Patient financial records a disaster? Here's what to do

In our last post, we discussed some ways to organize your receivables system to make sure that you get off to the right start to control past due amounts and deal with any amounts that may become delinquent.  

But what about a situation where you initially did not have a plan or execute a plan?  The aging analysis has never been reviewed, there’s been no follow up, patients are seen without regard for their financial status. The assumption is that everything will work out OK.  And in a lot of cases, you don’t know what to collect because you have no idea what is owed.  That’s certainly not an ideal situation, but fear not.  Do not abandon hope.  The situation can be salvaged and turned around. 

Take the following steps as soon as humanly possible:

Train your patients and other receivable tips

In our last post, we mentioned that a key part of achieving monthly payment/6 week scheduling harmony is an effective receivables system.  Obviously, collecting money is both fun (actually having the money) and undesirable (asking for the money when it is past due).  

This is especially true when you have monthly payment or other convenient payment plans intended to ease the financial burden on the patient.  This is extraordinarily true if you decide to allow payments to be made after treatment is completed.

But here are some tips for easing the undesirable part and creating more of the fun part.

Achieving payment plan/patient scheduling harmony

Here, we examine one of the more common conundrums in orthodontic practices today.  Quite a number of practices believe firmly in offering patients a monthly payment plan that allows that patient to fit the monthly obligation into his or her budget.  Those of us at My Practice Engine fall into that method of thinking.  Combine this with the fact that over time, technology has allowed doctors to see patients less frequently.  In the distant past, patients had to consistently be seen on a monthly basis.  Now, sites regularly discuss 5-8 week intervals between appointments.

Very clearly, reducing the frequency of appointments is a win-win for all involved.  For a patient, having to make fewer visits to the doctor’s office is almost always preferred.  For the practice, seeing the patient less frees up time to see other patients.  Just doing the math, if you see patients every 4 weeks and then move to seeing them every 6 weeks, you now have increased the total number of monthly patients you can see by 33%.  That’s without adding chairs, space, staff or any other cost.

The problem that arises comes from the fact that practices intertwine the monthly payment and the frequency of visits.  As a result, a practice charging a monthly fee will see patients on a monthly basis so that they can make sure to collect that monthly amount.  This eliminates the possibility of the office using all of that wonderful technology available for treatment.  Here are some of the objections and solutions raised when discussing monthly payment and non-monthly visits.

Please note that we will not be discussing the quality of outcomes or movement of teeth using one method or another.  There are a number of outstanding sources for that type of discussion.  This is not one of them.

Keep small problems small

In one of our client practices, we recently ran into a technical problem that affected all 14 offices in that client’s group of offices.  Before we could begin to investigate the cause and solutions of the problem, our client requested that we involve his legal team and 2 sets of accounting firms to investigate and solve the problem.  Certainly, involving them would lead to some type of action being taken – and enormous fees being run up.

But are those fees merited.  At this point, we’re not even sure of the underlying cause of this technical issue.  The matter could simply be that a clumsy engineer at the service provider tripped over the power cord and cut us off.  Or, there could be more sinister forces at work with that client being the subject of an undercover investigation by a federal law enforcement agency and they are gradually shutting off services before swooping in with guns drawn.  The solution most probably lies somewhere in between.

Before you haul out a bazooka to solve a problem where a fly swatter will do, please take the following steps:

3 tips for no-cost advertising

In the recent past, we have gotten a number of requests from practices seeking marketing assistance with one thing in common: the practice have virtually no money available for marketing.  Generally, these practices fall into 2 categories:

1. 1. Startup practices that are trying to build things on a shoestring budget.  Once the staff and rent have been paid, there’s no money left over for much of anything, especially buying an ad or running a pay-per-click campaign.
2. 2. Struggling or failing practices.  These practices are holding on by making sure they have an office (rent), the heat stays on (utilities) and key personnel (salaries).  Marketing essentially becomes deemed a nonessential expense.

Whatever the case, marketing your practice with no money is challenging, but not impossible.  In fact, succeeding is very possible.  Just keep these things in mind:

Start The New Year Strong

At the beginning of this year, we see optimism everywhere.  Experts generally see the economy improving this year, unemployment is down (although wages are too), most pundits expect stock prices to increase this year and we still haven’t seen additional spending power unleashed as the result of falling oil prices. 

You, too, probably have similarly high expectations for your practice.  So, let’s review some of the big picture ways you can make sure that happens:

The power of incentives: a true story

Over the course of our time here at My Practice Engine, we’ve talked about using incentive programs to focus everyone in your practice on the same goals as those who have an ownership interest in the practice.  Below is a very recent, real life example of the impact of a good incentive program.  

In our offices in Spain, we set up a very simple incentive program that started in the fourth quarter of 2014.  All of the offices there are multispecialty offices so we were interested in performance on the dental and orthodontic side.  Our incentive involved a combination of orthodontic starts and dental collections.  We would take the past performance in those categories and increase that by a percentage for targeted growth in the offices and that was the goal for the office to reach.  For reaching the goals, the staff in the offices could earn a percentage of up to 10% of base pay.  This incentive is not insignificant and its significance caused the office managers to take keen notice of the program when it was introduced in early October.