Medical billing collection is a challenging business.
Whether you are a debt collection agency, an extended business office, or the accounts receivable department that manages healthcare collections, many struggles are the same.
- Bad medical collection practices can damage a healthcare facility’s reputation.
- Bad internal communication can impact medical billing collection results.
- Poor patient education can cause lower healthcare collection numbers.
Your business can combat these struggles and collect more through good internal policies, empathy, and the right healthcare collections solutions.
Reputation Risk in Medical Billing Collection
Bad medical collection practices can hurt your company’s or your client’s reputation.
Unlike other businesses with one-time consumers, healthcare organizations rely on longstanding patient relationships to thrive.
Negative patient interactions can damage a medical facility’s image and the trust it has worked to build in the community.
These interactions aren’t just limited to a patient visit. A bad payment experience can cause bad online reviews, lost patients, and negative word-of-mouth.
One of the easiest ways to boost your (or your client’s) reputation is to make communication and payment easy.
- Offer email and SMS communication for a better patient experience.
- Make payment requests fast and easy to complete through a message or a secure online payment portal.
- Send bills and policy documents securely, in the same message as a payment request. That way patients have everything they need in one workflow.
Build Trust With Empathy in Healthcare Collections
There are many reasons a patient might be struggling to pay a medical bill.
As the AR professional in charge of these collections, it’s important to be empathetic of a patient’s circumstances.
- Managing a recent or ongoing health issue can make it hard to stay on top of paying bills.
- It might be hard to find money for an expensive, unexpected medical treatment.
Remember, most people want to resolve their debts and just need help understanding how.
Communicating with empathy and providing solutions (like affordable recurring payments) will go a long way toward building a good reputation and collecting more revenue.
Build Trust with Custom Branding
Digital communication is more widely used now than ever before.
Healthcare practices and medical collection companies often use email and text messaging to send invoices, collect payments, and engage patients.
How can you encourage more patients to trust these messages? Custom branded elements make it more clear that your company is legitimate and messages aren’t a scam.
PDCflow offers many custom branding options for building patient trust:
- Use your own company’s email domain
- Use your logo and brand colors
- Add a custom footer for compliance messages or customer support contact information
Improve Completion Rates with Custom Branded Transactional Emails & Flow Reminders
Build Trust With Security and HIPAA Compliance
Patients might be concerned that receiving messages from your company isn’t secure.
If patients think your payment security is questionable, or don’t know if their personal information is protected, it can damage your reputation.
Many companies choose PDCflow as a medical billing solution because it is HIPAA compliant, and reduces PCI compliance scope.
Back Office Communication in Healthcare Collections
No matter who is collecting on medical bills, communication behind the scenes is essential.
Your whole team should have access to information all in one system, so everyone is on the same page.
- AR departments need access to standard, approved templates for messaging patients about requesting a copay, health insurance ID card, or payment.
- Extended business offices and third party collectors need a system that helps to manage opt-outs, to follow compliance.
- Finance departments all need to have controlled access to message templates, reporting, and automated event notifications.
- All of your staff need to be able to log into your messaging, document, and payment system (no one should be sharing a login).
To simplify medical collections, use document and payment software like PDCflow that encourages team collaboration and offers strong reporting.
- No per-user charges, so your whole team can log in and use the software without racking up extra costs.
- Automated event tracking means your team can get notifications at every stage of a payment request, so you know when a large medical bill has been resolved.
- Organization management features mean administrators can control what departments or locations can access templates and reporting.
- We monitor email and SMS opt-outs, and help you honor patient communication preferences.
Patient Education in Healthcare Collections
Higher deductible healthcare plans, copays, and other changes in medical insurance have shifted more payments away from insurance companies and toward individual consumers.
This means all parties have a responsibility to understand the billing and payment process, including patients.
Agencies and creditors may find this works better if patients are informed of their responsibility and payment options.
- Explain billing processes ahead of time and offer recurring payment schedules for those struggling with large medical bills.
- Link to financial literacy information from your debt collection website or medical office website.
- Educate patients dealing with hardship about financial aid options that may be available.
PDCflow for Medical Billing Collections
PDCflow’s document, payment, and esignature software makes sending messages and taking payments easier.
With PDCflow’s all-in-one system, your medical office or debt collection agency can engage patients faster through digital channels and send everything they need in one message.
- Email and SMS: Reach patients faster with the channels they prefer to use. No more manual phone calls about an overdue bill.
- HIPAA compliance: HIPAA compliant messaging, so you can send documents securely to patients.
- Event tracking: Sign up for notifications and track your message to know when a patient has opened, paid and completed the request.
- Native payments: Payments are native to our software, not through a plugin.
- Recurring payment schedules: Help patients with large balances pay down their account with flexible recurring payment options that work for them.
- Payment portals: Self-serve online payments, so patients can resolve their bill without reaching out to your office. Our payment portals can include self-serve recurring payment setup, for patients who want to create a schedule themselves.
- Custom branding: Brand your messages with your own logo, colors, email domain, and custom text.
- Bulk sends: Send payment requests to up to 5,000 unpaid accounts at once through a simple spreadsheet upload. Great for settlement campaigns, payment reminders, and other large-scale campaigns.
- Multiple accounts: Good for third party collectors or medical offices with multiple locations. Add multiple accounts, so patient payments stay organized.
- Reporting: Get an overview of performance or drill down to specific transactions for detailed information.
Interested to learn more about how to improve your medical billing collections with PDCflow’s HIPAA compliant document and payment software? Sign up for a short demo today.
Book Demo
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
Hannah Huerta, Marketing Specialist
Hannah Huerta is a Marketing Specialist at PDCflow. She creates content for the accounts receivable and payment industry.
Related Articles
