Practice Management Alert

To collect accounts receivable (A/R) promptly, you need collections staff with certain skills and personality traits. After you've found qualified individuals, you can improve their job performance by establishing achievable goals.

Collections candidates must have basic knowledge of the billing process, says Cam McClellan Teems, MA, CPC, senior consultant with Gates, Moore & Company in Atlanta, including an understanding of:

the revenue process the specialty for which they are billing and collecting, including coding, payers' standard bundling practices, and details of treatment protocols that can help in arguing denials with payers insurance contracts how to use computer practice-management systems accounts-recoverable reports. Test Candidates for Objective View To assess a potential collection employee's knowledge, iLIANT Management Directions in Winston-Salem, N.C., a provider of outsourced services for physician practices that handles billing and collections for about 500 doctors, tests the applicant. In addition to helping the company identify applicants with a billing and collections background, the test also indicates how much additional training a potential employee might need, says Chris Uthe, director of centralized billing services for iLIANT. Physicians often hire staff members for the wrong reasons, such as liking the potential employee. "In most interviews, a person is going to tell you what you want to hear," he says. "In many cases, you have a physician involved in the hiring who really doesn't know the questions to ask. The test at least provides some degree of objectivity on what a person knows and how they might handle the accounts receivable." The test includes true-false, multiple-choice, and fill-in-the-blank questions on topics such as insurance terminology, kinds of insurance contracts, payment systems, claim denials, and claim information requirements. It also includes an essay question in which applicants must give a practice's collection problem scenario. The test is based on a weighted average of the questions with the essay counting the most. Note: For sample test questions, see the box on page 35. Look for and Encourage Five Personality Traits There are a variety of personal characteristics a collector needs, Uthe says: 1. Aggressiveness and persistence. Collectors need to be aggressive to encourage payers and patients to pay, but there are limits to it, Uthe cautions. "You don't want someone who is going to be rude. You need a person who is going to be willing to understand and work with different situations but realize that the bottom line is to get a commitment to get the money in." For example, if an insurance company or a patient stalls or delays to evade payment, the collector needs to know how to get around those tactics. "If someone tells the collector he or she can't have payment now, the employee has to know to [...]