Medical Collections

Although you increase the quality of your patient's lives, and sometimes even save them, when it comes time for the patient to pay their bills, yours is often at the bottom of the pile. You are competing with other credit grantors that supplied a tangible product, or something they really enjoy like cable or their cell phone and therefore your medical collections problem is more difficult.

This is why it's important to learn as much as possible about your patient and make your credit policy clear before the medical service is actually given. This will help you minimize future medical collections problems. This is when the patient is most likely to be cooperative.

The information you should obtain is as follows:

> To aid medical collections, get the patient's full name and birth date.

> To aid medical collections, get the full name of the person financially responsible for the patient, full address, phone numbers for home, work, and a relative.

> To aid medical collections, get the patient's Social Security number.

> To aid medical collections, get the patient's present employer, job title, name of supervisor, address, & phone number.

> To aid medical collections, get the name and address of the patient's insurance company.

You should also verify insurance information at this time if possible to help with patient medical collections.

PREDICTING POTENTIAL MEDICAL COLLECTIONS PROBLEMS

Here are some things to look for that will help predict a potential medical collections problem:

Has the patient had several jobs in a short period of time?
Has the patient moved often?
Is the patient having personal problems?
Does the patient have a phone?

MEDICAL COLLECTIONS SCHEDULES AND PAYMENT ARRANGEMENTS

Some tips for billing and medical collections that have worked well for professional credit grantors are as follows:

Medical Collections Tip: Ask for payment at the time of the treatment, if possible. If they have insurance, ask for payment of the portion of the bill that will not be covered by insurance.

Medical Collections Tip: Provide an itemized statement within 30 days from their visit, if you cannot provide one at the time of treatment.

Medical Collections Tip: Send another statement 30 days later.

Medical Collections Tip: If no payment is received 14 days after the second statement has been sent, send a friendly reminder.

Medical Collections Tip: Call if there is no response 10 days after the friendly reminder is sent.

Medical Collections Tip: If there is still no response, send a final letter explaining that the account is being placed for medical collections.

WHAT NOW REGARDING MEDICAL COLLECTIONS?

There is a limit to the amount of time and effort that you should spend trying to collect on your past due medical accounts. You will know that any further medical collections efforts on your part will be unsuccessful if any of the following occurs:

- No response to your statements, letters and phone calls
- Missing scheduled payments as per your arrangement, for no reason
- Repeated complaints
- Idenying responsibility
- Mail is returned and you don't have a valid address
- Marital difficulties
- Phone is disconnected and there is no new listing
- Job loss

If any of these problems occur, you should place the account for medical collections immediately, the longer you wait the more difficult it is to collect or locate the debtor.