Dr. Dean C. Bellavia

1-716-834-5857

BioEngineering@twc.com

Negotiating Acceptable Financial Agreements


Sunday, 15 February 2015 00:00
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Are your patients discouraged from starting because of your financial agreements?  Are your agreements flexible or inflexible?  Maybe this pearl can help you decide.

 

Your fees are what you feel your services are worth, based on the time and expense you put into the treatments you provide—this is your decision.  Your financial agreements are a reasonable way to pay your fees—this too, is your decision.

 

But, the financial agreement selected by the guarantor to pay your fee is their decision, and if you don’t give them an option that works for them, they will go to a practice that does.  Of course, not all guarantors are credit-worthy and you need to set limits on which agreements they should and shouldn't have, based on their credit worthyness.  You don’t have to be as paranoid about their credit-worthiness as a bank, although, you do need to separate those who have the ability to pay (most) from those who really don’t (the few).  A simple A, B, C rating approach works just fine.

 

Once you decide that they can pay your fee, the next step is to settle on an agreement that works for them.  Being stubborn and just giving them one or two options (e.g., pay in full or 1/3rd down and the rest over the months of treatment) will work for most, but can you afford to lose the rest of those starts due to inflexability?

 

Your fee schedule is the basis for your financial agreements, which should be built into that fee schedule.  See the attached Excel file to set up your fees and financial agreements.  Also see the attached PDF that explains how the fee schedule works and how your TC can use it to negotiate your financial agreements.  Also attached is an Excel file to quickly create your own Fee Schedule with the usual financial agreements.

 

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