Step 5 - Follow-up and Track Everything

c. Start using Chiropractic Billing Software

Chiropractic billing software will help your practice easily manage the challenges that come with billing insurance. With accurate charge capture, advanced claim processing, and billing analytics tools, your practice can stay on top of your patient A/R.

d. Implement a credit card on file policy

Instating a credit card on a patient’s file that requires patients to leave their payment information with your practice ensures that you get paid at the time of service.

a. Provide electronic patient statements

The patient follow-up process should go beyond traditional communication. Send electronic patient statements and information to the patient/insured person to effectively convey the balance due for chiropractic services.

According to a 2019 McKinsey and Company report, 50% of patients want more clarity from their bills. By sending electronic patient statements, you can accelerate cash flow, lower your costs, while providing greater convenience to your patients.

71%

71% of consumers

to enroll in eStatements from providers (Consumer Healthcare Payments Survey 2018)

The patient eStatement should include pertinent information regarding: 1. The provider of services, 2. Services performed, 3. Charges of services, 4. Payer payments and adjustments, and 5. Contact name, address and phone number for statement inquiries

There is a higher chance of getting a patient to respond to balance dues if they understand what services were performed, how much they owe, and how to pay or inquire if they have statement queries.

Chiropractic EHR and billing software makes it easy to generate electronic patient statements and send them to patients via email. With zHealthEHR’s cloud-based billing software, you can prepare on-demand patient statements if you would like to provide a patient with a walk-out statement or if you would like to send a patient their latest statement in response to balance inquiries.

b. Patient Follow-ups

While chiropractic practices ideally should work to receive payment from patients at the point of care, sometimes this is not possible. Therefore, it is important to implement an effective plan for the collection of payment after the patient has left the practice.

Develop a proactive plan for contacting patients who have not made timely payments. Create a script for your staff to follow. Your staff should be able to communicate effectively on how to request payment in full, discuss payment options, and offer a payment plan if needed.

Add a follow-up reminder in your chiropractic EHR for collecting patient balances the next time the patient visits your practice.

c. Track the Financial Health

Tracking and managing the financial health of your practice is important. Make reviewing your payment collections a standard part of your regular financial tracking process. To drive improvement in patient payment collections, it’s essential to track and manage your results. Start tracking these reports and take measures to improve your collections:

This is a great tool for measuring the overall financial health of a practice. The A/R report breaks down money owed from patients and insurance payers based on the number of days they’ve been in receivables.

Red flag: Claims that take longer than 45 days to process. If the days in A/R is more than 90 days, it is an even bigger red flag.

Accounts Receivable A/R Report

Money Collected or Received Report

Patient Payment Report

This report will show information about how much you have billed and collected from patients and insurance companies. You will get a clear idea of how much you should collect from your patients to pay their claims.

Another vital set of reports that your practice needs to analyze are patient payments. Tracking patient payments is essential to ensure that your practice is profitable. In this report, you should be able to track patient name, patient type, payment method, and amount paid.

A credit report can show if the patient has a long history of not paying his or her payments or which patients to approach first to collect payments. You can start communicating with patients who have more balances on their accounts. Check the patient profiles with high balances to know how much you should collect from them.

Patient Active Credit Report

Sukhi Singh, CEO and Co-Founder of zHealthEHR

Revenue cycle management needs to be integrated with other activities around patient experience. Providers need digital tools like chiropractic EHR and billing software to engage patients and provide exceptional experiences.