If your office doesn’t have one in place, now is not a bad time to sit together to discuss it. The economy is forcing many dental offices to revisit their policies and make adjustments to their accepted payment options. But what do I mean by the term “living, breathing”? Basically – you have a stringent set of terms under which your office operates. However when you are slow or patients are asking to pay smaller amounts, it may be time for you to take another look at your policy to see if needs tweaking. But here’s the important part – everyone must be aware of the tweaks that you are making.
I say this because I’ve worked with offices where the dentist will tell the patient “You lost your insurance? Okay -just tell Teresa to knock 20% off the fee when you see her.” Then the next patient – the dentist’s neighbor asks for a discount and she is told to ‘not worry about paying for your cleaning today.’ Your front desk employees are thoroughly confused and wondering if they’re going to collect anything today.
So think about these points when you have your next team meeting:
- What are our office’s courtesy adjustments (not discounts) for:
- employee’s family
- senior citizen
- payment in full
- local businesses (such as Chamber of Commerce)
- How long will we finance payments in-house (without third party such as CareCredit or Springstone):
- 2, 3 or 6 months
- will you assess a finance charge?
- In the case of a bounced check:
- will we redeposit?
- will we charge a fee?
- will we ask for cash or credit card only payment from now on?
- after how many bounced checks will you terminate the patient-doctor relationship?
- How often will we revisit this policy?
- as needed?
- yearly?
These are just a few of the points of a good, solid financial policy. When there is any doubt or disagreement, the policy wins. The policy keeps everyone on the same page. It lets everyone do their job because the policy tells them their job. Ready to put one in place for your office?
Click here to learn more about my newsletter The Ultimate Office Planner
