Since the launch of Obamacare, many practices are seeing more insured patients and those insured patients usually have pretty high deductibles and coinsurance.
If your office does not have a staff member who plays the role of financial counselor, you will probably need to make plans for how you intend to help your patients with these new higher deductible plans and your cash-only services or products that you offer. If you have any outstanding patient accounts receivable on your books right now, I would like you to think of that outstanding amount the same as carrying no-interest loans for people that do not go through an application process, have no guarantee of payment, and sometimes there is no promise of payment, and most likely nobody has ran any credit checks. Is this smart business? Not in my book.
To avoid misunderstandings and potential loss of revenue, we need patients to be educated on the process and to understand the burden they are asking the practice to carry. Some patients consider access to your service or products (healthcare in general) to be a right and not a privilege. Patients do not necessarily think of you as private business owner. How many times have you come across articles on "How To Negotiate Healthcare Debt?" and other such propaganda that establishes a patient's thought process to think that this is not a legitimate financial obligation but instead are inflated charges that were arbitrarily created so that we can negotiate or discount them later. This concerns me because by not collecting our patient obligations for contracted insurance plans, we put our practices at risk of violating our insurance contracts with that insurance and/or committing insurance fraud because if you are offering a reduced rate, you should have billed at that reduced rate.
I think that most dental providers have really done a great job at embracing the cash-based business model and educating their consumers that if you expect to receive their services, payment is required and not just expected at the time of service. I hope you caught that subliminal message. Medical providers for years have had a typical financial policy in place that states, "Payment is expected at the time services are rendered." This is not as strong of a statement; wouldn't you agree? It is essentially saying that you expect payment from the customer, but you are also communicating that payment is a want and not a need. As children, some of us learned the difference between a want and a need. An expectation is a want. A requirement is a need. Do you need or want your customers to pay you?
Many of us are afraid to demand payment or require payment at the time of service because their competitors are not and they fear that they will lose business. I must ask this; if you have a non-paying customer who threatens to take their business elsewhere, are you losing anything if they leave? I want you to remember quality is much better than quantity.
What is a quality patient or customer? How do we convert our existing patients into this category without losing them? We need to establish an educational process in our practices that creates quality and maintain our relationships and trust that we have already built with our patients. Through education, we are making it clear what our needs are for us to have a great working relationship up front and this will eliminate any misunderstandings later. A peeve of mine is when I come across online reviews with derogatory remarks about practices for billing or financial issues. To me, this just shows there was a breakdown in the communication process. In practices that I do revenue consulting for, I often see employees at the check in or check out desks that are "afraid to" or "feel bad" about asking a patient for their expected patient responsibility. When we do not educate a patient of their obligation and collect payment when service is rendered, we are not doing the patient any favors. Oftentimes when a patient receives a bill in the mail, they are angry because they were not expecting it. By educating and informing them when they're in front of us, we then give the patient the expectation that they will receive the bill and know ahead of time how they will handle this expense. Preparedness creates confidence and trust.
You empower your patients by communicating clearly before a service is rendered. If you are made aware of the cost of something, make a plan of how you will cover that expense and then proceed with an educated decision. Then you feel much more confident and certainly are not angry. You are given the freedom of choice. Most often people feel helpless when their choices are taken away.
We need to start our education process where our communication starts. We need to have employees who are all on board with our philosophy and are strong enough to enforce and protect it. Some people in healthcare are just not cut out to work in the for-profit side of healthcare. Think of the legal profession.
They recognize the distinction and you have legal professionals that work strictly as non-profit attorneys. People that seek positions need to rationalize that they have the same two choices in healthcare. They can work for the not-for-profits or the for-profit. Have a meeting with your staff to make sure everyone understands that you are a for-profit corporation that as such you require payment for the services and products that you offer. Everyone needs to understand that in addition to helping people, we are also there to be a successful business. Make sure they are comfortable with being part of this process. Every person in your office needs to know and accept that they are a part of the sale as well as the collections process. This is a great time to pull out that mission statement and see what we need to adjust for this economy. The team needs to function as a unit for completion of our goals.
All practice staff needs to be trained in "sales." The majority of people I run into hate "sales" because we hate to be "sold." But think about it, we are selling people on our services and products and then you must sell them on maintaining the relationship and also sell them on wanting to pay you before other pop-up obligations arise. Make your sales training fun. After all, you can sell through great customer service.