A recent article in the New York Times by Ann Carrns, Medical Debt Cited More Often in Bankruptcies, from 12 to 13 percent for those citing medical debt as a factor in financial counseling.

She also goes on to point out that people do not want to default on medical payments. In fact, instead of not paying their healers, they will pay their medical bills with new credit cards. However, those cards may carry high interest charges especially if patient has poor credit.

In addition to that, co-pays and deductibles will do nothing but increase regardless of any health care reform implementation.

All the more reason to develop sound front end strategies designed to make sure the patients understand their payments precisely and to make sure you make it easy and manageable for patients to pay.

Here are three ways to do that:

• Use historical payments, insurance payouts and actual treatment data to develop accurate patient responsibility costs. This will increase your point of service collections and reduce days in accounts receivable.
• Verify patient information accuracy. Compare self-reported patient information with data on various financial information databases. This will help avoid potential claim denial errors and improve the efficiency of your registration process.
• Obtain a financial profile on your patient that can be summarized into meaningful healthcare metrics. This will increase your point-of-service collections and also reduce days in accounts receivable.