- Industry News
- Law & Malpractice
- Coding & Documentation
- Practice Management
- Finance
- Technology
- Patient Engagement & Communications
- Billing & Collections
- Staffing & Salary
Is it Charity?
Our providers sometimes see patients in the hospital who will never pay their bills. Is this considered charitable work, and is there a place for it in the financial statements for the practice?
Question: Our providers sometimes see patients in the hospital who will never pay their bills. Is this considered charitable work, and is there a place for it in the financial statements for the practice?
Answer: Many practices break out both bad debt and a second category for professional courtesy and charity care. Charity care usually constitutes one-tenth or so of total gross charges for practices.
However, I think anything assigned to a charity-care category should be charitable on purpose. Debts that you tried to collect but could not should be designated bad debt, and it's ideal to track specific reasons for each occurence. For example, if you can recognize that you write off as bad debt lots of care provided to the uninsured, you can consider creating a proactive collection policy in which you reacch out to uninsured patients before they even leave the hospital, offering a uniformly discounted rate for payment within five days of service.
Asset Protection and Financial Planning
December 6th 2021Asset protection attorney and regular Physicians Practice contributor Ike Devji and Anthony Williams, an investment advisor representative and the founder and president of Mosaic Financial Associates, discuss the impact of COVID-19 on high-earner assets and financial planning, impending tax changes, common asset protection and wealth preservation mistakes high earners make, and more.
Reducing burnout with medical scribes
November 29th 2021Physicians Practice® spoke with Fernando Mendoza, MD, FAAP, FACEP, the founder and CEO of Scrivas, LLC, about the rising rates of reported burnout among physicians and how medical scribes might be able to alleviate some pressures from physicians.
