As a practice owner or manager, there is a lot to do to keep your health care practice running smoothly and efficiently. An easy one is making sure you’re getting the most out of your payments acceptance system.
How do you know if your payment solution is working at the optimal level for your practice? Here are five questions to ask to help determine whether it’s time to bring in a new payment partner that can help your practice be more profitable.
1. Are your patients remitting payments on time?
If your answer is yes, great! If not, there are many reasons why this could be happening. One reason could be that the payment options you offer are not convenient. Make it easier for patients to pay their bills on time by offering more payment choices, like paying online or in installments. If your current payment processor doesn’t offer these types of payments, it’s time to look for a new provider.
2. Is your staff spending a lot of time reconciling check payments?
If they are, it’s worth taking another look at how you are accepting payments. Check payments take a longer time and effort to process; opening mail, endorsing checks, completing deposit slips, and delivering payments to your financial institution take time. If your staff is spending time on these activities, they could better spend their time on other things if your patients were paying by credit or debit card.
3. Is your processing device reliable?
Sometimes payment systems just don’t work the way they are supposed to. Have you experienced processing device malfunctioning in the last six months? Even one time is too many, because it means a potential lost payment. It may just be that your solution has outlived its time. If it’s time to consider a new payment device, it’s also a good time to consider a new provider.
4. Are your patients swiping their chip cards on your device?
If you’re not accepting chip cards, you could be opening up your practice to a potential costly data breach. Your patients count on you to maintain confidentiality with their health records, and they trust that their payment data will be safe as well. Accepting chip cards let your patients know that you are dedicated to protecting their sensitive payment information.
5. When was the last time you compared your rates to the market?
If you haven’t compared your current fees and rates to what is available in the market recently, you should. This is especially true if you’ve experienced recent rate and/or fee increases. It may be that you are paying more than you should.
Answering these questions will help you gauge the “health” of your payment solution. If it’s time to revisit your solution, or you simply want to learn about payment processing options for your health care practice, give us a call or send us an email: 1-800-443-2756 or hsfs@henryschein.com.