Early Out Program
Early Out (EO) is the process of handling the resolution of a medical provider’s accounts as early as Day 1 and as late as Day 60 after the adjudication of a self-pay balance. When contacting the patient to resolve their self-pay balance, the EO provider is transparent to the patient and acts as the provider’s billing office. As far as the patient is concerned, the EO provider is the billing office.
This makes it imperative that the EO provider has access to the billing system. Access allows the EO provider to speak with authority with the patient in answering questions regarding billing, insurance coverage, and/or payment. It is critical that we are able to quickly overcome objections, which then maximizes the return of revenue to the provider.
A typical billing service will send out a statement every 28-30 days once a self-pay balance is determined. This may go on for up to six months before the account is charged off to bad debt collections. The billing service may also intersperse 2-3 automated messages to the patient, asking them to contact the billing office to pay their bill.
Instead, Halo will use a hybrid statement which will include language designed to elicit an immediate response from the patient upon receipt. Halo then makes up to four personal calls to the patient, using a live human being, in an attempt to discuss the balance due. In addition, Halo will layer in predictive dialing campaigns on a daily or weekly basis. As soon as the patient answers the telephone during this type of campaign, the call is immediately transferred to a live representative.
In a nutshell, a typical billing company typically sends two to three written statements and makes two automated calls in an attempt to get the patient to pay their bill.
Halo, on the other hand, will send three hybrid statement letters, make four personalized calls to the patient, and utilize in a minimum of eight dialing campaigns in order to resolve the balance due. Using Halo, a provider will effectively triple the number of attempts to recover its funds.
The more “touches” you can make, the better the chances are that you actually reach the patient, which will result in an acceleration of cash flow for the provider.