Issue 15 - December 2003

Team Tips by Susan Hoy
Open-enrollment ritual affects your practice

In October and November each year, millions of working Americans go through a corporate ritual with their employers: open insurance enrollment. During that period of time, they have the opportunity to change insurance coverage. And many companies actually change carriers at that time.

The open-enrollment ritual has tremendous impact on you: If you don’t have current information on your patients, you may send claims to the wrong insurance provider — an invitation to financial disaster.

As you embark on your financial planning for the next year, implement a simple yet important ritual of your own — updating patient information records. Not only will many of your patients have new insurance coverage, they may also have new jobs, addresses and e-mail.

Prepare a form to collect and update the following information:

1. Date: month, day and year

2. Personal Information
• Full name
• Social Security Number
• Date of birth
• Home address: city, state and zip
• Home telephone number:
• E-mail address:

3. Employment information
• Occupation
• Company name
• Company address
• Work telephone number
• May we contact you at work for important issues?
• May we contact you via e-mail for appointment reminders and special events?

4. Insurance information (Make a copy of both sides of the insurance card and the patient’s photo identification, if you don’t have it already.)
• Insurance company
• Chiropractic coverage
• Is this new coverage for the year 2004?

5. Primary care physician information
• Name of physician
• Address
• Telephone number
• May we send updates on your progress to your primary care physician?

6. Patient’s primary complaints and subjective assessment

7. Patient’s signature

As you review each patient’s file, make sure you have all the proper HIPAA consent and authorizations.

Once you have the updated information, re-verify insurance coverage. Taking this extra step can help you avoid a collections problem.

Plan the process of updating patient information and make a concerted effort to accomplish it by the first of the year. Finally, taking the time at the beginning of the year to get your paperwork organized will help you and your team become more proactive with regard to all aspects of patient care. This should alleviate any insurance billing and collection surprises, thus keeping your cash flow stabilized and steady.

Susan Hoy is an award-winning team trainer and consultant. She can be reached at 215-674-0130; suzzhoy@aol.com; or through her Web site at www.beefitup.net.