Healthcare providers need to maintain a good relationship with their patients and it is especially true when it comes to collecting delinquent payments. There are several ways in which medical practices can streamline payment recovery, maintain positive patient relationships, and keep their business running smoothly and cash flow intact.
Medical bill collections are quite different from other debt recovery problems because medical expenses are often unplanned. Therefore, pursuing medical debt aggressively without being tactful can affect a healthcare provider’s reputation negatively.
Methods to Streamline Payment Recovery
Here’s how you can streamline your payment recovery effectively and get your money back into your business while maintaining a good relationship with your customers:
Be Proactive Not Reactive
Good accounting practices will help you identify delinquent payments and allow recovery time for those accounts individually. It is important to understand that moving swiftly when making collections makes it more likely to make recoveries. So, it is good practice to implement the recovery processes as a part of the accounting process of your business. This helps you set up internal alerts for overdue payments at every stage which means that outstanding accounts are dealt with at the right time to make debt collection effective.
Make Debt Collection Customer Friendly
Many of the 58 million Americans who have debt are carrying delinquent balances for the first time. Thus it becomes important to have trained staff experienced in customer engagement. Their empathetic and positive approach improves the customer experience with your business and gives the morale to pay you back in time instead of avoiding your notifications. This customer-friendly approach to debt collection proves effective and beneficial for providers. These benefits include collecting more and higher payments, reducing operational costs, decreasing charge-offs, and strengthening long-term customer loyalty.
Partner With the Right Collections Agency
It is common for hospitals and physician groups to outsource their accounts receivables processes, including patient balance notifications, past due reminders, and insurance claim follow-up to credit collection services.
We at First Credit Services are a debt collection agency with 25+ years of experience in the industry. We guarantee you the same quality of service you would expect from your staff. We have helped many of our hospital and medical office clients reduce their accounts receivables days and increased their collections. Our expert staff will handle your collections for you so that you focus on providing your services without worries.
Contact us today to know how we can help.