Moving To Cash

Hi, I’m Dave Kats, at Therapist Consultants and I have a tip for you.

You know at some point in time almost everybody that takes insurance thinks about going to cash or being a cash practitioner where patients pay their own bill. Well, there are certain times when it’s good to be a cash practitioner and certain times or certain conditions when it’s not good to be a cash practitioner. Let me give you an example. If you are in practice that’s overfull right now, if you’re turning away new patients away, then chances are you should move to a cash practice because even if a few don’t stay with you, you have all those new patients coming in. So that’s one reason why you might want to be a cash practitioner. Another reason you may want to be a cash practitioner, is if your insurance is paying very little. If you have insurance companies that only pay you $60 or even $50 for a visit then I think it’s time maybe to go to become a cash practitioner. Another thing you have to realize about becoming a cash practitioner, is that usually it takes between $5 to $10 of time and money to actually bill insurance. So if you are getting $60 from an insurance company, it’s like getting $50 from a patient that pays cash. So if you're getting a real low reimbursement from your insurance companies, it’s probably time to switch over about now. And then if you’re getting a lot of patients off the insurance panels off the insurance company’s websites, then maybe it’s not a good time switch over. So most of your patients are coming from referral or from the Internet or something like that and they're not coming from insurance panels, from the insurance book or from the insurance website, then its fine to switch to cash. But if you're getting most of your new patients because they are coming from what they see on the insurance company’s websites then it might be better to stay with them, to stay with that insurance company. And then the last thing, if you're good at handling financial arrangements or if you have a staff person that is good at handling financial arrangements then it’s fine to go with cash because you are going to explain to the patient why you're going to accept them as an auto network provider and why they need to pay at that time and if you're good at explaining it and if you’re comfortable doing it then more people will accept your recommendation for care. So those are some ideas. Basically if you are overfull you might want to move to cash. If you are getting reimbursed very little, you may want to move to cash. If all your new patients are coming from places other than off the insurance websites, you might want to move to cash and if you are very good at explaining your financial policy or your staff person is good at explaining financial policy, then it’s probably okay to move to cash. So those are some of the considerations that you should make before you decide whether to be an insurance practitioner or a self-paid practitioner.

This is Dave Kats, thanks for listening.