5 Common Healthcare Payment Collection Mistakes and How to Fix Them
5 Common Healthcare Payment Collection Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Common Healthcare Payment Collection Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Human error can be a tricky foe for any healthcare practice to contend with. Without a modern medical payment processing system in place, the payment collection process is prone to costly mistakes that could impact your ability to grow. Luckily, collection mistakes are avoidable more often than not.
We’ll explain 5 common mistakes that practices make when collecting payments. We’ll also guide you through the healthcare payment solutions you can implement to avoid each one.
Mistake #1: Complex Payment Experience
Patients have full lives of their own outside of their medical appointments. When the payment process isn’t convenient or easy to complete, they’re less likely to pay right away — or even on time.
Even if you’ve upgraded from a simple paper and check-based collections process, keep in mind that not all digital platforms are equally user-friendly.
It isn’t just the traditional bill pay experience that can be complex. Some providers also make the mistake of sending healthcare bills that are too complicated for patients to understand. When patients don’t understand why they’re getting charged, your staff may have to field extra calls, drawing out the revenue collections process even further.
The Solution: Simplify With Online Payments and E-Invoices
Online healthcare payment systems like PayGround can add convenience back into the patient experience. When patients receive an invoice, they can pay the bill from any device, and the process is just like checking out on an e-commerce site — nothing complex about it.
PayGround can further simplify the payment process by allowing patients to pay bills in just one click. Once they store their payment information on our secure platform, patients can send you money within seconds.
The perks for you: Faster payments, higher revenue, and greater patient satisfaction.
PayGround also helps your team create clear invoices, which patients can review and pay — for their entire family — all on one easy-to-navigate dashboard.
Mistake #2: High Administrative Costs
An outdated healthcare collections process could be costing you enormous amounts of money.
To send paper statements, your practice not only needs to pay for materials — including paper, envelopes, postage, and ink — but also labor costs. Invoices can take an enormous amount of time to manually prepare.
Beyond the cost of billing, your practice may be eating the cost of inefficient collections. If you’re constantly chasing after patients with outstanding balances, you’re losing precious resources that could be better spent on helping your medical practice grow.
The Solution: Streamline With a Cloud-Based Medical Payment Processing Solution
Just switching to e-invoices can save your practice nearly $37 per invoice. With a healthcare payment solution like PayGround, you can send unlimited digital invoices for no extra cost — and it’ll get to your patients faster, too.
PayGround can even pair with your preferred billing software to further simplify the statement creation process.
Tired of chasing down late payers? PayGround lets you set up reminders, so you can nudge your patients without spending any time on the follow-up.
The best part: Every process occurs on a central medical payment processing dashboard, so you’re never wasting time jumping around from task to task. All of this can help you save 15% per month while boosting your total payment collections.
Mistake #3: Lack of Online Payment Technology
The majority of Americans do not use paper checks. Of those that do, most pay with checks for less than 20% of purchases. People don’t use checks unless they have to.
While carrying and paying with cash is more common, security is a major concern when sending cash in the mail. Patients could easily get their cash stolen — with few ways to track who stole it — leaving them with fewer funds and medical bills still unpaid. Plus, sending cash is only slightly more convenient than sending checks via mail.
Practices that don’t allow online payments could miss out on both payments and patient loyalty. If you don’t minimally offer online debit or credit card processing for bills, the patient experience you provide is lagging far behind the payment options the rest of the world is providing.
Over 40% of patients would switch providers if they had a poor digital experience — and 20% already have—so you need to allow as many payment options as possible.
The Solution: Expand Your Payment Options With PayGround
PayGround makes it easy to accept more than cash or check. Our online payment technology helps you accept debit card, credit card, and ACH payments virtually.
But that doesn’t mean we’re cutting out other forms of payment entirely. If you have patients who still want to pay via mail, over the phone, or in person, our healthcare payment solution allows you to manage those payments, too.
Mistake #4: Inconsistent Billing
Human error may be your worst enemy. It’s estimated that 80% of all medical bills in the U.S. have at least one small mistake. The cost? $68 billion per year, across the entire healthcare industry.
Mistakes in your billing process — including incorrect coding or duplicate charges — can lead to lots of time and money spent on audits and fines. Not to mention, if a patient shares their experience, you could take a hit to your reputation and face major losses.
The Solution: Digitize Your Billing Process
Healthcare payment solutions like PayGround can help you reduce billing errors by 37%. With every step of the billing process done digitally, our online payment technology can increase accuracy by ensuring you’ll never have to handwrite any line item again.
Mistake #5: Incorrect Patient Information
With a traditional collections process, the manual work doesn’t end when your practice receives a payment. When working with a billing company, you may still need to handwrite patient information.
When you get that information wrong — especially when it’s a credit card number — or your patient’s handwriting is illegible, you’ll get a delayed payment (and spend more time on calls) at best. At worst, you could face trouble for making incorrect charges.
The Solution: Get the Details Right With Online Medical Payment Processing
Choosing a digital healthcare payment solution like PayGround can help you cut down on post-payment errors. Our platform takes much of the work out of your hands when it comes to medical payment processing, so you can focus on improving patient satisfaction instead. Our automated processes will get it right the first time.