Turning Red to Black Blog

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.

Throughout the course of the last year we have outlined many topics in our blogs that help achieve a high level of recovery of outstanding patient debt. This work is performed across billing departments, early-out self-pay philosophies and third-party debt collectors – all of which rely on different levels of tools and similar techniques. Grouping these specialists into a single bucket of professionals, we paint a broad picture of what the amalgamated “Revenue Cycle Professional’s” Christmas list looks like.

Fowl, potatoes, squash, corn, stuffing, cranberries… The days of the pilgrims bartering with their neighbors have long passed.  In today’s world, you need to be paid in cash – check, credit card, money order or actual, cold, hard cash – not pumpkin pie.  Though I think we can all agree a nice slice of pie can go a long way!  So what’s the best way to prepare for mealtime and ensure that your table will be set with a bountiful revenue return?  Collecting the best information, you possibly can.  Simply put, information is the key to setting your table for improved recovery of your delinquent accounts.

“Don’t be a Scrooge!” Sure, the message can make you feel that way. But everyone can relate to the crunch of the holiday season – debtors and collectors alike. Three months of back-to-back-to-back spends… mostly for our children; oftentimes for our friends and families as well.  We warm up with costumed crusaders and ghoulish traditions, sustained by sugar highs then slowly stewed and simmered through all-day extravaganzas of food and football consumption only to be amped right back up by the blitz of Black Friday and the three following shades of Monday – Cyber, Manic and Green – shot-gunned through a capitalized time warp of purchases and parties and delivered on Christmas Day for a weeklong bookend with New Years. Phew! It’s a great time of year, filled with love if you’re lucky, but it’s also a time when we all feel stress infringing on our time and tugging on our finances.