Tag Archives: Business

INSURANCE MONEY WON’T PAY YOUR BILLS ANYMORE, DOC!

16 Jun

I was told today by a doctor that he refrains from pushing too hard to collect from a patient who owes him money, because of all the money he makes on the patient from insurance companies.  He is willing to write off patient balances, to keep making insurance money from the patient visits, and doesn’t want to offend the patient into leaving the practice by insisting he pay his bill.

This is the general attitude many doctors had 25-30 years ago.  It may have had some validity back them but times have changed!  Insurance money alone will not keep your doors open and your lights on any more doc.  You are putting your practice in jeopardy by not seeing what is happening around you!

High deductible health plans are the norm these days, and co-insurance is rising all the time.  Despite what the government tells us, there are more and more patients who do not have insurance, or have adequate insurance.  Self pay is now the highest payer in the medical world behind Medicare and Medicaid, and it is catching up fast.  According to recent statistics, patient balances now represent over 35% of a doctors income and soon, if major changes aren’t made, will be over 50%.

You can’t wish it away, or ignore it away.  You MUST find a way to motivate patients to pay you, and pay you faster than before.

Medicine, whether you like or not, or understand it or not, is a business.  You are trading a service for money, and the patient knows it.  They also know when you are leaving them alone about their bill so that you can continue to collect insurance money. Not only do they know, but guess who they tell?  EVERYBODY!!!  And guess what happens?  You get all the patients who don’t want to pay their bills.  Great!  Until, that is, until you watch your patient A/R go through the roof.  By the time you see this happen, you are already in trouble.

Don’t waste time.  There are automated tools to help your practice both maintain your good relationships with your patients, AND get them to pay you their portion of the bill sooner.  Call me today at 888-780-1333 and I will tell you about them.  Isn’t it worth 20-30 minutes of your time to keep the lights on in your practice over the long haul?

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Is It Time To Dismount?

5 May

My father was a wise man. He used to tell me, “If you find out that your horse has died, it is a good idea to dismount.”

I’ve found, in my experience, that many medical and dental practices are riding a dead horse, and it is definitely time to dismount.

How many things in your practice are being done the same way they were 20 years ago? 10 years? 5 years? If you are like most practices, your answer will be “nothing!” But, if you think about it, the one thing that is being done the same way it has been for a long time is the way you collect money from patients and insurance companies that owe you money.

Sending a monthly statement, and calling (when you get the time to do so) does not work any more to motivate your slow pay and delinquent patients to pay your bill. Calling, waiting on hold, and nagging insurance companies doesn’t get you paid on time either. And do you have any idea how much having employees on hold that long will cost you in a month?

Over the years, we have determined that there are four distinct types of patient payers. Each one requires a different approach to motivate them to pay you, and it is a mistake to treat all of them the same. It is hard, if not impossible, for you to determine which is which quickly and inexpensively in-house.

We have also found a much more economical and effective way to motivate the insurance companies who are dragging their feet, making excuses, and ignoring your calls to get you paid faster.

Transworld Systems can help you update and automate your A/R processes for both insurance and patients. The cost will normally be less than what you are paying now to do what you do in-house, and the results will be MUCH better than riding a “dead horse.”

Contact David Wiener at 888-780-1333 or email me at david.wiener@transworldsystems.com

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A Warning You Need to Read: Don’t Believe in Something For Nothing!

14 Jan

Many businesses have been told by their collection agency that they can provide free collections to them simply by adding the percentage fee onto the debtor’s balance as “the cost of collections”  In other words, promising prospective customers “something for nothing.”  With the high cost of collection agencies, this is a very tempting offer for a business who needs to collect their money and hesitates at paying an agency their typical 30-50% fee for collecting.

DON’T BELIEVE IT!!

First of all, the match doesn’t work anyway.  If the fee is 50% and the agency or the client adds the 50% back into the bill before it is collected, the client will only receive 50% of the new balance, which is not the full amount (only 75% of the original bill)

More importantly than that, the agency is tempting you to violate Federal Laws against usury.  The agency is setting themselves, AND POTENTIALLY YOU, up for a law suit and stiff fines and penalties.  Even if you put a statement to that effect into your financial policy, you may not charge these percentages to recoup your collection fees.

Please take a moment to read this article, copied from the ACA International (American Collector’s Association) website about a recent court case against such an unscrupulous agency.

Court Rules Against Collecting Percentage-Based Fees

Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that charging consumers a percentage
of their account balance as a collection fee is a violation of the FDCPA unless
the consumer explicitly agreed to pay a percentage-based fee.

In a Jan. 2, 2014, ruling, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals found that a collection
agency may not collect a fee based on a percentage of the account balance if the
original contract between the consumer and creditor did not specify the consumer
would be responsible for a percentage-based fee.

In the case, Bradley v. Franklin Collection Service Inc., the consumer plaintiff had
signed a patient agreement when receiving medical treatment that stated, “In the
event of nonpayment… I agree to pay all costs of collection, including a reasonable
attorney’s fee…” The creditor subsequently added a 33-1/3 percent fee (reflecting
the contractually agreed upon fee between the creditor and the collection agency)
before forwarding the account to the collection agency.

The court ruled that the plaintiff, “agreed to pay the actual costs of collection; his
contractual agreement with [creditor] did not require him to pay a collection agency’s
percentage-based fee where that fee did not correlate to the costs of collection.”
The court found that the percentage-based fee, assessed before the collection
agency’s attempt to collect, was not related to the agency’s actual cost of collection,
thus breaching the agreement between the consumer and the creditor. Therefore,
the court held that the collection agency violated the FDCPA by collecting the 33-1/3
percent fee when the consumer only agreed to pay the actual costs of collection.

