Collecting patient payments is known to be a historically slow, tedious process for staff. According to J.P. Morgan’s Trends in Healthcare Payments Annual Report, it takes 74% of healthcare providers more than a month to collect on patient balances. Combine this with the fact that 87% of providers rely on paper and manual processes for collections, and you have a recipe for delayed reimbursements.
Seeing as how payment collections are critical to the bottom line of mental health practices, it’s only natural for behavioral health billing staff to look for opportunities to eliminate payment barriers so they can collect on rendered services faster. It’s a matter of not only how you collect patient payments but also when in the process the payment collection happens.
Provide Patients With a Self-Service Payment Option
It’s most often assumed that patients aren’t paying their bills on time for financial reasons. And while that’s true in some cases, there are other contributing factors. In one survey, 19% of patients said they were unclear about what they owed, 16% said they simply forgot about the bill, and 13% weren’t sure when the payment was actually due.
One of the benefits of a self-service payment portal is that patients are able to easily see what they owe, including any outstanding balances. At the same time, they can view their complete bills in detail to answer any questions they may have on the payment breakdown. Collectively, this transparency into the mental health billing process leads to fewer questions for your staff to address.
As highlighted in a U.S. Bank survey of healthcare consumers, 44% say they pay medical bills faster when they receive billing notifications digitally or via phone. Patients can enjoy the convenience of being able to pay bills anytime and anywhere, without having to remember to mail in checks or bring one with them to their next office visit. A self-service payment portal is intuitive, allowing patients to submit payments with just a few clicks and receive a confirmation receipt to verify their payment was received.
Collect Copays Before a Behavioral Health Session
Copays can seem like modest dollar amounts in the grand scheme of behavioral health billing. But when these bills go unpaid amidst a growing patient population, the impact on practice profitability can be significant.
Collecting copays prior to a session helps healthcare providers mitigate this profit loss. Revenue is secured, while saving your staff the time and effort of creating patient billing statements. It’s also worth noting that these statements could include multiple copays, which could leave patients with an unexpectedly large bill to pay.
This all helps explain why collecting copays upfront has become the norm in the medical sector. As highlighted in an MGMA poll, 98% of healthcare professionals said their organizations collected copays, as well as deductibles, before services were provided.
Leverage Automation to Accelerate Billing Workflows
We can’t talk about streamlining payment collections in behavioral health billing without talking about the billing workflow that comes before patient statements are generated — and how manual that process can be.
Consider the authentication of a patient’s insurance coverage and eligibility. This step in the billing workflow can leave staff on lengthy calls with insurance providers just so they can get the information they need. Having a system that automates coverage and eligibility checks saves your staff time and accelerates the payment process so you can get paid faster.
The same rule of thumb applies to claims processing. It’s not uncommon for insurance claims to be sent back to healthcare providers due to the use of outdated mental health billing codes, which in turn delays a receipt of payment from an insurance company and patients. Working with a system that is automatically updated to account for current mental health coding prevents this hurdle in the payment process.
Looking to grow your behavioral health practice? Streamlining payment collections can help you see these results. Explore other growth strategies here.
