subject: Automating Account Balance Notifications to Improve the Effectiveness Of Medical Bill Collections [print this page] Paper explanations of benefit statements are unlikely to go away any time soon because not all patients have Internet access and email addresses change often. Most practices also send paper account balance due reminders. While mailed reminders are effective for collecting from some patients, they are also slow, inefficient and expensive. Everyone knows how easy it is to overlook a paper statement.
Many practices haven't considered that they can greatly improve their bill collection results by using multi-channel automated account balance notifications. The benefits of using automated account balance notifications include the following:
Greater Effectiveness with Multi-Channel Notifications
Paper statements are easily lost, forgotten or misplaced. Just about every patient can be reached by phone. Phone calls are better at getting the attention of patients and prompting them to call the practice to discuss bill payment. Email reminders can work well for patients that have expressed an interest in receiving email messages from the practice. Most people check their email accounts at least once a day.
Multiple reminders by mail, phone and email usually work better than reminders using just one communication method since multiple reminders are more effective than one reminder and patients have different communication preferences.
Collect in Fewer Days
With automated reminder calls and emails, patient account balance notifications can reach patients on the same day that they are sent, compared to several days later for mailed reminders. By speeding up the reminders process, patients receive reminders faster and they pay their balances faster as well.
Labor and Cost Savings
It takes valuable staff time to compose and print reminder letters, address envelopes, stuff envelopes, and add postage. With an automated notifications service provider, it only takes a few minutes to send an electronic file with the patients that should receive reminders.
Postage costs continue to rise and you're paying your staff to prepare those reminder letters. It's much less labor intensive and much cheaper (typically an automated reminder is 80% cheaper than a mailed reminder) to automate account balance reminders.
Automated account balance notifications make it easier to collect on outstanding bills and keep accounts from going to the collection agency.
Susan Linton is an expert in healthcare technology.
Automating Account Balance Notifications to Improve the Effectiveness Of Medical Bill Collections
