Increase front desk revenue, step 4 of 5
Independent practice physicians care about two things when it comes to their practice: patient care and the financial health of their practices. Many physicians go into business for themselves because they want to be independent, and one of the biggest ways to ensure that your practice stays independent is the ability to maximize your revenue stream.
Your front office staff has a great opportunity to lock in revenue when scheduling appointments. Take advantage of the face-to-face time to quickly and efficiently boost your income potential. Here’s number four of five ways to increase your revenue when scheduling patient appointments at check-in or checkout.
Step #4 Collect co-pays up front.
Collecting co-pays isn’t easy, but it has a huge impact on your practice’s profitability and income. Co-payments account for about one-fifth of the funds collected by a private practice. Recent reports show that physicians are only able to collect 60% of their patient co-payment.5 If you prioritize by determining co-pay amounts and collecting them upfront, it will save you the hassle of trying to collect later. Practices that want to limit the lost revenue of co-pays should look to practice management software that can save your staff from having to make phone calls or manually check the files for co-pay amounts. Other helpful features include confirming a patient’s arrival, entering the amount of the co-pay in a dedicated co-pay field and allowing staff to print a receipt for the patient.
Using software that quickly calculates the patient portion and co-pay amounts with on-demand verification helps you easily collect the proper co-pay amount during scheduling, check-in or the checkout process.
