Every single day we are surrounded by people wanting something for free. Patients want you to see them without them having to pay a co-pay, deductible or co-insurance. You may have employees expecting the "company" to pay for whatever holiday that Congress has created. You have patients wanting you to provide them with free drug samples so they don't have to pay for a prescription. You have the President wanting you to provide additional healthcare benefits to your employees and if you fail to do so - then you will be looking at fines in 2014 and later. I must get at least 2 calls a day - every day from doctors wanting to get free advice - but they don't want to subscribe to my newsletter, buy my book or hire me.  It doesn't stop there. The kids today expect mom and dad to provide not only a high school education - but they think they are ENTITLED to a college education and perhaps it goes further that they want you to pay for a Masters or a Doctorate. Where does it stop?

We can't change what we did 20 or 30 years ago with our children in teaching them to expect everything be handed to them - which is evident by the number of people on foodstamps, public assistance, etc… but we can re-train our patients to expect to be responsible for paying for the services you provide in your office. Later this month, I'm teaching a seminar on collections and while that may help - we need to start the retraining process alot earlier than we have in the past. 

It's time you start educating your patients BEFORE the doctor sees them that they will be held responsible. Responsible for the co-pay, responsible if they fail to keep the appointment, responsible for bringing in their medications with them on every visit, responsible for bringing their insurance card (and wallet) every time they show up, responsible for paying (in advance) when they want forms filled out that will take time, responsible for following the doctor's advice or they may need to find a new doctor, responsible for following office policy on HIPAA, privacy, respect, dress code, controlling their children, etc… 

WAKE UP PEOPLE. It's time we (management, physicians, staff, physicians (yes - I said physicians twice as we really require their help) start holding our patients and our customers responsible for following the office policies - but until we hold the staff responsible - we will not be successful at holding the patients responsible. Before you can clean up your neighborhood, you have to clean up your own house - so I think we need to know that this is possible. It may not be easy - but it is possible. Start working on your own compliance plans first and next week we have a Credentialing seminar and the week after a collection seminar and next month we're going to start a COMPLIANCE seminar series with a couple of experts. Watch our website and our Blog for this information.