Fee schedules are getting reduced every year. This means if you’re not on top of your patient collections at all times, revenue will be lost.

At MEREM Healthcare Solutions, one thing we know for sure is that poor revenue cycle management can be disastrous for a practice. The codes required for obtaining maximum revenue payout for billing medical claims are constantly changing, which brings numerous challenges for coders in an already busy practice. The coding and reimbursement landscape continues to change.

Impacts of High Deductible Health Plans

Due to patients having more responsibility for their healthcare costs, High-deductible health plans have a significant impact on your bottom line, from patient collections to bad debt.

You must also add in additional labor costs for the time required for your staff to focus on the collections side. Your billing process can no longer be something that gets a couple of hours of attention a day, it will constantly evolve and requires a dedicated staff or team to file and consistently work claims as well as dedicate additional time speaking with patients to discuss coverage and out-of-pocket costs.

Medical Billing and Coding – Let MEREM Health Help

With the increasing prevalence of High Deductible Health Plans and other aggressive patient cost-sharing models, it has never been more important to the financial health of your practice to have an efficient patient pre-collections program in place.

With a typical Medical Billing company, their patient collection efforts only go as far as issuing statements and generating “bad debt” reports of accounts that need to be turned over to collections. However,  we have found that when accounts reach this point, less than 50% of these balances are ever recovered.

At MEREM Healthcare Solutions, we work with our client partners to develop a Patient “Pre-Collections” strategy that is both aggressive and fair. We work with your front office staff and management to develop a Point-of-Service (POS) collections process to effectively collect more money up-front.

Additionally, you will have the added support of a dedicated medical billing team and a patient collections representative. Our patient collections reps work diligently to collect patient balances in full or to make payment arrangements within 90 days and will help you identify and transmit delinquent accounts to a third-party collections agency of your choice.

Contact Us today to learn more about our Patient Pre-Collections Services.

Patient Pre-Collections Solutions

Our Patient Pre-Collections Solutions include:

• 20 hours of consultant time to develop your customized solution
• Statements and collection letter processing
• Managing payment plan list to ensure patients meet their terms
• Running auto-dial lists to notify patients with delinquent accounts
• Aggressive follow-up on past-due surgical balances
• Custom reports to aid in POS collection efforts
• Diligent management of third-party collections accounts
• Ongoing support from our patient collection reps and management consultants

Request an Assessment of your patient AR to see how much money you could be leaving on the table! Contact MEREM Health at (205) 329-7519 or click here to send us an email.  We look forward to hearing from you!

MEREM Health provides exceptional collections and medical billing, coding and credentialing services for specialty physician practices, urgent cares, and diagnostic imaging centers. Take advantage of our medical billing and coding expertise today!

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After talking to over 100 orthopedic surgeons in the last month (mostly at AOSSM this past weekend), there seems to be some commonality that many are experiencing in their practices…..increasing accounts receivable.

Since 2005, High Deductible Health Plans [HDHP] have become increasingly more popular among employers. So much so, they have increased by almost 600% over the past twelve years, and half of all patients are expected to be covered by these plans by 2018. [Note: HDHPs are defined as plans with greater than $2,000 annual deductibles]. In addition, according to an analysis by the Advisory Board Company, patients with a $2,000 or above deductible are delinquent on paying their responsibility greater than 39% of the time, while that number grows to greater than 50% if their deductible is over $3,500.

So what does this mean for us as physicians and practice administrators? With patient responsibility on the rise, we have tio take a closer examination of our processes, and how we operate from the front line [Patient Registration] to Surgery. So how do we do all of this, keep a busy practice operating, and make this a manageable task that we can both review but also hold our teams accountable? Try this:

Diagram your patient intake and flow

• Identify the points with which you can collect dollars from patients, and identify what percentage you are currently collecting at those points.
• Test your staff on their knowledge of:
  • Insurance Verification
  • Identifying how much patient deductibles are and how to identified what’s been applied against them
  • Role play with your staff in collecting from patients, and provide them the training they need to compassionately work with these patients while focusing on the bottom-line needs of the practice.
• Identify your insurance rejections, and create a tracking system which will allow you to review these at least twice monthly to make sure your staff is focusing on these dollars. [Note: Insurance industry data show that 20% of all filed claims are rejected, and 65% of those claims are never resubmitted].

Provide patients with a cost estimate of services

• We know what services will cost generally, and provide this to your patients. [Note: Think of yourself in this role, would you ever let the plumber come to your house and just provide him an open checkbook to ‘fix’ things without knowing their cost?]
• According to multiple surveys in healthcare, only 55% of specialty practices require deposits when scheduling surgery. Ideally, the pre-surgery deposit will account for half of the deductible
  • Be willing to work with patients to collect these deductibles. There are alternative options [carecredit©, automated recurring payments, and securing a personal guaranty with a promissory note]. There’s never an excuse for losing a patient to a deductible, they’ll have the same deductible no matter where they seek care.

Identify Accountability

• No matter how you decide to tackle these items, create a way for you to track these opportunities, and hold yourself and your staff accountable to make sure these hard-earned dollars make it to where they are supposed to!

For more information on how we can help you with your revenue and practice, visit us at www.codecollect.net or call Lindsey Wingate at 205.329.7514.

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