How Can I Improve Cash Flow At My Dental/Medical Practice?

by Debi Enders

If your dental or medical practice is like most, its business model is built on credit. You provide services now – with the expectation that you’ll get paid later. There are things you can do to improve your practice’s cash-flow pipeline.

1.  Invoice patients for out-of-pocket costs faster. Faced with rising costs, many health plans have increased deductibles, making patients responsible for a larger portion of their routine health care expenses. Unable to predict accurately what these out-of-pocket costs might be, medical practices typically wait until after they receive insurance reimbursement to bill patients.  

By tapping into payers’ systems, medical practices can assess the status of a patient’s deductible and accurately predict out-of-pocket expenses at the time of the visit. They can immediately obtain authorization to charge a patient’s credit card once the insurance claim is settled.

2.  Deposit payments in your bank accounts more quickly. Many banks now offer solutions that enable medical practices to speed the time it takes to get payments into their bank accounts:  

-    Lockbox services allow a practice to have incoming payments collected at a secure post office box and transported to a bank for processing and deposit, eliminating the need for employees to handle incoming checks.
-    Remote deposit enables a practice to deposit checks into a bank account from its office.

3.   Combine your claims, EOBs and payments into a single database. Once funds are deposited into your account, medical staff must still take time to post them manually into the practice’s accounts receivable database. The claims and the explanation of benefits (EOB) associated with these reimbursements, meanwhile, are tracked in their own separate databases.  These and other emerging solutions do more than improve cash flow. They reduce the demands on administrators and improve accuracy as well. 

Debi Enders (debi.enders@commercebank.com) is assistant vice president, small business banking at Commerce Bank.