How to Handle Delinquent Accounts

How to Handle Delinquent Accounts

When a member's account is delinquent it means that they have failed to pay their membership plan balance. This usually happens when a member has been paying monthly and stops making the monthly payments prior to their 12 month term being fulfilled. 

At this point it's important to know that the member has received MULTIPLE notifications from VHQ via email making them aware of the balance. Prior to being in delinquent status they were in late status and VHQ reached out to them multiple times in an effort to get their account paid and up to date. (7 times over 28 days) 

We recommend you open the member's account in your EHR. Look to see what services the member has had completed while they were enrolled in the membership plan. What services or materials did you adjust off, or discount based on the patient having the membership plan benefits? At this point, we recommend removing any and all discounts you previously applied. When a member has gone delinquent, they are no longer eligible to receive the plan discounts and benefits. They have effectively broken their 'contract' or the terms and conditions of the initial agreement, which means your office is no longer obligated to uphold discounts you have applied to any treatment rendered, or materials sold.  

Once you've removed these past discounts, this will likely leave your patient with a large, outstanding balance. We recommend sending the patient a bill for this balance and treating this patient like you would any other patient in the office who has a history of bad debt. 

Once the patient receives the bill, they will likely call your office to address it. They have two options: 1) Pay the bill or 2) Pay off their remaining membership plan term balance. You would collect this balance in your office, not through VHQ.  After that balance is collected, you can take action to clear delinquency on that patient's account on VisionHQ. Once members go into delinquent status after initially opting to pay monthly, we recommend no longer allowing that patient to re-enroll and pay monthly. Moving forward they should only be allowed to pay for a membership plan at the annual rate. We recommend putting a pop up, or some sort of notification into your practice management software to ensure this system is followed. 

If you have sent the patient the large bill for their treatment and they do NOT call your office to address it, you can send your patient to collections as needed. 

Are you having issues with many patients going delinquent? Reach out to a member of our success team! We have many suggestions to help! (success@vision-hq.com) 

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