© 2014 ACA International

In other cases, medical practices, along with the agency, were charged under racketeering laws for the very same offense.  The fines and penalties that they were required to pay were astronomical.

Please, let me show you a way to avoid the percentages charged by these collection agencies, without running afoul of the law, and while collecting more money than they do in the process.

Respond to me through the form below and I will rush you the information on how to avoid these kinds of unscrupulous methods and still collect more of your hard earned money.

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Medical Collections Success Guaranteed!

21 Nov

Whether you have a large medical practice or are a single practioner, cash flow is negatively affected by slow-paying patients and unresolved insurance claims.  With Transworld Systems Accelerator, your accounts are worked earlier and this allows your payments to be received faster increasing your cash flow!

Early intervention is the key to successful collections!! Review the infographic below and see what kind of return on your investment you could make when submitting just 100 accounts to Transworld Systems!

RUR-Medical graphic

 

Is it worth a 20 minute conversation to see how you can get a 6241.81% return on your investment, while decreasing staff time, frustrations and expense at the same time.  Contact me through the contact link below, or call me at 888-780-1333 for more information or a no-obligation demo of our services.

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Great news for users of Epic, Mysis Tiger, Mac Practice, and Medisoft PM Software

21 Nov

Not only does Transworld Systems offer the most unique and cost effective solutions for managing a medical practices patient accounts, they now offer an interface with most major medical practice management software packages.  New to the list is:

Epic
Mysis Tiger
Mac Practice and
Medisoft/Lytec

Users of these, and many other software packages/systems can now seamlessly interface with Transworld’s unique 4-stage approach to patient A/R management.  This revolutionary, automated, technology based solutions provides medical practices with the ability to:

1.  Cut internal expenses and staff time spent chasing slow pay and delinquent patient accounts
2.  Speed up cash flow and increase bottom line profits for the practice
3.  Ensure compliance with ever increasing and changing Federal, State and local regulations.
4.  Elminate, or significantly decrease, the need for expensive collection agency fees.

For a brief, no=obligation, demo of these services, to receive a list of all of Transworld’s technology interfaces, or to receive my report, “It’s Only Going To Get Worse: Surviving the Tough New Reallity for Physicians”  please contact me using the form at the bottom of this page, or call me directly at 888-780-1333.

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Tools To Help You Get Paid Faster

6 Sep

acceleratorinfographic

 

Are you having a hard time finding the time to contact your customers or patients regarding payments?  Let Transworld Systems help you Accelerate your payments and improve your cash flow with Accelerator.

The below infographic illustrates the benefits of Accelerator and how we can help you get paid faster!  Don’t wait until 60, 90 or 120 days for you outstanding invoices.  The sooner you react, the sooner you can get paid the money you are owed!

Call me, David, directly at 888-780-1333 for a free overview of the tools that can help you motivate your customers and patients to pay you sooner, while maintaining your good relationship with them.

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The Importance of Cash Flow

5 Sep

Importance-of-Cash-Flow1

 

Cash flow is the life blood of businesses and there are many businesses and practices that have cash flow problems.  Since 1970 Transworld Systems has been working with small and medium sized businesses and practices to improve their accounts receivable and increase their cash flow!

Transworld Systems can improve your accounts receivable and increase cash flow with Accelerator by recovering your money faster!  Contact me  today to learn more about how we can help you!

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10 daily practice statistics every dentist should review – DentistryIQ

24 Aug

Here is a great article to get you thinking about “the business of dentistry.”  In the financial area, it is vital that co-pays be collected at all times, and that patients be motivated to pay more, sooner, on their responsibility.

I’d be happy to show you some new ways to get that done, while actually building your relationships with patients rather than tearing them down.

10 daily practice statistics every dentist should review – DentistryIQ.

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HIPAA: How to protect yourself and your practice | Medical Economics

13 Aug

HIPAA compliance is getting more complicated, and more essential.  Is your A/R management or collection agency doing anything to protect you from violations of HIPAA, FDCPA, HITECH, and TCPA?  If not, you may be liable for drastic penalties.

HIPAA: How to protect yourself and your practice | Medical Economics.

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Your A/R is Leaking!

27 Jun

Accounts Receivable depreciate in value.  Everyone knows that the older an account gets, the harder it is to collect.

What they may not realize is the extent that their money is evaporating from accounts that have not yet been collected.  According to the US Commerce Department study indicated by the graph below, accounts over 90 days depreciate at a rate of .5% every day that they are not collected.

By the time an account reaches 180 days, the threshhold at which most businesses and medical practices throw up their hands and assign the account to a collection agency, 70% of the value of the account will never be recovered by anyone.  They have already spent considerable time and money in chasing the account in-house.  That time and money is gone, as is the collectibility of the account.

depreciation schedule

But, there is a better way.  According to the Dartnell Institute of Business, the average cost of collecting a slow-pay account in-house is $31.60 each.  Using an outsourcing partner to do it not only gets the account collected sooner, before it depreciates, but can generally save the business a majority of their cost to do it as well.  Relationships with customers/patients can be retained, cash flow increased, and staff has more time to do productive things, rather than chasing the patients for money.

I ca show you in a 22 minute A/R strategy session by phone if the tools that I use can help your business.  Respond to me via the form below and we can make an appointment to talk briefly.  Isn’t it worth a 22 minute investment to see how much your cash flow can improve?

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