med-ar-blogger

Bad Debt Write-Offs

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:50:44 +0100

This is the 4th quarter and for tax purposes it is time to start reducing your yearly revenue to a realistic number.

This is the time that you will look at delinquent patient accounts and start writing them off as bad debt and then place the accounts out to collections.

When the accounts are collected those funds will now be counted as new income going forward.

Make sure that when you zero balance out a bad debt account that you put a note in the system that the account has been sent out for collections.

If an untrained employee sees a zero balance in your system they are apt to relay mis-information to a patient if there is no internal record of this tax liability reduction manuever.

We look forward to being your agency of choice when it comes to these types of accounts please feel free to reach Byron Hyter at 1-866-206-9589.

*Please consult with a professional CPA before using this technique to confirm that it will indeed produce the desired tax relief you seek.

Using an OUTSIDE Collection Agency VS. IN-HOUSE Collectors

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:43:46 +0100

Outside or 3rd Party collection agencies are 20% to 50% more effective than in-house collectors at collecting aged accounts (1 to 8 years old).

It has been a well know fact that 3rd party collection agencies came about as a necessity many years ago as a result of business owners reaching a roadblock with their non paying customers.

How many times can a business ask a person to pay via telephone, letters and various other methods before they give up trying to collect the debt or the person decides to pay? That is exactly the question that the patient is forcing the business owner to find out and at a very high cost.

In today’s high tech environment 3rd Party collection agencies are far more advanced in locating, contacting and collecting delinquent accounts than the majority of in-house collection divisions. The modern collection agency is tapped into so many databases and locating services that they are second only to the FBI in their ability to track and pinpoint an individuals’ whereabouts.

The 3rd party collection agency can afford to have these expensive systems in place because they are usually servicing multiple clients’ across a broad spectrum of industries and the sheer volume of accounts being handled makes it financially feasible.

The average business or medical provider is not equipped financially to handle the monthly expenses of using such expensive technology.

The second factor and probably the most vital one is that the 3rd Party Collection agency is just that a 3rd party not the original company or its staff. This tends to send a subliminal message to delinquent patients that action has finally been taken. They realize for the 1st time that you the business owner have finally detached from the process and they are on their own and when payment is requested this time it has more weight.

In-house collectors typically have a relationship with the patient that the patient exploits. In-house collectors are often times over extended with other duties and responsibilities and may also feel under compensated. The end result is a light hearted attempt at collecting debts versus a serious wave of concentrated and continually elevating collection activity as you would get with a 3rd party collection agency who's very existence is predicated upon collecting money.

This brings me to my 3rd point In-house collectors are usually hourly employees and no matter there recovery rate they are still going to get a check at the end of the week. You can not even question the effectiveness of a commission based employee at a 3rd party collection agency with an hourly or salaried employee of a business. The two have totally different motives that drive their production and persuasive skill set.

In-house collectors are useful to a larger degree in the early stages of a delinquent account say 1 to 3 months after that they are just redundant mechanisms with a limited ability to recover revenue. Anyone can send letters, any one can put something on some ones credit report but the true skill is in the ability to convince someone to pay a bill that they had previously decided to permanently ignore.

3rd Party collection agency reps are skilled in the art of negotiations and they know the psychologically motivating things to say and do to get the patient to at least seriously consider resolution of the debt instead of evasion tactics.

At www.AllMedicalDebt.com our collection strategy is designed to bring a patient back to the table for quick resolution.

Our methods are sound and time tested and have consistently out performed In-house collectors nationwide as well as other 3rd Party Collection agencies.

Call Byron Hyter at 1-866-206-9589 to discuss assigning your accounts for immediate recovery.

How Often Should Accounts Be Placed Out To Collections?

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:36:46 +0100

In my opinion a medical service provider that has a relationship with a collection agency should place accounts on a monthly basis at a bare minimum.

Medical service providers just by the nature of their design have patient accounts that fall into the collection criteria every day.

Unfortunately do to various reasons many medical service providers attempt to hold on to their delinquent patient accounts far too long.

I sense a general feeling that the medical facilities administrative staff believes that the patient will miraculously make them a 1st priority and pay their bill after a year has elapsed.

On the contrary statistics show that the longer a bill is outstanding the less of a chance you have to actually collect it.

Time is not on your side if you are the medical service provider.

The rising costs of day to day operations from facility, staff, and equiptment are stifling and the only defense against it is a steady stream of cash flow.

The only purpose of a collection agency should be to create cash flow in stagnant areas of your accounts receivables.

Yes collection agencies will charge a fixed fee for handling these accounts but if you will truly cross compare the costs over the years of having overburdened your internal staff, the cost of retention of such employees in raises or compensation packages and the sheer number of personnel you would have to add to maintain these types of accounts internally then you would quickly come to the conclusion that not to assign the accounts to an outside agency would be like slowly tightening a turnicate around the financial arm of your medical facility.

