How Do You Send A Billing Statement To A Medical Patient?

Several surveys have revealed that medical care professionals are able to collect only 35% of the due payments from the patients. Even sending a few reminders on the billing statements has not been proven efficient enough to prompt patients to pay their medical dues.

What causes patients not to respond to their billing statements?

“Hard to comprehend billing statements“ has emerged as the major reason that results in less revenue generation. Most of the time patients claim that they couldn’t decipher the amount they need to pay or does the billing statement require any action at all? Additionally, if these billing statements are not followed up with reminders, they increase the turn around time of the revenue generation cycle.

Points to incorporate while sending billing statements to the patients:

1. Clarity: Patients are not medical professionals who can comprehend intricate medical jargon. By briefly describing the services in a professional, yet in layman manners, can make a difference in reaching out to the patients.
2. Dunning Messages: Dunning messages have proved to be highly effective in communicating the crux of a medical billing statement. A dunning message is a concise reflection of the patient’s account. It portrays the current status of their medical account along with the due payment. Dunning messages provide patients with a clear picture of what they owe for the treatment without fussing over the treatment details.
3. Insurance Awareness: Most of the patients are unaware of the expenses of the treatment that insurance doesn’t cover. They believe that the complete cost will be taken care of by their medical insurance. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the medical professionals to educate their patients about their insurance policy and the cost bifurcations prior to the treatments. This way medical professionals can save extensive explanations behind the generated billing statement and shorten the turn around time of the revenue cycle.
4. Message Highlights: A patient friendly billing statement needs to be concise and assertive, while keeping the tone of the statement “requesting”. Framing a sentence as “the amount mentioned in the statement is your responsibility” instead of “You have 123 amount due. Please pay the same by date”, can immensely affect the responding behavior of the patient. Highlighting the due payments can further positively impact the clarity of the billing statement. A highlighted due amount can instantly grab the attention of the patient without the need for perusing the complete document. Such medical billing statements are easy to comprehend by the patients.
5. Knowing when you have to be more proactive with the follow-ups: There are certain patients that medical professionals deal with, who never respond to any of the due payment reminders. A blunt statement can catch the attention of the patient and persuade them into settling their medical accounts.
6. The Final Notice: In this scenario, the notice must include the repercussive steps that would be taken by your office if the patient does not respond to the sent notice and settle their billing accounts.
7. Patient Support: Patient support can have a substantial impact on RCM. Providing patients a communication modality to clarify their queries builds their trust. Additionally, proving different ways to pay their due amounts facilitates preferable payment options for the patients, which in turn motivates them to settle their medical accounts at the earliest.
8. Seek Expert Help: Managing the billing statement process along with the constant follow-ups and dealing with the patient can become quite hectic for a medical professional. This complete process requires a great deal of time and energy to handle it with accuracy. Management of each patient and their billing statement require a lot of effort. Therefore, seeking expert help in such scenarios is the best possible step. This is where billing service providers come into play.

Billing service providers are the companies who have experts who are well-versed with the medical norms and complete revenue cycle management. They cater to each of your billing requirements and have dedicated prolific professionals for each step of the RCM.

Outsourcing your billing responsibilities from such service providers comes with a multitude of benefits. You can focus on catering to the patients while they take care of your RCM. They are responsible for taking care of your finances, revenue generations, claim handling, and patient billing statements. They are further cost effective when compared to hiring a dedicated person for the same. Additionally, a hired personnel will again be the medical professional’s responsibility while outsourcing the services will lighten your burden to handle the queries of your patients related to their insurance plans and claims.