How is the health of your self pay?

Many practices dread the phrase "self pay." But athena is working on several initiatives to help practices get more control of self pay AR. Here is what we are doing:

1. athenaMailbox Launch
As covered in the January issue of the Pulse, athenaMailbox is a new initiative that offers practices a range of services, such as handling mail to facilitate the deposit of checks, eliminating the need for (and expense of) an outside lockbox. One of the most exciting features of athenaMailbox is the ability to process credit card transactions for patient payments, integrate check and credit card payments received at the physician's office, and most importantly, offer a single integrated tool to easily reconcile athenaNet to your bank account, line by line,
with a mouse click. How could taking payments at the office be any easier? Look for these services in Q2.

2. Self Pay First Aid Kit
This helps managers create a plan for their office. It helps plan for maximum front end collections processes with payment policies, payment plans and strategies to ask for payment. It also provides step-by-step instructions on the Self Pay Management functionality, Collection Functionality, and how to run efficient Self Pay Reports in athenaNet. If you would like a self pay first aid kit, please email selfpay@athenahealth.com.

3. Preferred Vendor - Transworld Systems, Inc.
Do you want to send pre-collect letters but just don't have the time? athenahealth has teamed up with Transworld Systems, Inc. (TSI) as our preferred collection agency to help make this process as painless as possible. TSI and athenahealth automate the collection process by automating the collection file process and reporting on payment results. TSI also offers two levels of collection work by sending a series of letters to your patients or by working as a more traditional collection agency. With questions on how you can have TSI become your vendor of choice, please email selfpay@athenahealth.com.

4. Self-Pay Management Worklist
athenahealth provides a suite of self-pay account management tools that allow you to create customized worklists for self-pay accounts and to perform effective follow-up action to maximize your collections from self-pay balances. We've designed the self-pay workflow so that your staff can navigate from worklist to follow-up action, and adjudicate each patient or family account according to the policies of your practice. You can create worklists tailored to your office procedures, using flexible worklist parameters that allow you to divide self-pay follow-up work among your staff in a manner that is most efficient for your practice. For more information on our Self-Pay Management worklist functionality, please email selfpay@athenahealth.com.

We look forward to working with all our clients to help improve the health of each practices self-pay AR. Look for more exciting self-pay news in months to come.

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