Hospitals in America carry a large number of accounts receivable due to the sheer number of patients they have to deal with. Limited insurance coverage and ever increasing cost of health services means patients have a larger share of out-of-pocket costs. Hospitals also have accounts receivable with healthcare insurance companies who delay or dispute a payment for one reason or another. Patients requiring long term care, emergency care and those with critical illness can rack up huge medical debts which they are unable to pay. Accounts receivable is a huge financial strain for hospitals and can turn their income statement in the red.
Collection agencies are an integral extension of any hospital, recovering thousands (sometimes millions) of dollars for hospitals helping to turn accounts in red into black. Hospitals cannot hire just any debt collection agency, they need a collection agency which has extensive experience in healthcare industry and a deep understanding of patient-doctor relationship, HIPAA privacy laws and several debt collection laws which vary by state.
Hospitals also require multilingual collection agency who can recover money from Spanish speaking patients. Collection agency should be able to send diplomatic Collection letters to patients whose date of debt is less than 120 days and intensive Collection calls for older debts or those carrying high balances. If nothing works, than the collection agency should be able to take the patient to the court and attempt to obtain a favorable judgment to recover money from assets or through wage garnishment.
Collection agency must also perform advance Skip tracing scrub on patients who become unapproachable or whose who have filed for bankruptcy. Some collection agencies also perform Litigious patient scrub, this is really important. Some patients have a history of suing hospitals and healthcare practices, a collection agency must inform hospitals about such debtors and an appropriate careful strategy to deal with them.
If you need a Collection Agency with extensive experience in serving large hospitals and healthcare industry, Contact us.