Increasing Your Practice Collections

In today’s competitive healthcare space maintaining a healthy practice, and revenue is a challenging task. Things became much more complicated in the global corona pandemic as you were already dealing with the administrative burden and rising operating costs and trying to keep your practice profitable.

Strategies which will help you in increasing your practice collections:

Online Presence is Crucial

If you don’t have an online presence, it means you don’t have a presence at all. If you don’t have a practice website or any other form of online presence, you are falling behind. With 62% of patients using online reviews to find new doctors and 72% of patients browsing the internet for healthcare information, your online presence is a must. The first thing you have to do is create a practice website. The next step is to create social media profile for your practice and encourage your patients to share their feedback. Create your practice profile on the major review sites and submit your practice to online directories. All these steps will help you come up with search results which mean new patients are able to access your practice information and can make an informed decision.

Build a Better Appointment Schedule

Having an optimized appointment schedule will form a backbone for your practice collaborations. It’s not as simple as assigning time slots to your patients, it’s a fine balance of art and science. You have to keep a constant flow of patients as well as avoiding long wait times for both parties. Having an efficient staff, practice management software and emphasis on virtual care are a few things that will help you to have a better appointment schedule. Your staff must be in touch with patients and should send them reminders from time to time. This will reduce last-minute cancellations as well as better appointment rescheduling. This activity will also help in achieving better patient care.

Patients will be better informed about their medical treatments with the patient portal from the practice management software. Virtual visits have a lot of advantages and are an ideal and long solution that emerged in this pandemic situation. Virtual patient visits can be more flexible since patients can simply log in online from wherever they are. If patients can’t make it on time or if you have a 10-minute timeslot open in your day, you can get online and start a virtual visit. In virtual care, unlike a usual walk-in, the patient doesn’t have to wait around in the office until you’re free.

Minimize Missed Appointments

No-shows and late cancels affect your practice collections badly and it might cost your practice tens of thousands of dollars each year. There are ways that might help you to minimize such missed appointments. You can provide the option of virtual visits if they can’t visit your practice on time and are stuck at home or at work. Rather than focussing on cancellation policy and cancellation charges, try to understand the reason for cancellation and work on an efficient appointment system and reschedule accordingly. Rescheduling is a far better option if the patient has a genuine reason for cancellation. Having an efficient staff who is constantly in contact with your patients could do wonders for you. 

Work on Patient Practice Collections Strategy

With the rising number of patients with high deductible insurance plans, collecting patient responsibility is a real headache for many practice owners. Most of physicians are able to collect only 60% or less from the patient portion while the patient portion represents more than 20% of your practice collections. Having an eligibility and benefits verification process in place could help you to collect patient responsibility at the time of visit. With benefits verification, your patient will be well informed about their insurance coverage and out-of-pocket expense, if any.

Renegotiate Payer Contracts

Most providers are not aware that they can renegotiate their payer contracts and can increase their fee schedules. If you have the data to show that your practice is getting great care outcomes in a cost-effective way, you have the leverage to go back to payers and ask for a pay raise. While you can do this on your own, you may want to consider finding a qualified healthcare business consultant to help you make your case. The ROI will be well worth the cost.

Outsource Your Medical Billing

Outsourcing your medical billing operations to a reliable medical billing company could improve your practice efficiency and can increase your practice collections considerably. Medical billing companies will ensure all claims submitted to insurance companies are getting paid and might take follow-up on unpaid claims. They will also work on denied and rejected claims and directly contribute to healthy practice revenue. They will also share various reports which will give your an idea about the financial health of your practice on a weekly and monthly basis. 

Medical Billers and Coders (MBC) who is catering to more than 40 medical specialties, is proficient in handling medical billing and coding services as per your practice requirements. To know more about our medical billing services and how we can assist you in increasing your practice collections, please get in touch with us!

888-357-3226