A dental practice can face several challenges when generating dental patient statements. These challenges can straddle printing or mailing issues. For the dental team, recovering payments on time for dues owed by patients can be cumbersome and stressful.
Healthcare costs are rising across the board, and expenses incurred by the average patient have increased accordingly. How does this impact a patient statement in dental healthcare processes? An increase in healthcare spending indicates a possibility that patients can delay or avoid paying their dues. Hence, a dental practice can witness a rise in outstanding debts and a longer collection process.
One of the ways to mitigate such risk is by creatively using accurate patient statements for patients. Dental statement follow-ups help to spur the collection rate and keep the cash flows ticking.
Understanding Patients' Statements And The Importance
A practice uses patient statements as a summary of the treatment offered to the patient and the cost for the same. It also contains details of the patient's name and location, dentist details, policy coverage, details, etc. The main reason for patient statements is to garner collections due to the practice.
Ineffective Patient Statements
The patient experience is not limited to treatment. It can encompass the billing process or a patient statement. This can hamper cash flows. Some dental practices still depend on physical bills and statements sent through the post.
Statements sent by mail can get ignored, and a patient might not even look at them. This leads to a loss for the practice, which has incurred expenses for printing statements and postage. Any mode of statement needs adequate follow-up mechanisms if patients have not remitted the payment.
Calling patients as a reminder for pending payments is not always effective, as attempts to reach them might not always be fruitful. The team might not have the time to repeatedly call patients about pending payments.
The Role Of Automation
Automation is a choice for many dental practices and is an effective option for dental patient statements. It helps to curtail costs that would have to be incurred on printing and postage. Automated patient statements deployed by the team can notify patients of dues on their preferred device.
Automation also offers a smooth payment process that can be made online with multiple options such as NEFT, debit cards, etc. Convenient options offered to a patient make it easier for them to pay and improve the rate of payments. Besides, the elimination of paper and postage is also an environmentally friendly option. Digital engagement options also augur well for younger patients. The benefits are varied.
Automation offers flexibility as statements can be set for delivery to a single patient or to a group of patients. The team can select from multiple filters that include patient demographics, outstanding balance information, aging, and more to create patient record sets that can then be used for electronic statement transmission.
Electronic statements can be sent to patients in a single click. A patient can open the patient portal to clear dues through a computer or a mobile phone. There is no need to open any additional apps or write cheques.
Best Practices For Generating A Patient Statement
A few ways the practice can benefit through patient statements by adopting a few measures:
Avoid Shipping Delays
Average debts by patients are rising gradually, and to avoid unwanted increases in dues, a dental practice must send patient statements on time. A delay can make a patient forget their dues, and this delays payments. The team must ideally generate statements within a single business day.
Since the treatment has just been completed, all necessary details captured in the system can be referred to while making the statement. An overload of work is the main reason for a delay in sending statements. The practice needs to prioritize billing tasks.
Draft Simple And Clear Statements
The practice needs to make patients aware of outstanding dues. It should also encourage and convince them to make timely payments. When a bill is ambiguous or difficult to comprehend, a patient may become confused and prioritize making payments according to the schedule.
The main reason for sending a statement is then lost. On receiving a statement, a patient needs to know what the statement is about and expected responses are. Clear communication can help prevent unnecessary calls to the practice.
Margins, spaces, and alignment can make a difference and help patients to grasp what's needed. Unwanted codes and jargon might confuse a patient. Use simple and broad fonts that make it easy for patients to read statements. Underlining sentences and italics must be used as required. Adequate white space in the statement makes the overall look clean and neat while making patients pay attention to the necessary elements and complete the action that is needed.
Boosting The Revenue Cycle
Patient statements for billing and follow-up can boost the revenue cycle. All relevant documents, invoices, post-treatment instructions, etc, can be included while making mailing programs for statements. It enables patients to pay faster by offering details when needed.
Clarification Of Insurance Details
When generating a patient statement, the team should ensure that details of primary and secondary insurance plans are included. Any pending amount from the insurance company needs to be added. This enables patients to stay aware of dues and payment amounts to be made. These details should ideally be right at the top. This makes the details easier for a patient to understand.
Highlight The Amount Due
Clearing dues payable is the key objective of every patient statement, whether initial or follow-up. The team should draft statements that are not challenging for any patient. The amount due to the practice must be highlighted clearly and in bold.
A patient statement can have multiple figures and descriptors, and hence, differentiating these figures and the amount payable by the patient must be clearly visible. The team must design different sections of the statement in a way that makes the pending payment stand out.
Adding Contact Details
A dental practice needs multiple touchpoints to attract and retain a patient. Some patients prefer calling a practice over the phone and may not be comfortable with indirect modes such as apps, emails, etc. Some might prefer quicker and convenient digital options.
All key contact details, such as the website link, email address, and phone number, must be added to the patient statement. Several contact modes in the statement indicate flexibility and availability of the practice to answer patient requests.
Choice Of Convenient Payment Options
The dental practice can offer various offline and online payment options to patients. This increases the possibility of faster payment. Moreover, every practice can have multiple profiles of patients, and hence, a choice helps to cater to all payment preferences. The team can also include a phone number in the statement to address payment-related queries.
Outsource Billing And Collections
A practice can outsource the job of billing and collection to any reputable third-party firm. These experts can leverage their skills and experience to draft statements that are appealing and convincing. This will also help the existing team to focus on other core areas.
Automate The Patient Statement Activity
A practice can integrate an automation software solution to manage billing tasks and send patient statements with ease and minimal effort. Automation results in accurate bills and statements. More importantly, saves the precious time of the dental team.
The dental team can effectively use patient statements as an important component of the billing process. Accurate patient statements sent on time make patients aware of outstanding dues. It also increases financial transparency and builds trust with the patients.
