Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Heavy Duty - October 2016 - Subscribe to Outpatient Surgery Magazine

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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Our payment plan is straightforward and reasonable. Patients must put 50% down at the time of service with 2 additional automatic pay- ments of 25% of the balance a month apart either by credit or debit card, or by automatically deducting the amount from the patient's checking account. For example, if the patient portion is $500, we'll accept $250 at the time of service and then split the balance into 2 payments: $125 in 30 days and $125 in another 30 days. This way, we're paid in full in 3 months (we tack on a 10% interest fee to the bal- ance for accounts older than 90 days). In rare instances, we'll let financially strapped patients take up to 6 months to pay. If a patient doesn't agree to automatic withdrawal, we don't accept the payment plan. Be sure the patient leaves a copy of his debit or credit card so you can process the payment at the beginning of every month. For electronic transfer from a checking account, known as an ACH (Automatic Clearing House) withdrawal, the patient must provide you with his checking account number and routing number. We also let patients use a healthcare credit card to pay for out-of- pocket expenses that aren't covered by their health plans. This financ- ing option is quick and clean. It pays us upfront and in full, and bills patients separately. How are we doing? Surgical facility managers now face a new financial reality, one in which almost as much of our revenue comes from patients as from insurers. We collect the patient's full out-of-pocket costs about 60% of the time and a half of what they owe about 40% of the time. Not bad, but we can do better. OSM Ms. Aldred (monika@northpointesurgical.com) is the business office man- ager at the Northpointe Surgical Center in Tooele, Utah. Business Advisor BA 3 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6

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