12-23-2009, 09:20 PM
GGD wrote:
[quote=C(-)ris]
Yea, I haven't quite figured that out. It takes MONTHS for me to get bills from my Doctor's office. I don't understand how they let their A/R sit for so long before even trying to collect.
I think it's generally because the patient is the last one they collect from. First they bill the insurance company, wait for that to get billed/disputed/refiled/paid/etc, and then when that's complete they bill you for the rest.
I recently got a bill for $13 from an office visit back in January, that was the amount that the insurance didn't cover, I think they must have resubmitted it a few times, possibly thought it wasn't worth billing me for, and then finally it seemed to get shipped to some other collections division that just sent me a bill.
They really have to markup the costs because of non-collection factors. I'd guess that close to 1% of geriatric patients die before their bills are even received.
The doctors I know aren't great businessmen and don't understand time-value of money or net present value. I'm sure their thinking is something like "I'm making so much money, who cares if I don't get paid until next year" and they don't realize the longer they wait to get paid the more likely it is that they won't. The ones that do understand will usually gladly give a 20% discount for payment at the time of services and a 25% discount for check and 30% for cash. At least this is what I shoot for when I'm negotiating ahead of time. Of course, I have an HSA so I pay the first $3500/yr out-of-pocket (reimbursed by my tax deductible HSA contributions, of course).