If you’re looking for a new way to bring in cash, check out this statistic: About 52% of patients would pay $700 more by credit card when visiting a physician if they’d gotten an estimate at the point of care. That stat from a McKinsey quarterly survey of retail health care consumers demonstrates just how important price transparency is to patients, and one way you can be more transparent is by providing patient payment estimator data to them.
Whether you’ve got procedure price ranges posted on your website or you’re just getting started with patient payment estimator tools, check a few ways you can give accurate cost estimates to patients.
Be Clear About What You Can and Can’t Estimate
Suppose your doctor asks a patient to schedule a colonoscopy. When the patient checks out while leaving your practice, they ask you to schedule a time and also request an estimate of what it will cost. You know that providing patients with that cost transparency builds trust and helps with collections, but you also know that your doctor’s charges are only one piece of the cost puzzle. In cases like this, your best bet is to emphasize clarity with the patient by explaining every detail of billing for that service.
You might say, “Well that’s a great question. You’ll have a charge directly from our doctor, who’s actually performing the procedure. Depending on whether he needs to do a biopsy or uses a snare device, or other factors, the charge could change, but it typically runs between [cost] and [cost]. In addition, you’ll also get a bill from the ambulatory surgery center where the colonoscopy takes place, along with a separate bill from the anesthesiologist. Here are the phone numbers for the ASC and the anesthesia practice, where you can ask the billing department to provide an estimate of their possible charges. And if the gastroenterologist has to send anything to pathology, you may get a bill from a lab or pathologist for that evaluation.”
This allows you to set the patient’s expectations for how much your practice may charge, along with what charges they might expect from others.
Identify the Patient’s Insurance
Calculating what a patient will owe often depends upon their insurer as well. You may be able to create an estimation by seeing what the doctor plans to do, looking up the average pay for that code from the payer, and determining what the patient’s portion of the bill will be based on their coverage and plan. This will require you to know such details as whether they’ve met their deductible, if they’re in network with your practice, what their copay and coinsurance are, and any other details about their plan.
If the patient is self-insured or uninsured, you may have discounts available, which you can discuss with the patient so you can calculate a potential charge that they should expect to pay when the time comes.
Consider Estimation Tools
If manually calculating patient estimations becomes too burdensome on your front desk, you should consider using electronic estimation tools. These can allow you to create estimates based on such data as your practice’s fee schedule, your historical charges to previous patients, or pricing data that comes directly from payers.
There’s so much more to know about front desk financial conversations, and expert Tracy Bird, FACMPE, CPC, CPMA, CEMC, CPC-I is here to help! During her 60-minute online training, Boost Your Front Desk Patient Collections, Tracy will provide you with actionable tips that can help you collect more. Register today!
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