Tight credit for patients can mean hard times for doctors
In a recent Transunion survey of hospital administrators, nearly half of the surveyed administrators say their hospitals have experienced a 6 percent to 10 percent increase in uninsured and underinsured patients since early 2007. Almost 30 percent observed an increase of 11 percent to 20 percent. The survey covered hospitals in 15 states.
The survey also reported:
- Nearly 79 percent of respondents said they are concerned that Consumer Directed Healthcare Plans will increase their bad debt within the next two years.
- Hospital executives are spending a lot of time worrying about patient collection issues. Improving patient collections was the number one priority for over 40% of executives. Close to 20% have focusing on lowering bad debt as their top goal.
Given the current economic times and the trend outlined in the survey, it is critical to excel at patient collections. It is critical to use ll of the tips, tricks and tools available to improve patient collections. Without the latest (and proven) approaches it is easy to spend a lot of resources without much result in patient collections:
- Online payment technology is evolving; with some new technology web sites now can accept credit cards as well as debit cards and even electronic checks.
- Do not allow you credit card readers to be a bottleneck. The latest ones are inexpensive (since they are software based and hook up to a front desk PC). You should have at least two both for backup purposes and to facilitate taking payments from multiple patients at once. In addition, try and use one that converts checks to electronic payments for almost instantaneous processing of checks.
- Establish a consistent policy on whether you’ll reschedule these patients or let them see the doctor and mail in their money later. If you choose the latter route, make it easy for patients to remember their responsibility. Hand them a self-addressed envelope marked “COPAY-URGENT”.
- Prioritize patient collection efforts by more than just the balance owed. Consider the patients likelihood to pay. A $1,000 balance from a patient that is only 20% likely to pay is worth much less than a $500 balance from a patient that is 80% likely to pay. Elements to consider when accessing likeliness to pay include prior payment history and employment status.
- Track how well your front desk staff collects co pays and coinsurance. Reward and discipline accordingly.
These steps can help you avoid falling prey to rising bad debt.
Copyright 2008. Carl Mays II
The Advantages of Business Process Outsourcing
Outsourcing is the new buzzword in the business community. However, the question of why businesses outsource their business process is still being asked by a lot of people. Surely, outsourcing would create a lot of profit for a business. Besides, why would businesses outsource their business process if they won’t make any money out of it?
These are the benefits that your company can take advantage of in outsourcing. Cheap labor with equally qualified professionals in other countries can definitely save your company a lot of money on salaries.
By first checking out the quality of work from an outsourcing company, you will be able to determine if the work done by them is up to par or not. If it is not, you can always go to other outsourcing companies and check out the quality of their work. Doing this will enable you to find the company that will meet your standards.
Some advantages of Outsourcing
For a politician, outsourcing will just be a political subject that can be argued on debates within the walls of Congress and newspapers. The issue will serve as a “fortified objection” to take away jobs from your own countrymen, making your business “unpatriotic”. Politician’s sympathy with regards to the outsourcing issue may win him a few votes in the upcoming election, nothing more than that.
There are other advantages of outsourcing, yet the aforementioned advantages are the most noted ones. Do not be misled by rumors and gossips about outsourcing. You are the business owner-and you know what is good for your business.
Business Process Outsourcing: The Perfect Solution for Your Business
In the past, handling all business matters was easy. But because of the growing demands in businesses today, you have to consider that it will be difficult for your company to cope up with today’s competitiveness in the business world. Your company should maximize its resources in order to remain competitive with other companies.
One example would be the help desk. Every company that manufactures products needs one. This particular business process is a way to communicate with your clients and know about their feedback in your products and it is also a way to assist your clients in case they encounter difficulty with your product. Creating a help desk department may prove to be too costly. It will involve everything from hiring additional employees and purchasing all the necessary tools you need to create an efficient and working help desk.
Today, there are available call center companies that will be able to provide a help desk for you. They will be the one who will answer your calls and generate reports regarding each caller and providing the reports for your company.
