Refining Solutions

Originally I thought of the problem my company was facing collecting patient balances as, "How can we collect the monies that we are owed by patients in a way that is effective while still offering the services they need"? I thought about different solution that could help us as a company correct in some manner this problem. Of the ideas I thought of two came to the top of the list as the best and most viable ones. The first ideas was to require a credit card from every patient at the time of service to keep on file and have the patient sign an authorization document for us to charge the credit card with any balance left as patient responsibility. The second ideas was to have a billing customer service representative at each service center collecting on old balances before new services could be rendered.

When I started working on how each process would work I found that with the credit card idea there was too much room for errors and that in the end it might create additional work for the staff. The reason I came to this conclusion is that sometimes explanation of benefits are posted incorrectly either by a representative not paying attention to what their doing or in the case of electronic explanation of benefits from the largest insurance companies glithces happen and the patient ends up been billed for a balance they do not owe. This is a situation that not only happens in my company but it happens every day at every medical facility in the nation. If we had chosen to go with the credit card idea, patients would have been charged for balances that they did not owe and we would be adding more work for ourselves because now we would have to go thru the refund process and having a very upset patient because we charged their card incorrectly and in some instances they would have to call us to make us aware of our error. Trying to refine this solution I decided to work and refine my second solution because although new processed would need