The healthcare industry is considered "recession-proof." We are certainly nearing an economic downturn, and we will see if this holds true in the upcoming months.
While your business might be "recession-proof", it does not mean it will not see an impact. An economic downturn or a recession brings higher unemployment rates, which in turn means a larger number of your patients will shift from employer-sponsored private or commercial insurance plans to government plans like Medicaid, or even remain uninsured, self-pay patients. This shift does not impact individuals but entire families that change their coverage plans.
Why does this matter?
While these changes might not stop patients from seeking your care, it does mean your expected revenue and profit would be different, typically lower than anticipated. In preparation for this impact, healthcare professionals and facilities can prepare their Business Office to serve, bill and follow-up a different patient and payor mix.
As you already know, the billing and follow-up process for government plans, financial aid, and self-pay requires more time and resources as compared to privately or commercially insured. This also means that you are getting less return for the increased efforts of your billing team. Additionally, this also results in older AR Aging, which turns into higher billing and collection costs for patient responsibility fees, with longer AR Days and lower collection recovery rates.
How would Extension Express be different?
Extension Express can help your practice in several ways:
- Cost Cutting: For every dollar you recover, you would spend a much lower amount with EEI than with the added costs of your staff.
- Convenience: EEI specializes in the recovery of your AR, your staff cannot fully focus on recovery because running your business entails so much more.
- Staff Turnover: EEI would mean you have less staff turnover to worry about, less hiring costs, management costs and responsibilities, and less payroll and benefits expenses.
- Local Agency: EEI is based in Atlanta, Georgia, and is 100% U.S. based, all our employees live in the United States, no international staff to worry about.
- Higher Recovery Rates: Because EEI specializes in RCM and AR services, we can recover more of your AR faster and at a lower cost.
- No Long-Term Contracts: We want to earn your partnership and trust; we will not force you into a long-term contract for our services.
- No Sign-Up Fees: There are no upfront costs, no sign up or startup fees.
- No Fee Increase for Patient Billing: The earlier in the process we start, the lower your fees will be. If we start your billing at 0-days, you will maintain the same fee throughout the lifecycle of the account. This also means there is no incentive for us to let your patients go to collections, it is also in our benefit to recover your money faster.