How To Reduce Bad Debt In Your Healthcare Practice: 5 Factors You Should Consider

When maintaining your practice’s revenue cycle, knowing how to reduce bad debt in healthcare is necessary.

ut minimizing bad debt involves more than reminding your patients about their dues—it entails taking proactive, well-meaning initiatives to help them fulfill them.

To help you gain a better understanding of how to reduce bad debt in your healthcare practice, here are five factors you should consider:

Five Factors To Consider For Reducing Bad Debt In Healthcare

1. Patient Experience

Patients who experience unsatisfactory treatment are less likely to fully pay (or pursue full payment) for their treatment.

Surprisingly, numerous patients find their experience with healthcare providers frustrating.

Facilitating a positive patient experience helps reduce bad debt by promoting patient responsibility. Patients will feel obligated to reciprocate your clinic’s hospitality and due diligence by making timely payments. It also improves satisfaction and retention, which significantly boosts your bottom line in the long run.

Consider these guide questions on patient experience and bad debt

• Is the check-in process and other aspects of your front desk fast, convenient, and efficient?
• Do you always have available receptionists to accommodate patients?
• Is measuring patient satisfaction part of your operational strategy?

2. Treatment Planning

One of the most common reasons why patients drop out of treatment is that they believe it is ineffective. Dropouts, cancellations, and no-shows often come with unfulfilled payments, leading to bad debt.

Your practice must proactively persuade patients that treatment can yield results if they give it time. To achieve this, your staff should communicate with your patients the desired outcomes of every stage of treatment. This reduces the likelihood of dropout and, in effect, bad debt.

Consider these guide questions on treatment planning and bad debt

• Do your providers actively manage patient expectations in terms of the direction and rationale of the treatment plan?
• What role do your receptionists have in care coordination?
• Are you providing further education/information to your patients about their condition and treatment?

3. Patient-provider Communication

Successful clinical outcomes result not only from provider expertise but also from communication and empathy with patients. Lacking both can reduce your patients’ confidence in the success of their treatment.

In the worst case, patients may avoid payment as they believe their treatment is ineffective, partly because “their providers don’t even bother to listen to their concerns.”

Making patient-provider communication part of your patient collections strategy is imperative, as it can improve numerous aspects of your practice.

Consider these guide questions on patient-provider communication and bad debt

• What are your current patient-provider communication protocols about collections?
• Are your providers exercising empathy and understanding with patients (especially those of low socioeconomic status)?
• Do you collect patient feedback regarding their experience communicating with providers for deeper insights?

4. Pricing And Payment Plans

Some patients undergo treatment with a limited understanding of how much it will be. When receiving their final amount due, most patients are surprised as it may be higher than expected.

Patients who cannot afford the bill may be discouraged from pursuing further treatment and may even evade payment altogether.

Minimizing bad debt requires that patients fulfill their due and be enabled to have the agility and cognizance to do so, which your practice can help facilitate proactive transparency, payment flexibility, and communication.

Consider these guide questions on pricing and payment methods and bad debt

• Is treatment pricing provided with a detailed breakdown?
• What are your supported payment plans (credit cards, patient portal, etc.), and do you help patients identify alternative methods of fulfilling their dues throughout the payments process?
• Do you send patient reminders with a full breakdown of the medical bill for clarity?

5. Staff Training

Reducing bad debt must be a shared responsibility among your staff, whether they work behind the front desk or in appointments.

Hence, every member of every department of your team should be well-versed (or at least have fundamental knowledge) in patient collections and their roles in reducing bad debt.

Consider these guide questions on staff training and bad debt

• What is your current general staff training regiment?
• Does your regiment include patient collections and, in particular, bad debt?
• How often do you execute (or plan to implement) training protocols on managing patient collections?

How Your Front Desk Can Help To Reduce Bad Debt

Your front desk can play a significant role in reducing bad debt. Here are some of the many ways they can help:

• Improving patient collections. Your receptionists can ensure a consistent operational process for collecting copayments at the time of visit to help increase patient collection rates.
• Increasing schedule-outs. With constantly available receptionists, you can maximize schedule-outs across all your patient visits for greater patient collections.
• Reminding patients about upcoming appointments. Sending texts or emails or making phone calls are some methods your front desk can utilize to remind patients about outstanding medical bills.
• Reducing stress and burnout. You can delegate administrative tasks such as scheduling appointments to your receptionists (instead of your providers) to reduce stress and burnout, allowing your providers to have time to focus on patient care quality.
• Helping patients finance their treatment. In addition to verifying health insurance, Receptionists can suggest alternative payment methods and plans to direct full payment.

With adequate front desk training, your receptionists can be well-equipped to improve your practice’s revenue cycle and patient experience.

Reduce Bad Debt With A Good Patient Experience

Managing bad debt can be stressful, but with the proper approach and best practices, you’ll be well on your way to reducing it.

Improving the patient experience is one way you can achieve this. However, remember that the patient experience should be a primary priority for your practice. Focus on the patient experience, and everything else — including patient collections — will fall into place.

Are you considering leveraging your front desk to reduce bad debt but experiencing issues with staffing? Try WelcomeWare, a live virtual receptionist service and platform specialized in the healthcare industry, enablingyour front desk staff to check in your patients remotely through video receptionist kiosks. Learn how WelcomeWare’s patient intake solutions can help significantly reduce medical debt and improve your practice’s patient experience!