You must have financial office policies in place to maximize your profits: part I.
In summary, it is clear that A/R and collections relate to the business side of medicine and are critical to your financial success. After patient care, your focus should be on getting paid for your services and collecting what is due, having a fine-tuned billing process with all its components working in a coordinated fashion, maximizing revenue, managing patient payments and overdue accounts, and ensuring that your employees are operating in a trustworthy manner. The key to managing your A/R is to be consistent while at the same time flexible with your patients. Staff training and continuing education must be a job requirement. Setting performance and expectation standards is necessary for each and every employee. In your training sessions, which must include all providers, staff members must understand the tasks for which they are accountable and how their individual roles contribute to the success of the entire practice. Remember that the overall goal in managing your A/R is to collect what is due you on a timely basis. The longer funds are due from the patient or insurance company, the longer the practice waits for the money. In some cases, you may never receive payment, so it is critical that you have a team in place to act on collections and everyone in your practice is on the same page. Your staff must learn to work smarter, not harder, when it comes to collecting what you have earned.
The Cascardo Consulting Group, and Fellow, New York Academy of Medicine, USA. dcascardo@aol.com
Debra
D
Cascardo
D000067:Accounts Payable and Receivable; D006801:Humans; D007349:Insurance, Health, Reimbursement / Q000191:economics; D010350:Patient Credit and Collection / Q000191:economics*; D011216:Practice Management, Medical / Q000191:economics*