Turning Red to Black Blog

Simon’s Agency has spent the last fifteen years continually implementing strategies that will help us grow and improve our operations as a whole.  Each and every part of our process is analyzed and enhanced in order to confront both the newest challenges as well as the age-old ones that require a constant dedication to improvement. This is why we generally double the national average collection success rate across all sectors of healthcare providers.* 

Over the last decade as Simon’s Agency has grown into a highly successful collection agency, we have prided ourselves on how often we hire first-time collectors as opposed to “seasoned,” lifelong debt collectors.  While we have certainly required collection experience for our managers and supervisors, our call center agents have more often than not come to us with little to no collection experience and there is a very important reason for this.

A call comes in and you have a patient on the phone. You have their account in front of you and know what they owe and why they owe it. But you don’t know what their circumstances are or if they are even ready to pay. How much time should you spend working with this patient?

What happens when you receive a call from your patient but they are insisting they cannot afford to pay the balance in full? At this point, the very first thing you should consider is that you have a willing payer on the phone. Don’t get thrown off balance by the negative implication of the patient being unable to pay the whole bill.  Instead, embrace the fact that they are calling to give you money. 

Before a successful billing and collections strategy can begin, your billing department needs to arm its employees with a plan of attack.  Developing a set of standard criteria gives your team the rules and direction they need to approach each account confidently and fairly.