AnesthesiaBilling
April 21, 2025
The Challenge of Communicating with Anesthesia Patients

The Challenge of Communicating with Anesthesia Patients

Not only is anesthesia an arcane service not fully understood and appreciated by most Americans, but explaining how anesthesia charges are calculated and paid by insurance plans can baffle even the most astute patients. While anesthesia providers are especially adept at explaining the potential risks and benefits of anesthesia techniques, there is never much discussion of the process by which the patient’s insurance decides what to pay for the service. Most patients generally assume that the black box of claim adjudication is so complicated as to simply be taken for granted and are grateful when the claim is paid in full. After all, whatever communication occurs before the actual surgery is more focused on what the patient will experience, and it is the provider’s attempt to allay any patient concerns.

The Challenge of Communicating with Anesthesia Patients

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Hospital-based providers all face the same challenge. They have no on-going relationship with patients. Most patients don’t even remember who provided their anesthesia. While office-based providers have the opportunity to validate and confirm demographic details, hospital-based providers are dependent on the admitting staff for accurate insurance information.

Very rarely does the patient’s insurance plan pay 100% of the provider’s invoice. The reality is that, in most cases, the insurance will pay a portion of the amount due; and, after the contractual adjustment, the patient owes the balance, unless they have a secondary insurance. It is at this point that the billing staff must communicate with the patient to resolve the unpaid balance. Collecting these unpaid balances is one of the greatest challenges in the billing business. It is always easier to collect money from insurance plans than from patients. While today’s communication options provide a variety of options for communication, they also provide patients many ways to avoid communicating.

It used to be the billing company would only use the U.S. mail to send bills. Now there are additional ways to send bills to patients, such as email and text. Actual paper bills alone are no longer as effective a means to engage patients. The fact is that many patients assume that a bill received in the mail is nothing more than an update of the status of the claim’s processing. In other words, it is not something that requires patient action. Due to this, using multiple methods has been found to be the most successful in collecting payments from patients.

Traditionally, the anesthesia collections business has relied on phone calls to patients to resolve open balances. While this has never been all that effective, today’s use of smart phones and caller ID has made it even less effective. The use of predictive dialing helps some, but calling patients is just not all that productive, unless the office is structured as a collection agency.

Thanks to the wide use of smart phones, most patients now communicate via text. Some people hardly even use their phones to actually talk to their friends. This introduces another dimension to the collections process. Most physicians now use text to confirm appointments, get additional information and remind patients of past due balances.

The challenge now is to capture all the necessary information up front to communicate with each patient using their preferred mode of communication and to implement and use tools that will work. It was never easy to communicate with patients, and the process has only gotten more complex. The key, however, is to make sure that the patients understand your approach and strategy. The essence of effective communication is not only to connect with patients but to effect action so that they pay their bills.