In a March 22 Webinar, Bruce Gehring of Allegiance Group (formerly A/R Allegiance) shared some very interesting trends in the DME Industry.

• Population over 65 years is at all time high and as a result the DME Industry is expected to grow 60 Billion dollars by 2020, up from 47 billion in 2015.
• By the year 2020, 37% of a DME provider’s revenue is expected to be private pay. In 2010, only 10% of revenue was coming directly from the patient.  This is due to the fact insurance policies have increased the patient deductibles significantly over the past few years.
• Currently many DME of them struggle to collect the patient balance because the they don’t have trained staff to work these collections effectively. Typical patient collection rates are less than 50% of the amount owed.With the cost of labor and materials, cost of collection is expensive Over time many DME’s  give up and turn the accounts over to traditional collection agencies and sometimes selling A/R to agencies for only a few cents on the dollar.

Bruce Gehring explained in that with the AG’s COLLECTPlus integration with HDMS, there is a better solution:

• Allegiance Group: builds a call center that works on behalf of the DME client. Building the call center includes lots of training at implementation about how call center should speak on behalf of client, who to transfer calls to, etc.
• As part of the integration/service, Allegiance group sends out patient statements that are clear with the client’s logo, collection letters, and makes follow up calls until claim is paid or even forwards into real collections (impacting credit).
• When PAYMENT is made: Allegiance group offers online payment portal that even will have our client’s logo on it, any/all payment from web/statement is then AUTOPOSTED into HDMS!
• COLLECTPlus dashboard is launched directly from HDMS, clients can view image of every statement patient received and even hear the recorded phone call.

If you missed the webinar, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/SNTaljsBuKA.   For more information on the HDMS COLLECTPlus Integration, call Matt Golen at 810-653-5000 (x312) or email him at mgolen@univesalss.com.