Almost every movie that takes place in a corporate environment from the ‘80s and ’90s contains a scene that takes place in what they called “the mailroom”.
If you worked during this era, you know exactly what department I’m talking about; the smell of freshly printed ink, the roar from the office printers, the hustle of this department’s employees sending and receiving mail, and those massive envelope carts.
If you didn’t work in the 1980s you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. The proper name for “the mailroom” was the mail services department. It was such a familiar department back then that movies’ like the 1987 romantic comedy The Secret of My Success, starring Michael J. Fox, were about starting a job at the mailing room and rising the corporate ladder.
Landing a position at a mail services department wasn’t glamorous but it was an essential piece to the success of any major corporation, university, or hospital. The sheer volume these organizations had in outbound and inbound mail at the time was so much that it required a massive amount of labor and employees.
On a smaller scale, startups or family healthcare practices wouldn’t have an entire department devoted to their mail. Instead, management placed this responsibility on one or two of their employees, usually their receptionist.
So where did the mail services department go?
Right around the middle of the 1990s email became more accessible and accepted by companies. Thus, attaching documents to emails for free instead of paying for printing and postage became the more popular option over time.
It’s been almost 35 years since The Secret of My Success came out and organizations no longer have a use for mail services departments anymore, right?
Although these departments still exist for many large universities, they’re mostly obsolete.
However, some hospitals and doctor’s offices still prefer sending their mail to their patients due to their demographic or HIPAA compliance safeguards. But instead of a mailroom, they outsource their statement printing and mailing services.
As for the smaller organizations and practices, most of them are a little behind with the times. What I mean by that is they still have one or two employees whose responsibilities include sending and receiving their statements.
Of course, it’s probably different people at these positions considering it’s been three decades. But you’ve most likely grown over the years and see a much higher volume of patients than you once did.
Seeing more patients means that you’ll need to design, print and mail more statements. Thus, these few employees don’t have time in their days for anything else.
By keeping printing and mailing in-house these practices are reverse engineering a mailroom situation from the 1990s as they continue to grow. The end result is expensive between paying for new employees, ink, printing and postage rates.
Of course, the solution to combat these expenses is by outsourcing. But what exactly are the benefits of redistributing statement printing and mailing services?
Table of Contents
New Responsibility Distribution
One of the biggest fears associated with outsourcing these services as a practice is that it leads to layoffs.
This isn’t an irrational fear as outsourcing caused 9% of U.S. layoffs in 2004. Sure, that was a long time ago but taking jobs elsewhere, whether domestically or offshore, has been a hot debate topic for decades.
However, it’s not something that’s going to happen if you’re a small organization or facility. What ends up happening is it allows you to train those employees whose responsibilities used to be mailing statements and invoices on other important aspects of yoru business.
It’s likely that there are areas of your organization that are falling behind. That’s nothing new as it’s a struggle for many practices to stay afloat in some aspect considering that physicians alone work so much that they’re often burnt out.
The reality is that printing and mailing your statements isn’t a core duty of your practice.
You have more important responsibilities like boosting the quality of care, enhancing your overall patient experience and figuring out innovative ways to get more people through your doors.
57% of businesses outsource certain responsibilities like printing and mailing services so that they can better focus on their core principles and offerings.
As a small practice, you and your staff are on a more personal level than if you were a large facility so laying off some of them simply isn’t an option. Luckily, you won’t have to worry about that when it comes to outsourcing statement printing and mailing.
Less Risk Involved
When you keep your entire statement process in-house, you’re also inheriting a lot of risk.
Sure, keeping everything under your roof gives you control over every aspect of the process from design to postage. But, no matter how thorough your process is for printing and mailing your statements, you still can’t control your employees entirely. In other words, they’re going to make a mistake.
Sending correspondence via the USPS qualifies as a HIPAA compliant method of delivery because of the regulation’s Conduit Exception Rule. In essence, the rule allows authorized organizations such as the USPS, Fed-Ex, UPS and DHL to deliver PHI because they’re transmission-only services.
Since the PHI isn’t stagnant, it’s allowed in this case. The rule also requires that the physical transmission services don’t have access to the PHI and only store transmitted information temporarily.
Now that we know all of that information, what’s the risk your employees pose when sending your statements themselves? Sending a bill to the wrong address.
There are two places specifically that leave your organization susceptible to facing a breach…
Entering the wrong patient name or address on the designed statement
Stuffing an addressed envelope with the wrong documentation
Now, if your staff sends one statement incorrectly it’s not the end of the world. But if you, as the physician, provided services to an entire behavioral health or long-term care facility you could end up with a huge fine on your hands.
Statement printing and mailing service providers have a lot of checks and balances put into place to protect you from a HIPAA violation. These workflows ensure that the information on a statement is accurate and that it gets to the right place.
