Many medical practices take a lot of precautionary steps to ensure that they collect from patients prior to rendering services. However, one factor in a patient's policy is as unpredictable as the weather, the patient's annual out of pocket. This part of the patient's policy is as confusing as politics, so much so that not even the insurance plan themselves can you help you when attempting to estimate what to collect ahead of time from the patient. For this reason, it is paramount that a solid patient receivables plan of action be discussed between Doctor, management and office personnel. At the end of the day, ignoring patient receivables will not make them go away, and practically giving a collection agency free money is a disservice to your practice and yourself.

One way to protect your practice from ever increasing patient receivables as well as to help your practice overhead by saving in fees paid to a collection agency, is to provide all your patients with a clear Financial Policy as well as a Credit Card Authorization Form that will be kept secure with the patient's credit card information. This form will of course specify to the patient under which circumstances this credit card will be used. However, prior to implementing such a policy is it imperative that this new policy be carefully executed. Ensuring that only key employees have access to this information or having all employees sign confidentiality agreements is one way to protect yourself. Also, all staff members that deal with patient scheduling and/or coordination need to be properly trained on how this new policy will be enforced.



Implementing this policy has many advantageous results, such as saving on postage, reduced days outstanding of patient balances, etc., however, it also has very serious repercussions if not properly executed. If you need to help on successfully executing this policy in your practice KabriniMed Group, Corp. can help. We can be contacted at KabriniGroup@gmail.com for more information.