Remove the Revolving Door from Your Practice

Dr. R. A. Foxworth, FICC, MCS-P

You already know that patients in pain want care at any cost. But when that pain eases up, patients may ease on out, even if their treatment plans are not completed. How do you stop that revolving door?

In many cases, it often all comes down to dollars and cents. Today’s patients are healthcare consumers, and in today’s environment of ridiculously high deductibles and co-pays, they don’t want to pay a penny more than they absolutely have to. If no one has explained their financial options simply and clearly to them and allayed their fears about affordability, they’ve already got one foot out the door.

Joseph Fifer, president and CEO of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, underscores this point when he writes, “Let’s agree that it’s reasonable for consumers to expect accurate information about what they’re expected to pay out-of-pocket. Let’s further agree that consumers shouldn’t have to hunt down information about financial assistance or feel any stigma about it.” Read the full opinion here.

The key point at which your patients should be able to receive that information about your financial policies, your fee schedule, the capped fees and payment plans you’re able to offer as a ChiroHealthUSA provider, is during the Financial Report of Findings (FROF). And yet far too many doctors don’t deliver a FROF at all, or worse, pass the task off to an undertrained CA who may be just as uncomfortable talking about money as are doctors and patients.

You probably already deliver a rock-solid clinical Report of Findings. It is, after all, based on what you do and what you care about most as a physician. But when you don’t follow up in your office with a clear, concise, informative FROF, you’re letting your patients, and your practice, down. You may even be losing patients over it.

As a ChiroHealthUSA provider, you have the groundwork for a simple, easy-to-understand FROF right in the scripting we provide. You or your staff can train on these scripts until they feel natural. And you’re already ahead of the game because there’s nothing in them to squirm over. You’re not delivering challenging news. Your ChiroHealthUSA membership means you can give every one of your patients great news. You can give them the care they want, need, and deserve at a cost that works within their budgets.

Patients need and want care, or they wouldn’t come to your office. Provide a thorough consult, exam and Report of Findings to establish the need and benefit of care. Then offer a simple, compliant, Financial Report of Findings using ChiroHealthUSA to show patients how you can help keep their care affordable, whether they have insurance or not.

Master the FROF, and you can turn shopper calls into new patients, transition insurance patients to private pay, and help keep care affordable for the underinsured, like Medicare patients. You can also help families with high deductibles and copays.

Click here for a free simple, one-page financial policy and other tools that can help you stop the revolving door. You can also find other helpful scripts, marketing resources and more, by logging in to your provider page at https://chusa.chirohealthusa.com.