Deductible Season Has Arrived

If you are a new medical practice that accepts insurance and you have not gone through your first deductible season then it’s time to buckle up! While there is often little drop of in patient volume, your practice is likely to see decreased revenue in the first quarter of the year. Patient deductibles have reset so most payments are going towards the patient deductibles and not to the practice. This is a natural part of the revenue cycle and there are some ways to combat this. Patients are not going to want to schedule any major medical care until the end of the year when their routine care has caused them to meet their deductible. This is ok, it is still important for you to schedule these necessary, but not necessarily emergent, procedures. First off, you can get your schedule booked now so in the 3rd and 4th quarters when deductibles have been met you will already have a full schedule. Secondly, there is often a rush at the end of the year for patients and practices to schedule procedures once deductibles have been met but you can beat that rush and fill your books by having these scheduled in Q1. This also gives the patient the peace of mind that they will get the care they need and it is already scheduled so they can prepare and plan accordingly.