The first point of contact for patients can be your greatest help with collecting payment. Train your front-desk staff how to politely handle overdue accounts.

When scheduling appointments for patients, your staff should look at the patient account and remind the patient of any overdue balances and the amount. Kindly ask them to arrive a few minutes early for their appointment to take care of the overdue balance.

Have your front desk staff always look at patient accounts when checking in a patient. As they are confirming insurance and patient information, they can politely remind the patient about a past-due balance and ask how the patient would like to pay it. Kindly ask if they would like to take care of the balance along with their copay for today’s appointment.

Designate your front-desk staff to work the list of past-due balances. Have them call patients about their balances in between answering phones and checking patients in and out. Make sure that the staff have excellent phone etiquette, but also has the tenacity to not take “no” for an answer. Create a policy for them to follow which includes allowing time payments and/or allowing a pay off discount if payment can be paid in full right away.

If you have exhausted all internal efforts, hiring a third party collection agency can help to recover these accounts. Central Credit Audit, LLC specializes in delinquent debt collections. Request a free confidential quote here.