Practice Management Alert

You can spend weeks pouring blood, sweat and tears into developing your financial policies and procedures document, but if the finished product is impossible to understand, youve wasted your time.
 
Every medical office should create a formal set of financial policies and procedures, insists Sara Larch, FACMPE, MS, chief operational officer for University Physicians Inc. in Baltimore, MD. And patients should receive a copy of these policies as part of their registration paperwork when they join your practice.
 
You should make your expectations clear to your patients from the beginning, experts agree. Dont wait until theres a collections problem to explain to a patient what you expect of him from a financial standpoint, advises Elizabeth Woodcock, director of knowledge management with Physicians Practice Inc. in Atlanta.
 
Many practices dont realize that the key to clarity is simplicity. Thats where the seven-letter rule comes into play, Woodcock says.
 
Tip: Dont include any words in your financial policies and procedures that are more than seven letters long.
 
Here are some other tried-and-true nuggets of wisdom that can help you create and disseminate a set of financial policies and procedures to help make life in your billing office easier:
 
Front desk staff and billing department staff should put their heads together. Billers and front desk staff are the most knowledgeable people in any medical practice about problem areas in collecting payment from patients, points out consultant Crystal Reeves, CPC, CMPE, with The Coker Group in Roswell, GA. Join forces to identify the most common issues you face, and then begin to write your policies, she suggests. For instance, make sure you spell out that co-pays are payable upon patient registration. (See the guidelines in "Not Sure Where to Start...." for more hints on areas your policies should cover.)
 
Keep it short. Your complete document shouldnt be longer than one page, says Woodcock. Otherwise, patients most likely wont read it. Another approach is to present your policies in a simple financial brochure, suggests Reeves.

  Financial policies and HIPAA policies dont mix. You should integrate your financial policies into the patients registration paperwork, but keep this document separate from the notice of privacy practices HIPAA requires you to distribute, Woodcock advises. Make it clear that your financial policies are totally separate from HIPAA.
 
Presentation makes all the difference. If possible, have your policies professionally printed, Reeves offers. If the financial policy is copied on the office copier, it will be only a matter of time until the copies have black toner marks on them, are copied crooked on the page or are not readable, she notes. And that sends a message to patients that the document isnt important to you, which means they probably wont take [...]