Improving your patient payment collection during a pandemic should be your top priority in your financial plan this year. You may think why to focus on patient collection, because with half of the employers pushing high deductibles plans onto workers. Patients are facing bigger medical bills, one they never prepared to pay.
If patients deny to pay then your practice may be in risk. It is found that the patient’s co-pay alone make up about 20% of a physician’s office revenue. Most of the physician’s practices only collect a dismal 60% of patient co-pays. A further drop in this collection rate is because you need to prepare for ICD-10 and meet the important requirements of medical billing, this would be bad news for your practice. Especially when you are running a small practice with a tight budget.
Providers are feeling the challenges of a public health crisis turned economic emergency.
Two in five working-age adults do not have stable health coverage because of the pandemic, and more than one-third are having medical bill problems, the Commonwealth Fund recently reported.
High deductibles and a potential surge in self-pay patients are making it difficult for physicians to collect patient payment collection.
Here are some ways to optimize collection even during a pandemic:
Patient Eligibility and Coverage Verification
Patient insurance coverage and verify the eligibility of services is the best practice of Revenue Cycle Management. This step is very important when there is an increasingly fluid coverage environment.
The provider has some options to collect patient responsibility when there is no insurance coverage of the patient on the data of service.
Insurance verification can provide solutions to identify the source of insurance for patients, whether it be Medicare, Medicaid, or commercial insurance. The solutions query hundreds of different payers to identify valuable sources of coverage for patient accounts.
Identifying unknown coverage prevents patients from the higher costs of being a true self-pay account and helps providers prevent lags in A/R by going after insurance even during pre-service.
Online Payment Service
Almost half of the healthcare consumers are frustrated with their providers patient billing and collections process. Especially those providers who are not yet digital. Unconsolidated medical bills, inadequate customer support, lack of digital payment options e.g. credit card payment, are often reasons why patients are not excited to pay medical bills.
Website and patients’ portals are other ways providers can connect with their patients digitally. These tools can help providers for self-scheduling and telehealth services, these two are important capabilities patients are seeking during the pandemic.
Price Transparency
Out-of-pocket cost estimation is valuable to patients who are facing high deductibles and those who are newly uninsured. The estimation sets realistic expectations for the patient and opens the way for a productive conversation about patient payment responsibility.
Insurance verification and technologies are two keys to determining cost estimates for patients, awareness about price transparency strategy is a crucial step.
About Medical Billers and Coders
We are catering to more than 40 specialties, Medical Billers and Coders (MBC) is proficient in handling services that range from revenue cycle management to ICD-10 testing solutions. The main goal of our organization is to assist physicians looking for billers and coders.
With almost 12 years of experience in healthcare revenue cycle management, this Revenue Cycle Specialist brings deep expertise in medical billing, claims optimization, and practice profitability. Shares industry-backed insights focused on improving collections, reducing denials, and driving operational excellence.
