As the popularity of high deductible health plans with low monthly premiums increases, the out-of-pocket maximum for each patient and the cost for each visit also increases. This creates a growing challenge for specialty practices to collect, as there is a 62 percent lower likelihood of payment once the patient leaves the office. The changing payer model creates a need for a patient-centric specialty practice experience to help collect more at the time of each patient visit.

Payment policies for aesthetic services are more akin to booking a luxury cruise than buying a car. You can’t repossess a facelift, so it only makes sense to require payment in advance and to charge a substantial booking fee. The business of medical aesthetics may seem straightforward—you provide a service, the patient pays a fee—but the reality of patient billing is more complicated.

Ophthalmologists are trained to provide the full spectrum of eyecare, from prescribing glasses to precision eye surgery. Yet while they may be experts at treating patients, very few have business degrees or specialized practice management skills. Poor real estate decisions and bad hires, for example, are common mistakes that constitute part of the typical learning curve. However, many doctors make serious financial mistakes that can devastate their businesses, such as choosing the wrong electronic health record (EHR) and then sticking with it because of sunk costs.

Some early adopters of electronic health records (EHRs)—specialty practices in particular—are experiencing buyer’s remorse to the point that they are considering changing vendors. Think about the movements of a patient during an appointment in a retina practice. He or she may be tested or screened in one or more areas of the facility, transitioned to another area to consult with the retina specialist, and then moved to the payment counter. Most all-purpose EHRs cannot accommodate such complicated workflows.

Last week, health plan provider Centene disclosed that they had lost track of six hard drives containing the private information of roughly 950,000 individuals. These records contained details such as names, addresses, dates of birth, member ID numbers, private health information (PHI), and Social Security Numbers. Luckily (if you can call it that), at least they did not contain any financial or payment details. According to the disclosure from Centene, the missing hard drives contained about six years worth of research data (2009-2015) and “were a part of a data project using laboratory results to improve the health outcomes of [their] members.”

Mailing medical bills 30 days after an encounter is a sure-fire way to lose money in the new world of high deductible health plans and changing payer models. In fact, the most efficient way to collect from patients is while they are still in the office, and, in some cases, before they arrive. High performing practices ask their patients how—not if—they would like to pay their bill today. Creating pricing transparency is the new imperative for providers, since data show that the probability of collecting from a patient after he/she leaves the office drops to less than 20 percent.

Now that the ICD-10 coding system has been up and running for just over a month, we are starting to see some reports back from the trenches. And those reports are surprisingly good. The sky did not fall in and the world did not come to an end. For most practices, denials did not go through the roof. Robert Tennant, senior policy advisor for the Medical Group Management Association, was at a Town Hall meeting a couple of weeks ago with Humana and Emdeon (a medical claims clearinghouse) and both organizations reported that they were seeing no great increase in denials and no big drop in the number of claims submitted.

In a recent article from Cataract & Refractive Surgery Today, Timothy J. Archer of the London Vision Clinic details his clinic's transition to Nextech from paper medical records. Not only did the practice experience a smooth implementation proccess, but Archer explains how your practice can have the same success as the London Vision Clinic through some helpful tips and strategies.