How’s the cash flow in your practice? It could be better? Collections and cash flow is a multi-faceted- No one gets on your schedule without a financial arrangement. Your patients need to know what to budget for before they walk in for their appointment. I realize there are many consulting firms that advocate not to talk to patients about money. However, I feel you are putting your practice and your relationship with your patient at risk if you don’t. You must have the money conversation and allow your patients to make an educated decision on how they will pay for it.
- Your entire team needs to know what that financial arrangement is. I have seen the clinical team dismiss a patient thinking they were free to go when only to find out that the patient had a co-pay for today’s visit. Then the front office is all in a tizzy because they did not collect from the patient. There are many ways you can communicate with your team about the patient’s co-pay for today’s visit. You can put it in the note box of the appointment, write it on the route slip or discuss it in the morning huddle. However you decide to relay the information, it must be done because the entire team is responsible for the collections in the practice.
- Anyone in the practice should be able to collect money. If your front office is shorthanded for the day or maybe the financial coordinator is on the phone with another patient, anyone on the team should have the skills to collect money. Create a protocol sheet for how to collect cash, credit cards and outside financing payments (i.e. Care Credit). If a patient owes money today, he or she should not walk out the door. It is costing you a ton of money.
- Send billing statements two or three times a week. This changed my life when I was working in a practice and it will yours too. I devoted an entire article to this topic and you can read all the details by CLICKING HERE.
- Use the Collection Manager to track your accounts receivable. In the past when I was doing Insight Seminars for Henry Schein and I would get to the section on the Collection Manager Report, I would ask the audience who was using it to manage their accounts receivable. Maybe a third of the hands would go up. I am still amazed at how many people do not use this report and are still using the Aging Report for accounts receivable management. You can read an entire article on this report by CLICKING HERE.
If you take these five tips to heart and put them into your regular routine, you will see an increase in your cash flow and a reduction in your stress level. It’s all about the systems and how you manage them because you don’t have a money tree growing in your backyard.
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Five tips for improving your cash flow
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