Why didn't my doctor tell me.....?

I often hear from patients asking "why didn't my doctor tell me I had to pay today?" It is important to educate patient's on your medical office's financial policy. Not only is it good customer service, but it makes good business sense.

In recent years, the entire health care industry has become more aggressive in their collection practices. With the ever-rising costs associated with health care, it is extremely important to the livelihood of any facility to get the maximum reimbursement which largely relies on patient payments.

Deductibles, copays and coinsurance amounts can add up to lots of dollars loss if sufficient efforts are not made to collect these out of pocket expenses from your patients. Collecting the patient responsibility is just as important as collecting from the insurance companies. But when does aggressive collection procedures cross the line to delivering poor customer service?

Here are some collection do's and don't for your medical office.