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Mail sorting: tedious but necessary task

Practice Management. By Mike Norbut, amednews staff. Feb. 23, 2004.

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Unfortunately, the mail you receive at your office isn't quite like what you may get at home. It's not as easy to distinguish bills and checks from junk mail, so you almost have to open every envelope and see what's inside.

Opening and sorting business mail could be one of the most tedious jobs in the office, but it's also one of the most important commonsense duties in a practice, health care consultants said. While not a top priority for physicians, the mail should at least be on their radar screens, consultants said. Even the slightest bit of oversight can help doctors keep track of their accounts receivable and prevent any fraud or theft from happening.

"If you're never checking your accounts receivable, you may never know if a payment has come in," said Patrick Baker, a consultant with Professional Management of Milwaukee Inc., a firm based in Wauwatosa, Wis.

Baker described a situation where a long-time employee devised a way to cash some checks from the practice, mainly because no one checked up on the deposits. In small offices, the oversight often becomes the physician's responsibility.

"My concern is the person who is making deposits is the same person who is opening the mail," Baker said. "Sometimes, the best way is to have one person stamp the checks and another go through the deposits."

Services also are emerging that enable practices to remove staff members from the picture almost entirely. Not only are many practices filing claims electronically, but they also have set up lock boxes at local banks, where checks are collected and deposited for them.