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 it seriously.
 
Hold a trial run. Before you rush out and have 5,000 copies of your policies made, give the document to staff members for a review to ensure it makes sense. Then, try it out on actual patients for 30 days, Reeves counsels. You might discover patients asking the same questions over and over, in which case you can modify your policy before spending time and money on thousands of professional copies.
 
Appoint one person to handle special cases. Anytime you have a rule, sooner or later, there will be an exception. Assign one person (for instance, the billing manger or practice manager) the responsibility of handling exceptions to your standard policies, Larch advises. That way, everyone in your practice will know who to turn to with a special situation presents itself.
 
Educate physicians and other staff members. Everyone in your office should be familiar with the financial policies and procedures, so hold a training session. Incorporate this training into orientation for new employees, Larch says.
 
Get patients signatures. Each patient should receive a copy of your financial policies and procedures for her records. Have all patients sign a form acknowledging that they received and understand the document, Larch says. That way, no one can come back at you with claims of ignorance should a problem arise.