Practice Management Alert

The intervention of a collection agency has many benefits for your practice, whether you outsource collections sparingly or on a regular basis:  
 
1. Saves you time and money: Once you've determined a patient is not paying and doesn't intend to pay, it's not worth your time or the cost of staff and supplies to continue calling and sending letters, says Adrienne Rabinowitz, CPC, billing manager at Western Monmouth Orthopedic Associates in Freehold, N.J.

2. Quicker results: Often it takes only one letter from a collection agency to make patients realize the situation is serious and they need to pay, she says.

3. Fewer headaches: It's convenient to have a collector handling difficult cases so you can concern yourself with more important office billing, Rabinowitz says.

4. Preserves patient relations: When a third-party collection agency enters the picture, it becomes "the bad guy in the eyes of the patient," says Vincent Gaudio, principal of Collexx Inc., a collections agency in Long Valley, N.J. This allows your practice to become approachable to patients again and to maintain a good public image, Gaudio adds.

5. You do the math: For example, you are unable to collect on $10,000 in patient debts. If you turn those accounts over to a collection agency that charges 50 percent -- which is really high -- and it collects all the money, you'll have $5,000 that was otherwise lost to you, Gaudio says.