Thanks Leslie,
Once again, it is the 3rd party insurance industry which makes this difficult. As stated before, our back balances usually consist of uncollected copays.
I am not very good at the business side. I do have someone who is. My question is how, besides that the patient has a contract with the insurance company, is not paying a deductible, insurance fraud. Just asking. It would seem like that would be advantageous to the insurance company as their deductible would take longer to be met.
It is interesting that is basically a mindset. It isn't so much that the auto mechanic (not sure why we always use that guy), is tougher on customers, it is just that 1) for years that has been the expectation and 2) I don't think there is the same rapport. And, of course, it is cash only, and your car keys are held hostage. And, if you don't make your car payments, the car WILL be repossessed.
I charge insured and self pay patients for their records when they transfer for no obvious reason. Most freak out and threaten to call an attorney over $27.45. It is not that they disagree with the fact that it does take time for my receptionist to gather them, burn to a CD, put it in a CD mailer, write down the name of the practice and send it out. It is the fact that they have never been charged by any other office. I never have an issue with a first-time patient as they think it is the norm.
And, I think it is the norm that patients think doctors are 1) rich and 2) the last person they need to pay. We also don't have a corner on the market. Time-Warner, the other day, whom we had paid and had not sent us a bill in three months even though we called them and "begged" for one, just turned off our service in the middle of the day. No multiple invoices with stickers, no collections, just flip a switch. And, that will get a check in the mail rather quickly.
Then to add insult to injury, we get 10 faxes a month from electric companies secondary to a patient who simply can't go without electricity even though they haven't had an asthma exacerbation in three years and are 14 and could easily use an MDI. We now have them come in THAT day and give them an MDI sample and charge a visit. We do sign the fax as I am sure we would be liable if he went home and had a bad attack from their cigarettes. We write the same thing on all of these: asthma and nebulizer. Yes, we could say no, but the page at 10 pm kinda sucks. Just easier to fill it out in ten seconds and fax it back. I had to talk to Bangor Hydro the other day, and I told them, "Do you realize that 95% of these are completely bogus?" You can imagine their answer.
But, I digress.
