For most clinics, payment collection is a critical issue. If the payment collection process takes too long or is too complex, it can easily result in missed payments—reducing the clinic’s income. Even if all other aspects of your orthopaedic practice are operating flawlessly, if your payment collection slips, then the practice as a whole may suffer.
So, improving the payment collection process to capture more payments from patients (and sooner) is important to the success of any practice. The question is, how can you increase your collection rate and shorten the delay between payment collection and the provision of care?
While many clinics opt to use payment collection services to remind delinquent payees of their debt, a better alternative may be to use point of service collections in healthcare. What is the point of service collection? More importantly, how can you enable collections at the point of care?
To put it simply, point of service collection is when your practice collects payments from a patient before they leave the clinic. This is preferable to post-visit collections because it means that the clinic can capture the payment sooner and more reliably handle any issues.
There are many things you can do to enable patients to pay at the point of care. Some valuable tips include:
Following these suggestions can help you streamline your payment process somewhat to increase collections at the point of care.
So, what should your orthopaedic clinic do if a patient is unable to pay at the point of care—such as if they had to be anesthetized and cannot provide consent for payment before leaving, or simply don’t have a payment method on them at the time?
Here, maintaining strong communication with patients can help. For example, if you have the patient’s email address, you could send payment reminders and invoices via email if they miss the payment due date.
If you have an online payment option via your patient portal, that can allow patients to easily provide payment—making your collections process easier for the patient. Automated reminders from such solutions can be used to encourage patients to visit their patient portal and approve payment.
Another way to increase collections is to use payment plans for patients with larger bills. Being able to break up one large bill into many smaller ones makes it easier for patients to pay what they can, when they can. It’s better to get a part of the payment owed rather than nothing, after all.
Setting up follow-up visits can also help to improve collections, as it gives your front office staff a chance to remind patients about outstanding balances during your patient check-in process.
Phoenix Kiosk, Phoenix Ortho’s solution for patient check-in management, helps to streamline your collections process workflow by giving patients a built-in solution for paying their outstanding balances.
By leveraging Phoenix Kiosk, you can allow patients to pay copays, outstanding balances, or payment plan installments directly from the Kiosk—improving payment collection for your orthopaedic clinic by making it easier for patients to pay at the point of care.
Point of service collections in healthcare can be a powerful tool for increasing your clinic’s cash flow. Are you ready to enable payment collection at the point of care? Reach out to the Phoenix Ortho team today to get started.