Ric Sinclair, Vice President of Product, ZirMed: With the rise in patient financial responsibility, it might be tempting to double-down on traditional collections processes. But as anyone who works in healthcare knows, these processes have never worked all that well to begin with — hence the 49 percent of patient responsibility that ends up being written off as bad debt.
If healthcare organizations don’t have effective modeling and prioritization of patient accounts — if they rely on credit score or other overly simplistic metrics to populate collections work flows and build work queues — they inevitably spend an excessive amount of time and money chasing balances that have a higher cost-to-collect, and that may not be collectible in the first place. A more accurate analysis factors in historical healthcare payment behavior, as well as where the patient stands in terms of progress toward deductible and how the patient’s coverage (and thus, expectations) has changed over time.
If you would like to share your RCM best practices, please email Carrie Pallardy at cpallardy@beckershealthcare.com to be featured in the “RCM tip of the day” series.
More articles on revenue cycle management:
5 things to know about surprise medical bills
7 thoughts on the future for integrated RCM systems
PatientPay e-billing reduced expenses by 30% at Women’s Health Care Group
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