Always keep in mind that you should first check the quality of an offshore outsourcing company first before you sign the contract in order to be sure that you will be getting your money’s worth. Remember this and it will pave the way to make your company the best in the industry.
Technology Will Not Save You From Bad Medical Billing Employees
No matter what technology you deploy or the strength of your process, superior medical billing ultimately relies upon a strong billing staff. There are four key elements to creating a world-class billing team:
1) Set up a cadre of tools, individuals and policies to insure you find, hire and retain the best employees:
The leading billing organizations recruit the best staff. A dedicated, specialized HR team evaluates applicants-applicants must pass a proprietary billing testing process assessing both skill and will. This process shouldn’t be different from the recruiting process of a Fortune 500 organization.
The leading billing organizations train to develop desired quality. Junior staff members must pass demanding training programs-junior team members are developed into billers, capable of following the measured and monitored billing process. In addition, staff is trained throughout the year in latest payer rules, follow-up techniques and compliance guidelines. A dedicated Compliance Officer is responsible for all additional HIPAA and OIG training.
If you do not remove weak performers from your team they will demoralize the entire group and will bring most people down to their level of performance. It is. Unfortunately true, that on bad apple can spoil the bunch. Each year remove the weakest members of the team based upon clear performance metrics.
2) Focus your team members: The best medical billing processes are designed to allow individuals to specialize in specific areas such as charge posting, insurance follow-up or payment posting. Such specialization allows the individuals to become true experts capable of spotting issues quickly that billers spending their time performing multiple tasks might miss.
3) Supply your billing team with strong data driven analysis: This rings back to the “You can’t manage what you do not measure” message. Your team cannot systematically improve their performance or your billing without in-depth measurements of how billers behave and how the billing process is working.
4) Incentivize the billing staff: All positions in billing process are monitored and incentivized to perform optimally for your account. The incentive system while highly motivating for the staff, falls within the parameters established by the OIG for an acceptable incentive system in a medical billing environment. The best performers should be rewarded accordingly.
These steps provide a foundation for growing a medical billing team that will be second to none.
Copyright 2008 by Carl Mays II
How To Outsource Your Way To Home Business Freedom
I’m sure most of us got into home business and came to the internet to earn a good living, provide value to the community and have some semblance of freedom, right? We’ll why are you working longer hours and feel less free as an entrepreneur? It’s probably because we don’t know when to let go and start outsourcing some of the mundane tasks that prevent us from truly having that freedom.
Usually when you are just starting out you may not need to outsource but keeping an eye on how quickly your home business can grow is important. Way back, when I first started working full time from home I jumped on Ebay and the sales took off like a rocket. I had no clue how successful I’d be.
In this situation I new that I was going to need some immediate help and I brought on a part time assistant. I paid him to do some of the mundane tasks that I didn’t necessarily care for in exchange for a consistent hourly wage created by the added sales and productivity. When your business gets to that level, don’t put it off as it will ultimately stunt your growth.
When that time does arrive, you’ll want to be careful to hire the right people for the job. The key is to hire people that are professional and are somewhat natural at there jobs. Don’t try to hire someone that is proven to do one task well and have the do something totally different. The last thing about hiring is not to hire people to do tasks that totally control the destiny or direction of your company, that’s your job.
Examples of this are tasks such as answering emails, keeping track of stocks and sales figures and so on. These jobs are very simple and often repetitive which make them easier to learn and less likely to screw up. Again, never let someone else make decisions that will greatly affect your internet business if you do not want to risk losing it overnight.
Now let’s get down to the bottom line, how do you pay your new hires. It depends on how often you need their services. In the beginning you may be able to hire a freelancer on a periodic basis as you need them, but as business picks up you may consider hiring them on a full or part time basis. Full timers would be paid hourly and your freelancers would be paid on a per project basis.
Now when it comes to project work, you are only required to pay them once based on a job done according to your previously agreed specifications. You can find reputable freelancers in several places right on the net. A couple popular sites you should familiarize yourself with are www.rentacoder.com and www.elance.com.
