[Sample] Letter to the Patient Regarding Balance

You have no option but to follow the fad as a healthcare professional.

Although it would be convenient if you could wave a magic wand and alter your client's financial obligations, you are not a true wonder worker.

The truth is that the most effective businesses, clinics, and hospitals have a well-organized, thorough medical billing procedure in place.

You need a consistent source of income to function. You are a company at the end of the day.

Yes, if you're a doctor, the only reason you spent all those years in medical school was so you could improve medicine and help others.

Without a source of revenue, you cannot continue. As a result, you are compelled to create your own medical billing system for your clinic.

Although there are numerous phases in this process, writing and mailing collection letters is one of the most underappreciated tasks.

The American Collection Association estimates that 63% of all medical debt never gets paid back.

That number can make you nervous if you work as a healthcare practitioner or office manager.

The good news is that collection agencies will continue to have customers for many years to come, which is fantastic news for them.

You should cooperate with a collections agency, but not all debts should be written off as terrible. Before they are sent to a third-party agency, you may be able to cancel unpaid account balances.

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How to write a medical collection letter?

Here's how to create a professional-looking collection letter that works to reduce your outstanding debt.

1. Catch Your Reader's Attention

Consider the last time you got a bill. Wheeling through your pile of mail, could you identify the company it came from? Or was it confused for trash mail since it wasn't very distinctive?

The 3:33 rule is a marketing strategy that direct mail companies cling to. In essence, it says that to escape the trash, you must make your envelope stand out from the stack in three seconds or less.

Additionally, you have three minutes to elicit a reaction after spending 30 seconds engrossing the reader.

Even though this guideline only applies to advertising materials, it's nevertheless a useful tactic to have in mind while composing a letter of demand to your clients.

You need to figure out how everything will appear before you even begin writing.

Examine yourself with questions like:

Can the receiver quickly recognize the sender before even opening the envelope?

Does the letter's appearance suggest that it is a formal, expert document?

Are there any individualized details that would suggest a real person penned and signed the letter?

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All of these things need to be taken into consideration when you write your collection letters. Your logo and identity should be on everything you send, regardless of how big or small your firm is.

According to 81% of customers, to purchase from a brand, one must be able to trust it.

In that it has nothing to do specifically with patient collecting, this figure is comparable to the one I provided before in this section. However, the basic idea is still covered.

Customers aren't "purchasing" from you in this situation. Instead, by seeking therapy, they have already "purchased" your organization's services.

An invoice is used in this kind of business transaction. A statement is a technical name for "invoice" in the healthcare industry.

I could keep using terms in quotation marks to further delineate the parallels between the deals from the business and healthcare sectors, but you get the idea.

Without trust, patients and customers won't feel confident making purchases.

If you're sending them a collection letter, trust already exists, so as not to stray from the subject of this blog article. Sending them anything by postal mail, however, is quite different than their selecting your business to make an appointment.

You are contacting them at their home address and are up against a sea of other individuals and businesses vying for their attention.

By now, you've undoubtedly given the patient several statements with personalized dunning messages informing them of the progress of their account.

Those invoices may have also been too unattractive, which is why they were misplaced in the mail. Statement design, however, is another matter.

2. Details You MUST Provide

It's time to start composing the letter when you've created an appealing design for it.

For your benefit, collection letters aren't solely used in the medical industry. A whole industry is committed to attempting to recover bad debts on behalf of other firms, as I briefly described before.

Why not utilize that information to your advantage?

Search online for pre-existing templates to use as a starting point when creating a medical collection letter.

The previous medical collection letter sample isn't really impressive. In fact, it runs counter to what I said previously about being attention-grabbing.

The name and location of your practice are shown in a placeholder box at the top of the letterhead, but that falls short when attempting to establish confidence.

However, it is a useful illustration to use when figuring out what details to add to your own version.

The example shown in the picture above is the same, but I went through and underlined all of the details you need to provide.

Customer number

Balance owing

Account standing

Patient obligation

Expires on

working hours

Financial support

The receiver of the collection letter may easily draw a conclusion from all seven of those pieces of information. In essence, they say, "You need to pay us soon or you'll suffer the consequences.

Your payment is long past due. Although it is much less direct and more professional, we provide the possibility to divide up payments according to a plan if you require assistance.

It's difficult to send collection letters.

The best-case scenario is that the statement was sent to the incorrect address and never reached the patient.

Conclusion

It might be difficult to try to recover money from patients. They would settle any outstanding debt they may have with you as soon as they get their first statement if that were possible.

However, as you are aware, it is considerably more challenging than that for several reasons, including...

rising medical expenses

trends in patient responsibility

Trends in value-based care

Period of sending

patient characteristics

The list may go on forever.

To keep your doors open, you must really receive money from your patients. Numerous healthcare institutions and practices do not see themselves as "companies".

They didn't begin with the intention of generating money alone; instead, they wanted to help individuals who were ill or hurt.

Sending collection letters, however, is an essential aspect of the work, and you now know how to create one that is efficient, indicative of your practice, and sympathetic in nature.

Sample letter for the outstanding balance

[Date]

Client's Name
Road Address

Zip City, State

Dear (first name of patient):

I appreciate you coming by the office recently. Your dental plan provider has paid our clinic for the dental work you had done. However, your dental plan's restrictions meant that only a fraction of the total amount was paid for.

Your remaining payment is (amount). You are accountable for this sum in accordance with the agreement you made prior to starting treatment.

Send this money as soon as you can to our office, please. Contact your human resources department, your dental plan provider, or our office at if you have any queries (office number).

Once again, it is our pleasure to provide you first-rate dental treatment.

Sincerely,

[Signature]