of Pocket – This is the limit of what a patient will pay for covered services within a plan year. Again, on family plans, there may be an individual max and a family max.
Keep in mind your staff will not know the details of your patients’ plans, nor should they be expected to! In the ever-changing world of health insurance, our patients need to become better consumers. So just being able to explain these key terms and why they create a patient balance will help them become better insurance plan shoppers!
Use your tools. Look into using Integrated Eligibility (available through your billing software and your clearinghouse). This will allow your staff to check remaining deductible balances, copay, and coinsurance amounts with the click of a button. These results allow practices to confidently collect at the time of service rather than spending time and money on sending statements and working collections after the visit.
Create a plan and stick to it. Use this time to review the efficiency of your patient collections plan. Are you using an outdated plan or policy? Have you considered offering payment plans to patients with an HSA card kept on file? Make sure that your employees understand how important patient collections are to the practice, educate them on the plan, and support them when they hold patients accountable to the patient collections policy.
For more information on how EZClaim can help you with this journey, schedule time with our sales team. Ready to get started? Download your free 30-day demo today!
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