Medical debt is a sensitive issue for many patients. It’s incredibly easy to rack up high medical bills in the unfortunate event of an emergency, an accident, or a surprise diagnosis. In addition to being rather costly, medical bills are often added burdens on top of patients’ medical conditions that landed them in a hospital or another healthcare practice in the first place. This is why medical debt collections must always be navigated with empathy, grace, and integrity. Doing so will help to preserve and improve your patient relationships and keep your provider reputation in good standing. However, finding a medical debt collection agency that can do an excellent job with your collections can feel overwhelming. To help, we’ve gathered together a list of 3 things to look for when hiring a medical debt collection agency.
1. A focus on top-notch customer service.
Customer service completely changes the game for healthcare collections. Hiring an agency with trained representatives who communicate with understanding, empathy, and integrity is absolutely essential to preserving and even improving your patient-provider relationships. This paves the way to higher recovery and provides a strong foundation for higher patient retention. Good customer service will keep your patients coming back to you, even if they are put through your collections process.
2. Multiple repayment plans.
Everyone gets paid on a different schedule. Accommodating every individual’s unique financial situation is a phenomenal way to ensure you’re being repaid at the highest amounts possible. Early-out plans that offer incentives for your patients to pay their bills in full early on in the process also ensures that more cash flows back to you quicker. Patients also appreciate the understanding of their financial situations and the flexibility of choice.
3. Excellent communication skills for healthcare collections.
It’s one thing to say that communicating with understanding, empathy, and integrity is important. It’s a completely different thing to proactively invest in training your call representatives to actively practice these communication skills. Having training in place and ways to measure these communication skills translates into higher recovery and patient satisfaction. Whatever agency you hire should have this.
Here at Frost-Arnett, we have over 125 years of experience maximizing healthcare providers’ recovery while improving patient-provider relationships. Contact us at (615) 259-6271 to learn more.