The reason I rarely call is that I'm the doctor's wife. It looks like I'm a money grubber. I do call and verify that I have the correct address (playing dumb) or to explain that they have a co-pay or deductible (you'd be amazed how many people say "I have good insurance" and that's supposed to mean that they don't have to pay anything out of pocket.
Our software has a collections wizard that will allow you to filter a certain group of people and send them to collections. I don't bother with the people that owe less than $50 but if you owe me more than that then I send them to collections. Fortunately it isn't a lot of people for most practices I bill for. When I do send them to collections they still don't get everyone but they get more than half of the people and it is certainly worth it for me
Software has ZERO to do with dealing with the federal and state regs. ANY software can produce a collections report. it's not up to the software to deal with state and federal collection practices.
I guess I wasn't clear enough in my last post. After the collections wizard in my software produces the file it gets uploaded directly to a collections company that does the collections (that is what I meant by being sent to collections and "'they' still don't get everyone"). I don't have to worry about the state and federal regulations because the collections company does all of that stuff for me. Which is a another benefit to using a collections company so I don't have to worry about knowing all the regs of all the states for all the different practices I bill for.
I guess I have lucked out with our collections agency. Once that percentage is added to the account and sent, they are awesome. I dont really have a large number of accounts with them. However, I can spend the entire day on the phone and get the runaround but the moment the agency contacts them, 95% of the time, they receive payment in full and we get our $$. It's something about that 30 days the agency gives because they sure dont want it on their credit report (even though medical expenses is not suppose to really "damage" your rating). Another issue, if the patient sends the payment to us, we endorse it and send straight to the agency, because once they have it (the account), there is a fee and we are not paying for it, the person that owes will pay...