Smart Strategies for Healthcare Providers to Collect Outstanding Patient Balances

  • Written by Ashley Mark
  • Tuesday 7th February 2023
Smart Strategies for Healthcare Providers to Collect Outstanding Patient Balances VLMS Healthcare

The toughest task for healthcare professionals is to collect payments and outstanding balances that were not paid by patients. This even disrupts their cash flow, making it difficult to manage funds and outstanding balances. The effort, time, and energy this process takes are beyond the capacity of the staff who have other stuff as well. This is the point where a healthcare services provider may help you out as they have expertise in handling those who have not paid their balances. 

However, if you have professional medical billing services or not, you can still prefer some points for better management of cash flow. 

Checking eligibility- Before the patient visits for availing of any service or treatment, make sure that they have proper health coverage or payment plan. A patient who does not have any health plan or not seemed to be paying a bill should not be allowed to for general services until they pay some amount to cover the cost. Otherwise, the chances of collecting the balance from such patients will be much less. 

Reminders- Whether covered under any plan or not, all patients should be made aware of any costs and charges. So here, the staff needs to be very keen on all the policies that apply to all patients. Staff should see and check if there are any due balances in the past. A quick reminder and alarm will be very beneficial for all those patients who may forget to pay their balances. 

Variety in payment options- The more payment options you will have, the more chances of payment will increase. Many patients might say they do not use such payment options. You have to make all types of payment options available so that all patients pay on the spot. Some of the payment options that have to be included:

  • Card payment (Debit and credit cards)
  • Paypal
  • Emi/ installments
  • Cheque
  • Phone apps and others options. 

The availability of all types of payment options will decrease the possibility of outstanding balances and also patients will be able to pay at their convenience. 

Keeping credit card details- This sounds easy to avoid late payments and disturbance in cash flow. Keeping a valid credit card number will help you to charge for co-pays if payment is not done on time. 

Take charges before the next visit- This will need seamless software to detect if there are any dues in the past. With this, you will be able to take charge before their next visit or appointment. 

The better you streamline your collection process and efforts before it is late, the more likely you will be able to get payments on time. All this can be achieved by following these medical billing service tactics. And last but not the least, you can also collaborate with a healthcare service provider in case you don’t want to take any stress. The expert team of healthcare providers can help you with no dues in payments and smooth cash flow.