Boosting Your Patient A/R Revenue

By Samara L Keaton

A comprehensive pre-collection (early-out) program has the potential to boost patient A/R recovery results by more than 60%. Although many practices understand the importance of a robust pre-collection program; few actually take the steps needed to implement one. To build a successful pre-collection process, it is important to have the right staff, system, guidelines and governance in place. Here are some simple guidelines to help ensure success:

1. Expand business office hours. For maximum recovery results, it is vital that patients reach a representative that can help when they call to inquire about a bill. It is also important for in-house medical recovery specialists to call patients when they are home - nights and weekends.


2. Require FDCPA Certification for all staff patient representatives. There are many laws governing consumers with regards to balances owed. It is essential for staff members to know and understand these laws and work within their guidelines.


3. Purchase a system that efficiently tracks progress and results for payment plan arrangements. If the patient balance is greater than $350, the patient is likely to require a payment plan. To recover all money owed on this obligation, an auto-payment plan system is extremely effective.


4. Procure an auto dialer system. If there are more than 200 patients to contact in a given month, it will be nearly impossible without a sophisticated auto dialing system. On average, it takes 17 phone call attempts before actually reaching a patient by phone. There is absolutely no way to effectively do this manually.


5. Provide adequate staffing dedicated to patient balance recovery. It will be necessary to have the requisite number of staff members trained and available to answer and handle incoming patient calls. Remember, these calls are the path to revenue. Patients "hate" going to voicemail when they want to speak to someone regarding their invoice(s).


6. Attain PCI Compliance. It is imperative to be 100% PCI compliant so as to take all major credit card payments by phone. Over one third of revenue received from patients is paid by credit cards, pay-pal, and/or e-checks. Don't lose out on this revenue.

As a rule, most back office medical systems and administration are focused on insurance billing and recovery - not patient billing and recovery. To be truly successful at in-house patient collections, the same focus and attention placed on the insurance process needs to be placed on the patient side.

The above recommendations have proven to be an effective model for significantly increasing patient A/R revenue. Outsourcing this component of the revenue cycle to a company specializing in patient bill processing and recovery is another option to reach the desired results.

Samara Keaton is the Operations Director at Millennia Patient Services (MPS). http://www.mpsonlineservices.com MPS provides revenue enhancing products and solutions to medical providers Nationwide.

Using their Fore-Sight technology, MPS can determine the lift a practice can expect to their revenue by using one of the MPS revenue enhancing solutions.

Call 1-888-531-6406 today for a free patient A/R valuation that will compare your current patient collection results against your peers and against your optimal patient collection potential.

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