Post-Visit

Okay, now that our patient has officially left the building with their confidence in our hands, it’s up to us to follow through with those post office visit tasks that must be completed within a timely manner. Remember, just because the patient left the building, doesn't mean that we're done taking care of them. So, here's a few key important tasks that happen next and that we must follow through on. The first thing is, is that we want to ensure that we have posted all of the charges correctly. This is very important, because not only does it allow us to give our patients an accurate receipt, but it allows the doctor and your practice administrator to do accurate reporting for the practice, very very important, and for you when you’re doing that scoreboard. 

Next, we're going to verify that all materials are ordered. Now, your opticians will be doing that, but as we talked earlier, we want to make sure that we're just kind of doing that checklist, insurances filed, patient's orders completed. Doctors, we want to make sure that you are all completing your charts that day. Now, if you’re using a clinical optician or a scribe, when you walk out a room, you can checkmark that off. It should be almost completed for you. Now you may have a quick review, but the bottom line is, it’s important that we're getting all of our charts closed that day, so that the rest of our team can do the tasks that they need to do. Which the next one is, is that we need to file that Insurance. And we need to file that within a 24 hour period. Otherwise, it starts stacking up on us and we fall behind and we don't want to do that, we want to be efficient. 

Now, once our order is received, we will dispense the glasses, but we can't do that until we have checked in the order and we’ve done quality control measures. We’re making sure that the right lens is in the right eye and that the patient is receiving the product that they expected to receive. And of course, then we dispense the glasses or contacts to our patient. Now remember this is one opportunity, just one of our last touch point moments that we have to let our patients know that we truly care about them and to make sure that they're satisfied with the product that they're receiving. Their glasses feel comfortable and they are happy with their contacts. we do recommend that within a week to two weeks, you give a follow up call and touch base. “Mrs. Jones, Robin. How are those glasses fitting?” if they're raving about it, that’s a golden opportunity for us to say thank you so much and maybe there’s a potential referral in there. If not, it’s better to allow us the opportunity to correct that for them, so that they are happy. 

Now, the next thing that's going to happen is you're going to receive an EOB or an explanation of benefits and an insurance check. Now, two important key points here that need to happen. that insurance check, if it's not on electronic deposit, needs to be included with your nightly deposit when you're closing that evening. You always want to do it the day you receive it. And then your EOB’s, these need to be reconciled within the month that they are received. Now, on occasion, we're going to have a denied claim. When this happens with those EOB’s, it's very important that the team is reviewing the reason for that denied claim, so that you can come up with a plan to make sure that we stop that leak and we discontinue making that same repetitive mistake. And in reality, a lot of that happens at patient reception. It’s when we’re capturing that demographic information. It's either there or we didn't enter in the correct diagnosis code or CPT code. So, let's make sure we do it right the first time. 

And then finally as we’re wrapping up that patient production cycle, we do send the patient statement to the patient and you want to send it that month that you receive it because the further you get from the moment that you receive your EOB, the patient is also receiving their explanation of benefits and the longer you take to get that statement sent to them, the harder it is to get paid for the work that we have done. And remember, the patient production cycle doesn't end until we have collected all monies due.

Okay, so we're almost done with that circle. We’re heading into the home plate and that is marketing and patient retention.