It’s the time of year when patient deductibles reset. As such, patient payments due at intake are 2 to 3 times higher than they normally are.
For the average practice, there is over $10,000 of new, current, patient balances (not including past due).
- Open the ‘Self Pay Aging Report’ in your EMR.
- Note balances for the last two months – These are deductibles
- You collect 100% of self pay, there is no “contractual discount”
- Without collecting these deductibles, your practice will lose money on the associated treatments. Unacceptable
During Jan/Feb, deductibles cause
your patient self pay balances to
significantly increase.
We recommend you “huddle” with your Front Desk Staff, covering these points:
- Deductible, Coinsurance, Self Pay are all visible to the front desk when patients are checked in
- Note: Despite marketing as “integrated”, with web based PT EMR these balances are not visible at the front desk because billing is a separate software program. This costs you 3% to 4% of revenue.
- This primitive technology is unacceptable
- You deserve to work with a “trustworthy” EMR who doesn’t lie to you about billing integration
- Remind Staff that as healthcare evolves, patient obligations are increasing
- “We deliver exceptional outcomes, we deserve to be paid”
Make it clear that
- You expect these balances to be paid on intake
- You’ll be checking self pay balances several times per week
- You expect to see these balances decrease
- If the self pay balances continue to increase, there will be more meetings.
Manage this closely through January and February; it’s a lot of money!