As an added bonus, they’re inheriting a lot of your risk after signing their business associate agreement (BAA) with you. If a breach happens, they’ll face most of the audits and scrutiny from the federal government. Thus, you can further focus on providing exceptional service instead of adding another area of HIPAA to train your employees over.
Saves You Money
Simply put, if you’re not outsourcing your statement mailing processes, you’re losing money.
Let’s break this down.
Let’s say your employees send out your statements every week. In theory, within a week or so of the initial sending, you’ll receive payment from your patients. Simple enough.
However, what happens if the initial address written on the envelope was wrong?
Maybe…
There was a misspelling
It doesn’t exist
Your patient moved
Either case is bad but let’s look at each one.
First, if the address contained a mispelling you’ll have to call the patient, verify the spelling, correct the information from within your database and mail it out a second time. This process might not seem like it’s a lot but if this is a consistent occurrence, you’d lose a ton of money in the extra effort.
Second, if the address doesn’t exist and isn’t a mispelling then you have a fraud case on your hand. This means that you potentially just performed services on someone who’s pretending to be someone else. Thus, you lost money because the individual isn’t going to pay you for your services as it was never their intention to and you’ll have to pursue legal counsel.
Third, how are you supposed to find your patient moved in between seeing you and receiving their bill? I’m not saying you’re never going to that client again, but if their appointment was for a yearly checkup you’re not going to be able to collect on their payment for another year. Thus, you’re slowing down your cash flow.
By outsourcing to a statement printing and mailing service, each of these shortfalls no longer exist.
The best of these vendors offer what they call address correction.
In a nutshell, this service scans massive databases and online skip-tracing methods in order to locate your patient.
They look through databases such as…
USPS’ National Change of Address (NCOA)
Magazine subscriptions
Credit card applications
Legal documentation
It might sound a little invasive to go to such great lengths to figure out why the postal service sent your statements back to you. But this service saves you money because it guarantees that what you send through the mail gets to where it needs to in order for you to receive payment.
Thus, you’ll also save money since you won’t have to spend any additional cash on postage and resending.
Shortens Your Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)
This section relates to the previous but by looking elsewhere for our statement printing and mailing services you’re also shortening your days sales outstanding (DSO).
DSO is a fancy term for saying the length of time until you receive payment for your services. In healthcare, the industry-wide DSO is between 40-45 days.
That’s a long time to receive payment.
To put it in perspective, that’s a month and a half after your initial appointment with your patients.
Of course, that statistic is also an average and by handling the billing process in-house I guarantee you’re on the unfortunate, longer side of that statistic.
By outsourcing the print and mail process, you also have the option to add on other services that speed up payment. Most of these vendors offer an online payment gateway or portal that they’ll spin up for your organization.
The URL and information will appear on the mailed statement with simple instructions on how to pay which speeds up the entire process.
At its fastest, payment through the mail still takes at least 10-14 days depending on when the appointment occurred.
By offering an online option you’re reducing the amount of time it takes to receive what’s owed to you by half, even for those patients that aren’t technologically savvy.
Furthermore, statement printing and mailing service vendors also allow your clients to create payment plans.
The reality of the healthcare industry is that its services aren’t always affordable.
That’s not something you have complete control over as the prices you charge are pretty standardized. The end result is treating patients that don’t have the required funds when they receive their bill.
At the end of the day, it’s better to receive some of what’s owed over time than nothing at all and that’s what payment plans open the door to. When your patients create a payment plan for their statement, they’re making a commitment to paying off what they owe you.
Customization Without Any Added Work
The design of your statement matters, that’s no secret.
If your clients receive a piece of paper in the mail with some charges and no color or branding, they’re more likely to think it’s a fraudulent document than from their doctor.
OK, but designing your own statement isn’t as easy as it sounds. It has to look modern, include eye-catching typography and emphasize important areas with color.
If you don’t have a professional digital designer on your staff you’ll either have to…
Hire one
Hope someone on your staff is willing to take a shot at creating your statement template
Either isn’t an attractive offer. A digital designer could cost up to $150 per hour of work and your staff already barely has enough time as it is with what they currently have on their plate.
Luckily, when you outsource your statement services to an outside vendor they’ll take care of the design aspect for you. Since this is a professional offering of theirs, these vendors usually have a library of templates to choose from.
All you have to do is pick one when you first integrate with them and they’ll change the colors and branding of the template to match with your practice.
These vendors put you in the limelight and ensure that your patients understand that they’re paying you. In other words, they work in the background and make sure your organization is present throughout anything that’s patient-facing.
Conclusion
It’s been 30 years since 1990, when mailrooms were at their peak in popularity. If you’re a healthcare facility or practice that’s still keeping the outbound mailing process in-house, you’re behind others in your industry.
The last thing you want is any delays in receiving payment and, in order to achieve a streamlined process, outsourcing your statement printing and mailing services is the where everything starts.
The staff who had this responsibility previously can shift their focus on enhancing the core of your organization while you collect your revenue faster.
