Offering cash plans to your patients is an emerging concept that shows promise. In this model, patients make a monthly payment to the practice and they contract for a specific level of service. In some cases, there may be a monthly cap on visits.
In others, the number of visits may be unlimited and more akin to a health-club model where there are no limits or barriers—or even appointments to make. This model works for some practices that have the right demographic.
If your practice is set up in an affluent area where patients have more disposable income, the cash-plan model works well. It is driven by numbers, however; if you have a few hundred patients paying $100 a month, you’ll be making $240,000 to $360,000 a year.
If you opt for a more aggressive model that only charges $75 a month but you have 1,000 patients signed up, that turns into $900,000 a year coming in to your practice.
On the other hand, accounting for multiple billing profiles can be a nightmare when you’re trying to remember who was billed when, what their caps on services are, whether their plans are renewable, and so on. To manage this kind of problem, you need the right tools. Fortunately, there is software available today that’s flexible enough to manage all the varieties of plans you can offer.