Change is the only true constant in the universe no matter if it is fast or slow born out of neccessity or intentionally incubated to fill a certain need everything is in a constant state of change.

I want to encourage every administrator of a medical service provider to take full control over the fiscal results obtained by your facility.

Collection agencies should not be looked at as a last resort they should be looked at as an appendage to your day to day work flow by using this mindset you will remove the financial bottlenecks in your business.

Once a collection agency knows that it can count on its clients for a steady flow of accounts the agency is itself freed up to expend more capital and manpower on that clients patients.

Collection agencies use an enormous amount of resources to recover unpaid medical accounts such as various databases to locate the patients, mailing services to contact the patients, credit bureau reporting to notify the patients in the most effective manner, and the sheer man power of staying in constant contact with the patient until satisfactory payment is achieved.

The cost of business has gone up for everyone and continues to rise so make sure you have a plan that takes into account how much money you will actually be losing by holding on to patients accounts beyond a reasonable date.

I know most of you would like for me to set a specific cut off date for you but I can not tell you how to run your businesses I can only suggest from my many years of experience that most patients if they have not made you a priority with in 3 months of the date of service are most likely going to have to be contacted in a more assertive fashion.

As the years go by and you look back over lost revenue remember you can drive your business to the bank or allow your business to drive you to bankruptcy.

I personally have seen too many great Doctors and medical service providers go out of business do to mismanagement of resources.

I would like to suggest www.allmedicaldebt.com for all your medical account recovery needs large or small ,new or old we can help.

Call our office at 1-866-206-9589 ask for Byron Hyter.

Collecting On Letters of Protection From Personal Injury Attorney Medical Liens

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:32:23 +0100

Get paid quickly from Personal Injury Attorneys and/or Patients that have been holding up your funds!

AllMedicalDebt.com provides collection services on Medical Liens, Lien Letters and Letters of Protection for all Medical Specialists, Hospitals, Medical Clinics, MRI Facilities, Lien Purchasers and Pain Management Clinics.

Please complete our information form to begin the collection process of your Medical Liens and Letters of Protection. Request Contract.

Call Byron Hyter at 1-866-206-9589 to place your Medical Liens and Letters of Protection with our collection agency.

There is no group of liens too small or too large for AllMedicalDebt.com to collect on.

For each Personal Injury lien, we request:

     - a copy of the lien signed by both the patient and the
        patient's attorney
     - the name and phone number of the patient's attorney
     - a copy of the bill(s)
     - the Date of Injury (D.O.I.)

For each Workers' Compensation lien, we request:

     - a copy of the HCFA bill(s)
     - the name of the insurance company and their claim #
     - the adjuster's name & phone number
     - the name and phone number of the Applicant's attorney
     - a copy of the lien that was filed with the board
     - the Date of Injury (D.O.I.)

Keep more of your money by hiring AllMedicalDebt.com to collect your unpaid or denied Letter of Protection accounts.

Is It Time To Place Accounts With A Collection Agency?

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 06:32:51 +0100

Yes, it is time to place accounts with a collection agency!

Why would a company hire an employee to collect accounts?

Why would a company keep mailing letters to patients that have not paid you?

Why would a company keep stretching internal resources to pursue unpaid patient accounts?

The answer is simple they just don't know any better.

Hiring an employee to collect is financially unsound since we are talking about patients who have not paid and may not even be willing to pay. So this new persons salary can not be totally based on what you expect them to be able to collect from these patients as that would be an unwise expectation for funding. Add the cost to have a staff member train this person and any health insurance benefits and you just created overhead instead of collecting debts.

A collection agency would work on a contingency basis and would only get paid if they collected the funds.

Continuing to spend money on postage stamps and envelopes and sending letters to patients that have not paid is another bad business practice. If you had a 1,000 patients that have not paid their bill and you send them 3 letters in a 90 day period of time at .44 cents a piece you just spent $1,320.00. How many letters will be mail returned do to bad addresses or the fact the patient has moved.

Most collection agencies have the ability to locate patients via skip tracing and they are mandatorily mandated to send collection letters. I suggest that any savvy business person would let the collection agency incur the mailing costs thereby removing that expense once and for all.

How much time does your staff have to call these patients that have not paid? How much time will it take them to talk to each patient and listen through the patients objections to paying and then try to reach some resolution and then still try to get their daily work load completed. One word "Impossible" it is just too much and your business will suffer because you tried to turn a person with a background as an insurance biller into a bill collector.

Collection agencies usually have the best debt negotiators as well as the the technology such as autodialers to handle large volumes of collection calls. There is just no comparison between your internal staffs capabilites and a collection agency to contact and communicate consistantly with a patient about their delinquent accounts.

Collection agencies have evolved into fine tuned machines that have to comply with both state and federal laws as well as each clients personal criteria to stay in business.

Hopefully you now realize just how important it is that you get your unpaid medical accounts to a good collection agency like www.allmedicaldebt.com as soon as possible.
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