Reduce Bad Debt with These 5 Easy Steps

Did you know

- Up to 80% of patient responsibility goes uncollected?

- It takes an average of 70-90 days to collect from a patient?

Are these stats about unpaid patient payments hitting a little too close to home? If your healthcare practice is like the majority of others, you're probably tired of waiting for checks to come in the mail and the overwhelming amount of overdue patient payments.

We've compiled a list of 5 simple ways your practice can reduce bad debt. Bonus? All of these methods are easy to implement.

1. Online bill pay From the patient perspective, being able to pay a bill online is much more convenient than having to call into the practice and much more secure than mailing their payment info. With online bill pay, patients are able to pay their healthcare bills anywhere, anytime, day or night, rain or shine. This means that as a provider you're doing less manual work entering payment information, and your practice is able to get paid faster than snail mail. (Pssst... we're hosting a free webinar where we'll be discussing what every practice needs to know about offering online bill pay).

2. Automated/Recurring Billing Patients with large medical bills will often put off their payments until after due dates, if they pay at all. We suggest using an automated recurring billing system. How does it work? Your practice simply needs to enter the patient's payment info, enter the total amount due, and enter in the amount for each payment. By giving your patients the option to set up a payment plan for their large bills, your pra

ctice could be getting paid faster and in full without going

to a 3rd party collection agency. Setting up recurring payment plans also cuts down on the manual work your office staff is doing to enter payment information.

3. Payment info saved on file What if your patients could keep their credit card information on file with your practice? This makes for easy and fast post-care payments. By keeping a card on file for your patients, your staff can easily charge a visit to a patient's account without having to fuss with sending a paper statement through the mail.

4. Collect more at the point of care/registration With your patient's payment information saved on file, you can eliminate paper billing and delayed payments. No longer will your practice need to create a statement, mail it out, and play the waiting game on checks and credit card numbers. Patients can easily pay their bills right from your office.

5. Quick and easy refunds Refunds? I thought we were talking about getting paid? Worry not, we still are. Everyone makes mistakes, and by the off chance that an incorrect amount gets charged to your patient, you want to have a simple, easy to use system for refunds. You won't have to worry about making irreparable billing mistakes and your patients will appreciate the efficiency of their refund.