Question

Chapter 19 Billing and Collections 155 LEARNING APPLICATION Critical Thinking 1. An elderly widow covered widow covered only by Medicare Parts A and B is a patient in your clinic. You know her resot are limited. She receives a very small pension and Socia that will involve surgery, hospital care, rehabilitation care prior to her return to her apartment, an tient physical therapy. Describe what steps your clinic might take to ease her financial burden lorthis l Security benefits. She is facing hip replacement needed care. 2. You are making a collections call. You follow all the rules and you are gracious in your approach. Before you realize what is happening, however, you have listened to a tale of woe, the patient is in tears, and you want to write your own check for the balance due. What happened? What will you do now? 3 Collections are an activity that many medical assistants shy away from and prefer not to do. What factors con- tribute to that feeling? When the clinic manager calls a patient regarding a past-due account, she is told by the patient, "I'm not about to pay that bill. The treatment made my pain worse, not better." What steps might be taken now?

Answer 1

1:- Being human I will treat the elderly widow politely and as an admitted patient , that too known her constraints that could not be able to pay her dues due to her. I will try several steps to ease her financial burden viz , cover her medical insurance scheme what ever due to her , use some helping hands like NGO serves , public health care serves etc to woe her burdens , so that she could be able to get all due medical attention , that ease her medical attention to get relaxed . Moreover I will try my level best to give her prescriptions that could be free from bargaining.

2:- Most probably some times such situations happen , being a kind collectionist I would clear their balance and allow the patient to leave and I would advise them if they get it possible to return then return , otherwise they are not bound to return my dues .

3:- The medical assistan manages multiple tasks and needs extensive administrative knowledge , medical assistant support physicians and other medical staff , to shy to do a medical assistant job can not be able to do a professional career professional . There fore it will not help a medical assistant to enhance his administrative traits to overcome the factors that made him shy.

4:- The best way to handle this type of situation is to have a policy in place before it ever happens . Keeping your customer satisfied is a top priority especially in a service driven health care industry. OncludeIa discount or write off procedure for the purpose of patient resolution.