It happens a lot that patients have their insurance plans inactive but they are found unaware of it later on. Such patients, due to lack of coverage at the time of service, are billed and they usually get surprised and sometimes really angry upon receiving an unexpected bill.
In such scenario there is no way to bill insurance. In this scenario, only one thing works and that is the art of handling the customer. A patient is a customer for us. And our medical billing practices have been designed to keep the biller informed of expected patient’s reaction. Each action of a biller leads to some expected reaction and we tell him in our training manuals. So embed the patient’s perspective in the mind of biller and that works well in the interests of both the provider and patient but sometimes, things may go unexpected. Sometimes a patient would be shouting just upon a bill of a nominal amount and other times, he/she would be smiling while paying a bill with three digits before decimal.
What is the best way of handling someone who is over the phone? Our training manuals and hiring criteria rotate around hiring such a diversified and problem solver biller who would know the best course of action with minimal or no supervision. He/she will decide, if not right at the spot, but with clear understanding what suits best for the provider and how to convince the patient.
Sometimes, patient abuses. In such case, a rich experience in customer services and a clam personality comes in handy. When we say we do billing from patient’s perspective then that phenomenon speaks for itself when biller essentially tries all options and even after applying all options, if patient does not agree to pay then… we take care of the rest.
Our billers talk on your behalf. When patients receive bill they usually have problems with different perspectives but their all concerns in the end melt down to one thing, a smile, a nice gesture of friendship and concern and some best practices followed by the golden rules of professional judgment, prudence decision making and in the execution while keeping the provider’s instructions in mind.