Your billing staff is throwing away your money…and it may be your fault!

Jan 25th, 2013

Think about the personalities of the people who are your billing staff. Most people who are good at billing are great systems type people, but frankly are probably boring, cranky folks who have little people skills.

They hate talking to people, have a poor demeanor, aren’t leaders, and couldn’t convince anyone to pay you their past due balance, as much as start a conversation at a cocktail party.

When you ask them why accounts receivable over 90 days seems high they react in the best way they know how…..you’ll never see any payments for balance in 90 day AR ever again. How they correct this is exactly why you’re losing income. Since they dread calling someone and setting up a payment schedule (what would they do if they were rejected yet once again socially?) they simply write off the balances before they go into the 90 day column. Now they don’t have to deal with the patient or with you! I’ve seen some creatively choose the software option which resets the aging date to the last mailed invoice date instead of the date of service, so they just waste your money by sending out statement after unanswered statement.

At PAS we employ a variety of personality types, in fact we hire with these issues in mind. We don’t view balances over 90 days as a failure, or something to be hidden. They’re only a challenge when left in plain sight to be viewed and worked. And consider your staff is probably being paid hourly. PAS is only paid against what we collect, so your money truly is our money – so we work every last claim as if it was our own. That’s part of the reason why you’ll increase your take home when you use PAS to do your billing and collections.