How Often Should Accounts Be Placed Out To Collections?
Posted by Byron Hyter on Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Under: Regular Account Placements
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.
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.
In : Regular Account Placements
Tags: medical medical service medical accounts hipaa medical collections
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I have been in the collections industry for 20 years since 1989.
My first job was with a very large collection agency called Debt Collectors Incorporated aka DCI which was the prototype for the modern collection agency.
I have worked in all facets of the collections industry from Training Collectors, Policy Development, IT Infrastructure, Management, Ownership, and Work from Home Telecommuting Technologies Beta testing.
My greatest areas of expertise are in medical and retail collections as well as debt buying.
I am happily married and have 4 kids with my wife Roberta Hyter and we live in Houston, Texas.
Current projects that I am working on besides building my medical clientele base is a collections self help/success book entitled " The Quintessential Collector" due out on Amazon.com in mid 2010.
It has been my dream to travel around the country speaking at various collection agencies to collectors about how they can improve our industry and themselves.
I abhor the mistreatment of people who owe money and I know "that there but by the grace of God go I" debt can happen to anyone.
I believe if you can show a person that you sincerely want to help them resolve their debt then they will be much more motivated to try and get the bill resolved.
Not everyone in the collections industry sees things my way but all collection agencies are concerned about excessive complaints and frivilous law suits and most of these can be avoided with a little TLC.
