Patient Billing Services – an Extension of Your Reimbursement Department
Industry wide, patient due balances comprise 15-25% of a company's Accounts Receivable.
In many organizations, patient pay accounts make up 50% or more of their past due balances.
Patient-owed receivables continue to increase with expansion of health saving accounts and new
lower cost insurance products.
Why partner with us?
Contingency Based. We get paid after you get paid.
Customized. We work with over 30 billing software packages and customize all our services to work with your billing platform.
Specialized. Bargmann Management and its HCS segment are completely focused on patient-owed receivables for the HME/DME and Infusion Industries. Patient-owed balances can comprise up to 25% of an organizations total accounts receivable, and timely collection is crucial to continued business success. At Bargmann Management and HCS, Patient-Pay is all we do. And we do it better than anyone else.
Knowledgeable. The Health Care Industry is plagued with compliance issues, documentation requirements, and specific rules when it comes to getting paid from Medicare and other third-party payers. As difficult as all of that can be, there is yet another tough part of your collections proces… self-pay patient receivables. Since patient-pay is our full focus, we are able to take complex issues that your staff may only deal with on occasion, and develop standard policies and procedures for our associates to follow.
Flexible Staffing. Companies find themselves struggling with patient receivables due to a variety of factors, including: lack of internal resources, not having the staff levels or time available to drive in these receivables, and not having the right personnel with proper training to handle difficult patient communications. At Bargmann Management and HCS, we can handle all, or just a portion of your patient-pay process. Our staff is well trained, focused and highly capable.
Focused. Many companies employ a tactic of splitting an employee's time between insurance and patient billing, a strategy that often fails due to the substantially different skill and negotiation levels required for both areas.
Other Companies have also tried in vain to utilize outside collection agencies "specializing" in medical collections to recover their aged receivables. These "specialists" do not understand the complex world of DME/HME and Infusion billing, active rentals and intricacies related to referral sources. Most return a paltry few percent in recoveries for clients, and clients have bounced between agencies in vain.
And some companies have turned to outsourced insurance billing companies for help with their patient receivables. Basically, these companies will provide one of two types of service, neither of which result in significant relief.
- The majority will send month-end statements (at a fixed cost charged to you per statement) to the patient for three months, and then return the majority of outstanding patient receivables to the client after ninety days upon non-payment. You, the client, are left with large volumes of aging receivables on your balance sheet, and a patient who you have lost direct contact with for three months.
- Other insurance billing companies will strictly not deal with patient receivables, opting to send the statements to you, the client, who must then in turn mail to patients, creating unnecessary delays in time and cash flow.
Regardless of how you currently handle your patient-pay receivables, Bargmann Management and HCS can offer a more cost effective and focused approach.
With nearly 200 current customers, Bargmann Management and HCS serve some of the largest and smallest HME/DME and Infusion organizations in the country. Our services are scalable and affordable at all business levels. We pride ourselves as a full extension of our clients reimbursement department, and employ skilled industry specialists to drive in our clients valuable account receivables. Our employee's are screened to have the qualities that drive the best results for our clients, including creative problem solvers, good communicators, trained negotiators, as well as significant experience in reimbursement and patient-owed receivables. Since most of our clients are opened between 8:30am and 5pm, our company has intentionally implemented staggered shifts between 8am and 9pm, as well as weekends, allowing us a better chance than most providers for communicating with patients. Our services are completely customizable, as each provider has a set of circumstances and requirements different from each other. Please scroll below for a template of our services that is typically executed on a day-to-day basis.
How we execute our written patient correspondence
Each morning, our staff log in to our clients billing systems via a secure VPN and/or Remote Desktop connection, printing daily invoices for any patients that have been identified as having a patient receivable. Why do we send daily invoices?
Simply put, we believe that the sooner we get an invoice in the patient's hands, the sooner we can make courtesy calls to the patient to explain the invoice, and the quicker we receive payment for our client.
All invoices list a toll-free telephone number direct into our offices, where we represent ourselves as the client on all written and verbal communication with the patients. Return envelopes are included for patients to easily remit payment, pre-printed with the clients remit-to address. Patient statements are also sent once every thirty days, complete with past-due/pre-collection notification colored inserts if the original payment terms are not met. All written correspondence is designed to elevate intensity as time progresses to indicate the importance of on-time payments.
How we execute our verbal patient correspondence
During our first patient phone contact, our staff explains how their insurance works, receive and forward updated insurance information to the client, identify hardship conditions, enter all notes of the patient correspondence in the billing system, and use our billing staff's personable, persuasive qualities and trained negotiation techniques to our clients advantage. After this explanation, we offer an "easy payment" system that allows the patient to pay via check-by-phone or credit card. We explain that this is a safer and convenient way to process their patient responsibilities, allows the patient to save time, and ultimately lets us decrease the days outstanding until your patient receivables are due. Many patients are also not mobile and are not able to travel outside of their house, and appreciate the consideration.
This first phone contact may take place during the 15-day terms we have set for the patient to pay. Our company takes a very pro-active approach with patient billing, and believes that if we do a better job explaining the patient responsibility before it is past due, we have a better chance of recovering our clients valuable receivables.
Finally, if we have to leave a message on voice mail, the following message is left "Hi Mr. Smith, this is Kathy calling from ABC Home Medical. Please return my call toll-free at 1-866-XXX-XXXX." This toll-free number is a direct line to the billing representative(s) assigned to your company from our agency. If we leave a message and do not receive a return phone call, we automatically set the patient up for a second contact in one week. If the phone is busy, we try the phone call again within 24 hours.
Our second contact (assuming we have made phone contact previously and explained the services performed) informs the patient that this is a friendly reminder that the balance is past due. We again ask if they have any questions on the invoice/statement, and reiterate the "easy pay" system. If the patient refuses to pay, we ask what date they will be remitting the funds and by what means. If the patient is unable to pay the complete balance, we offer them a payment plan (based on balance amount). At all times, we try to keep the payment plans under a six-month time period. We ask probing questions to identify plans that will fit within their budget. We also try to identify the patients that truly qualify for hardships. We ask that our clients have their written hardship policies on file with our agency to allow us to send the paperwork to the patients directly, without involving your staff up front.
Billing final phases
At this point in the process, the patient has received one invoice, one statement, is getting ready to receive a second statement with a past-due/pre-collection notification insert included in the mailing, and has received the phone communications indicated above. The next phone contact is courteous, but direct. We ask the reason for non-payment of the obligation, and try to receive a commitment to pay over the phone. If we are denied a payment/promise payment, we inform the patient that the account will be reviewed and recommended for collections at the end of the month. This is the patient's final notification via phone to resolve the obligation before it will leave our office and be referred to collections through HCS. As a whole, we prefer to keep the billing stage to either 60 or 90 days, and if the patient has been unresponsive to written and verbal requests, we produce a monthly sweep list for patients recommended for collections for our client's approval. At no time, unless otherwise requested, do we place a patient in collections without explicit approval. What happens next? On a monthly basis, we sweep the accounts that have not been paid to the other side of our company, Homecare Collection Service, providing a seamless transition between billing and collections. Please click here for more information on our Patient Collections Services.