Posts Categorized: Healthcare Patient Bad Debt

Current Trends in Patient Account Management

There’s been a major shift in the mix of healthcare payers due to the growth in high-deductible health plans and to increases in employee cost-sharing of employer-sponsored plans. As more people accept responsibility for more of their healthcare expenses, hospitals must collect more money from more payers who have more accounts with hospitals and affiliates…. Read more »

Make Lemonade from Lemons

Leverage Patient Bad Debt to Increase Revenue and Yield In our increasingly data-driven healthcare environment, effective financial management requires timely analysis of Key Performance Indicators (KPI). But it’s essential to track the metrics that give you the most complete picture of your revenue cycle. Traditionally, healthcare finance executives looked at “days in A/R” and “aged receivables”… Read more »

Three Ways to Improve Your Patient Bad Debt Process and Performance

Fewer than 20% of hospitals do anything to collect patient bad debt accounts except to “Set ‘em and Forget ‘em” with one or two primary collection agencies at about day 120. Unpaid patient accounts languish with contingency collection agencies indefinitely while hospitals recover only 10% of bad debt according to a Self-Pay study by HFMA… Read more »

Healthcare Executives Site Financial Challenges as Top Issue; Bad Debt is #2 Financial Challenge

The American College of Healthcare Executives has released its annual report on the Top Issues Confronting Hospitals. The top five issues based on a survey of 350 organizations within their membership are: Financial Challenges Patient Safety and Quality Governmental Mandates Personnel Shortages Patient Satisfaction Within the financial challenges, the top five areas of concern include:… Read more »

Trends in Medical Bad Debt Expense

Many recent news reports indicate a rise in the number of people selecting health insurance plans with high copayments and deductibles. This variation in cost sharing will require hospitals to collect higher sums to cover patients’ increased responsibility. Expectedly, providers are finding it more challenging to collect growing amounts from multiple sources, rather than dealing… Read more »

Higher Deductibles, More Bad Debt

In recent years, the health care marketplace has seen many diverse changes in the nature of payments. One leading change is the increase in patient deductibles, which have grown dramatically during the last decade. With a larger portion of costs now on the insured patients, medical providers and hospitals have needed to adjust to these… Read more »