Whether you run a cash practice or only receive copays from your patients, you probably lose too much time and money chasing down patients who owe money. Making a few simple adjustments can help you save time while increasing your collection rates.
Flip Your Billing Process
Most dentists have patients stop by the front desk to settle their accounts after their appointments. Why? Because that’s how it’s always been done. But the reason it’s always been done that way is that in the days of cash payments and handwritten checks, you needed to know the final total before starting the billing process.
Today, you can take an electronic payment authorization and verify their dental insurance information as patients sign in. This will cut down on the number of people who forget to pay on their way out, and your patients will thank you for saving them an extra step.
Send Detailed Invoices
If patients don’t understand their bill or believe they should have been covered by insurance, they’ll be more likely to refuse to pay. Include a line-by-line breakdown on each invoice of what is and isn’t covered, as well as the split between insurer and patient responsibility.
Your invoices should also include detailed, plain-English explanations of the procedures performed. Put the billing codes in a separate column for the insurance company, and then pretend that column doesn’t exist and make sure the invoice can be understood by anyone unfamiliar with medical billing.
Eliminate Checks
Is your practice one of the last places you know that still uses checks as a primary form of payment or that even takes them at all? With consumers paying an all-time high of $15 billion per year in overdraft fees, largely from bounced checks, it’s time to reduce your risks.
By only offering forms of payment that are instantly verifiable, such as credit and debit cards, you can all but eliminate the risk of returned payments. In addition to reducing bad debts, you’ll cut the labor costs of having to deal with bounced checks as well as the cost of bank fees that you may be afraid to pass on to patients who write bad checks. These hidden costs can be much higher than the two to three percent fees credit card companies charge.
Adopt New Payment Technologies
There are now 150 million people using Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Android Pay. These services offer processing fees that are equal to or similar to traditional credit card processing.
Offering these payment options gives you an additional form of instantly guaranteed payment and makes it harder for patients to forget to bring a method of payment. Additionally, patients who like the convenient, high-tech approach will have higher satisfaction levels.
Don’t Offer Payment Plans
This may go against conventional advice, but consider not offering payment plans — at least not before large procedures or for current accounts. With the ease of obtaining a credit card these days, do you really want to take on the risk of collecting from a patient who can’t qualify for one? By guiding patients toward using their cards, you’ll be paid instantly — plus they’ll still have the convenience of paying over time.
For past due accounts, you may need to be a little more flexible to ensure you get paid without losing the patient permanently. For example, you could require a small monthly payment to avoid collections, and then a push to use a credit card to balance the account.
Go Online
Despite your best efforts, some patients will still slip through the cracks. Using an online invoicing system allows you to set up automatic payment reminders that prompt patients to pay with the push of a button.
This will let you spend less time tracking who owes what and playing phone tag, and more time actually providing care for your patients.