I received the following email from the Financial Coordinator of one of my clients.  I wanted to share it, along with my response, since many offices are having similar issues.

“Good morning Paul,

Thank you for your help!”

It is, of course, completely up to Doctor whether or not you conduct collection activity.  Having said that, Doctor pays me for my advice, so I will give you my advice.  Proper collection activity is completely appropriate, and especially necessary in our current situation.  Your weak (B&C) patients will take serious advantage of a situation like this and get so seriously delinquent that you will not be able to fix them, leading to more dismissals and bad debt write-off in the future when times get better.  It is important to note though why I emphasized the word “proper.”  Proper collection activity during normal economic times is what you have been doing for the past years.  Proper collection activity today will look far different!  First, you should do no collection activity by mail, email, text, etc. (and especially #1 notices) unless you have tried diligently, and failed, to reach the responsible party by telephone.  With everybody at home, reaching them by telephone should be much easier and considering what we are trying to accomplish will be far more effective.

Proper collection activity during this period is not normally an attempt to collect money.  Rather it is an attempt to gather information regarding the responsible party’s current situation.  Many people are cooped up at home but still receiving their full salary because they continue to work.  My middle son, for instance, works for a dental supply company.  He is on salary and working from home and being fully paid.  My eldest son is also working from home, in Mililani, Hawaii (poor kid!).  He is responsible for environmental impact of the military bases on the islands, and is getting his full paycheck.  My youngest son quit his 12-year job to start his own contracting business, and he did that three weeks before the shutdown in Oregon!  The shutdown has stopped any opportunity for him to build his new business or even get a small contracting job.  However, he had saved up 3-4 months of income and his wife still works full-time from home so financially they are doing fine, for now.   My point is that some of your patients are not having financial difficulty.  In fact, that number is greater than half of all your patients, and possibly much greater than half, so a policy of doing no collection activity would train a good many of your patients that delinquency is acceptable and you would have significantly greater and longer term delinquency problems after this coronavirus issue is over.

So, we recommend that you continue your delinquency control activity in order to learn which of your patients are having bona fide financial issues.  Those who are will learn that your doctor is compassionate and considerate of their situation and that he will defer their payments until they return to work and will negotiate a new financial arrangement in order to get the deferred payments made either by raising the future monthly payments, adding months onto the contract, or whatever you end up negotiating.  Think about this for a minute.  Do you really want your patients sitting at home feeling guilty they have not paid you, being unwilling to call when they have a clinical concern or even an emergency, or being unwilling to bring in the younger sibling in a few months, because of that guilt, all because they never knew that Doctor was considerate of their situation?  Keep up your delinquency control activity, just with a different approach.

Hope this helps!