Healthonomics: How to Handle Health Savings Accounts
HSAs are becoming more popular with patients — and that’s a problem for your billing staff.
By Suz Redfearn It’s safe to say that Susan Miller is knee-deep in health savings accounts (HSAs) and the high-deductible plans that by law must accompany them.
Miller is the administrator of Family Practice Associates in Lexington, Ky., which is not only seeing an increasing number of patients that have HSAs but also offers HSAs as an option to its own employees.
It’s been a mixed blessing, reports Miller.
“The physicians here really wanted to lower premium costs and give employees an opportunity to put aside more money on a pretax basis, and that has worked out great,” she says. “But as for patients coming in with health savings accounts? That has been far more difficult to administer.”
Miller continued. “We’ve built this huge mechanism around getting paid by managed care, and now we’re going to have to get paid by patients, which is very difficult when you’re not sure what to collect, and often have a patient who’s confused or doesn’t want to pay. It becomes far more confusing because their payment is based on how much of the deductible they have met, as well as what is allowable for their particular health plan.” Continued...
