Physicians Practice - April 2008 - (Page 40)

ASK THE EXPERTS A It can be great to have NPs take ﬁrst call on the weekends. They’d take the calls and triage using protocols agreed upon with the physicians. If they can handle it, great. If not, they kick it to a physician on call. Before you do it, though, realize it will take some work to set protocols. It’ll also take some convincing and cash to get the NPs to agree to do it. They don’t want their weekends interrupted any more than the physicians do. You’d likely have to pay them hourly regardless of how many calls come in, since they have to be available. It’s worth taking the time, ﬁrst, to assess how big a problem you are talking about and what other solutions there are. You don’t want to start paying more when there actually aren’t that many calls. So look back or begin tracking how many calls you actually get after close on Friday through opening on Monday. If possible, identify why the patient called in and if they also called on Thursday or Friday. If the volume of calls is pretty low, it’s not worth making the change. You also may be able to inﬂuence the ﬂow by stafﬁng up and opening the schedule to allow for more sameday appointments on Thursday and Friday. If you’ve pushed patients off, they just call on the weekend. Or, perhaps, you can better educate patients at appointments on the issues they are calling in about. In short, explore the options. Using NPs for call isn’t an easy solution. CREDIT CARD NUMBERS ON FILE Q We are interested in asking patients who do not pay in full when services are rendered to leave their credit card number on file with our office. When we receive confirmation that their insurance policy does not pay in full, we would like to then charge their credit card. What obstacles, if any, do you see with this collection plan? We already accept credit cards for the payment of their copay, so we have the system in place. A Some practices do indeed do this, but there are a couple of risks, primarily credit card piracy. Having all those credit card numbers on ﬁle can be a temptation to staff and a theft risk. Some patients won’t want you to do this for these reasons, and they are quite right to be nervous. Indeed, your card processor may prohibit this practice for this reason. Check your contracts. The other risk is that patients, while knowing you plan to charge their card, may be surprised by the total amount. You risk hurting your relationship with them when they see this charge on their credit card statement and are shocked. Some other options: • Take full advantage of any real-time adjudication you have access to so you can collect at the time of service. • Offer bill payment by credit card on your Web site and direct folks there. 40 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | APRIL 2008 WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://www.amt1.com http://www.amt1.com http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - April 2008

Physicians Practice - April 2008 Contents The Bigger Picture: Medicare Decision Time Letters Physicians Practice Pearls: Outsource Your Pain Noteworthy Cover Story: Trial Lawyers Tell All Management: When It’s Time to Change Ask the Experts Technology: Do You Know Where Your Data Is? The Tech Doctor: Are Your Discarded PCs Really Clean? Billing & Collections: Playing Hardball The Administrator's Desk: Recruiting for Patient Satisfaction Start It Up: Finance - Mastering the Numbers Game Coding The Great Practice Makeover: Taking Care of Business Associates Classifieds Advertiser Index

Physicians Practice - April 2008

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