So now that you have a couple resources to fall back on when your home business gets to that point (or maybe you’re already there) you can rest assured that you won’t have to do it all yourself. If you’re anything like me then you might be somewhat of a control freak when it comes to running your business, however, I’ve come to realize that leveraging and outsourcing are the only way to build a scalable business model that continues to work when you’re not. Now start building!
One final thought before we part, don’t stop dreaming. You had a dream that got you to this point and it’s that dream the will continue to get you over the humps and challenges you’ll inevitably face. Make sure the reasons why you are doing what you are doing are greater than money, fame ad notoriety and you’re almost guaranteed success.
Reasons to Outsource Your Content Writing
A lot of webmasters use articles to provide content for their readers to enjoy, or to promote a product. If your website is a small one you may be able to handle the article writing on your own. However in some cases you will definitely need to consider the services of a ghostwriter to help you.
A ghostwriter is, just as the name implies, the invisible writer behind the article. Their names do not appear on the completed article. Rather, the person who purchases the article or hires the ghostwriter obtains the authorship rights to the article.
The decision to use a ghostwriter may be a difficult one if you do not know how to go about the task and if you don’t understand the reasons why you need one. It can, however, be a very rewarding experience if you know how to outsource your content to a qualified ghostwriter. Listed below are a few reasons you might want to consider hiring a ghostwriter.
1. You are overwhelmed with work because your site is growing so fast. That’s a good problem to have but it can be frustrating if you try to do all the work yourself. To have a fast growing website is a good thing; to be unable to keep up with the demand for fresh content is a bad thing. Your website visitors expect fresh, relevant content when they visit your site. They don’t want “leftovers” and if you continually serve old materials to them they will find another site to frequent. Why should they return?
A consistent update with custom articles written by a ghostwriter (or yourself if you have the time and talent) will insure your visitors will come back for more. That’s why blogs are so popular. The content is always changing. The visitor knows he will get the latest update. The bottom line is simply this: the more visitors you have coming to your website the better are your chances to make money. The fresher, updating content you put on your site the more traffic you will have. If your website traffic is increasing fast, you will also need to update fast and that usually means you need help. A ghostwriter can help you keep that traffic coming.
2. You sell a good product but can’t write a good article. It is not a secret: some people cannot write. Yet, content is necessary for selling any kind of product on the Internet. The words and pictures become the salesman. You need descriptions of your products; you need pre-sell pages; you need thank-you pages.In some cases you need passive, indirect sales pages where an article provides excellent information that subtly guides the visitor to the shopping cart. Unfortunately if you can’t write, and you don’t outsource, your site is doomed to become a dull, boring blight on the Internet landscape that soon dies an unprofitable death.
That’s where ghostwriters come once again to the rescue. Ghostwriters love to write and are usually good at it. A qualified ghostwriter can provide you with custom articles, product descriptions, pre-sell pages, thank you pages and press releases, relieving you from the task of writing so you can focus on building your bottom line by selling and providing customer service.
3. Lack of time to write. Everybody has a full schedule these days and you simply may not have the time to write articles. Maybe you have a dozen or more sites to keep updated. While you may have the time to keep one site updated you simply can’t keep up with all of them. Maybe you work a full-time job and your web business is a part time project.
There could be dozens of reasons why you may not have time to write articles for your site. But this doesn’t have to stop you from having a continual stream of good quality, fresh content for your site. By using the services of a qualified ghostwriter you can keep your “day job” and build a successful internet business as well.
4. You hate to write. If a person decides to become a chef but they hate to cook the advice would be, “stay out of the kitchen!”Likewise a person who hates to deal with people on a personal level would be an utter failure as a pastor of a church - a very people-oriented job. A sure path to failure is to choose a career one hates.
But with websites, it’s different. While websites require a lot of writing you can still be a success because you can outsource your content to a ghostwriter. There’s no reason to fret over hating to write! Outsourcing is just good business sense. Outsourcing your content writing is a way to double or triple the traffic to your website without you having to write a word.
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