Isn’t it time to cash in on email in your practice?

On many occasions I come across doctors who are dissatisfied with the amount of income they collect on a monthly basis when compared to the long hours and effort they put in. Not having an effective billing and collection software system and process in a practice can scupper all your hard work. An e…

Michael Botha, Managing Director of Synchramed

On many occasions I come across doctors who are dissatisfied with the amount of income they collect on a monthly basis when compared to the long hours and effort they put in. Upon closer inspection, this is not due to their number of patients, but rather, this dissatisfaction can ultimately be attributed to not having an effective billing and collection software system and process bedded down in the practice. Hard work and patient satisfaction is key to any practice – but having an efficient back-end is critical to the overall business process.

As such, there are five questions that need to be asked to ascertain whether or not the practice is managing the billing and collections process correctly, in order to enhance cash-flow. These include:

• How much is your turnover on a monthly basis?
• How much time lapses between a patient consultation and the consultation being invoiced?
• How much cash do you collect on a monthly basis?
• What is the value of the debtor’s book?
• What is the ageing of your debtor’s book?

In many cases, doctors battle to answer some, if not all of these questions – and it’s not surprising as most focus is invested into patient well-being rather than the business ‘admin’.

More recently though, an uncontrollable outside factor has taken its toll on most practices – even those that effectively manage the cash collection process – and as such, doctors and practice managers need to start putting more focus on their financial processes if they are to be truly successful. They need to review cash collection processes and, if appropriate, seriously consider alternatives. For example, think of the protracted Post Office strike (which is now over) and the negative impact it has had on collections and cash-flow.

In fact, it is safe to say some practices are still recovering from the decrease in cash flow as a result of statements of account not reaching their intended recipients. Added to which, the timing of the strike also came at a bad time of the year for medical practitioners as many members’ medical aid funds are depleted and the members have become liable for the debt. The cosof collecting this money also goes up as additional, unnecessary telephone calls have to be made to request payment and statements have to be reposted. Effectively the entire process needs to be repeated – wasting both time and money.

This is where Practice Management Software Systems, and their subsequent features, become essential to managing a Practice in today’s modern world. Electronic diaries, SMS reminders to the patient the day before the consult and online, real-time submission of claims to medical aids all go a long way to streamlining the entire practice and many make use of such features. Surprisingly however, we find ourselves not making use of technology such as email facilities to transmit statements of account to those responsible for payment. In fact, in many cases the norm is for practices to manually print statements and post them – which in many cases can take a number of days to reach the recipient. It also requires a substantial amount of effort and costs a fair sum of money, all things considered. What’s more, there is no guarantee of receipt and immediate payment.

Quite simply put, not only is this method time consuming, but it is also less effective than emailing statements. And considering email has become a critical component to overall business isn’t it time to include it in the overall Practice Management? In fact, emailing statements has a number of benefits including:

• Instantaneous access – these days most people have smart mobile devices which means instant delivery – anywhere, anytime. And remember – delivery to a post box does not equate to receipt by a debtor – they still need to make that trip to the post office which could add days, if not weeks, to the debt collection cycle.
• Quicker response – as a result of email delivery being instant, potentially so too are responses from debtors. Should the response be a query, it can be resolved quickly too. Should the response be a payment, the desired result has been achieved, i.e., a reduced turnaround time between invoicing and collecting the outstanding debt thereby enhancing the practice’s cash-flow.
• Going green – sending emails instead of printing and mailing goes a long way to not only reduce the amount of paper in a practice but also contributes substantially to reduced carbon footprint by having a more ‘green’ solution in place.
• Control – As emailing is instantaneous and done directly, there is no reliance on an outside third party to deliver statements on your behalf.
• Cost effective – emailing is also a more cost effective distribution method when printing, paper, postage and labour costs are taken into account.

These benefits can go a long way to ensure the success and sustainability of a practice as not only is risk reduced, but the probability of collecting outstanding cash significantly increases. As such, email needs to be seriously considered as an alternative to manually posting statements. While no system is foolproof, and of course the success of this starts with the correct recording of a patients email address, the success of automating and utilising technology in a practice cannot be denied and should be worth considering – don’t you think?