Medical billing reminders managed with Mobi-gram messaging

Healthcare providers in South Africa are often faced with receiving late or delayed payments from patients. Ensuring that payments are made on time is key to guaranteeing a steady cash flow and ensuring a sustainable healthcare practice. DentFin, a dental claims administration company based in Gauteng, South Africa, aims to meet that business need. By providing a service that specialises in the processing of patient claims for dentists and dental labs, DentFin aims to ensure a healthy cash flow while reducing the administration for their clients. DentFin prides itself in supplying a reliable outsourced claims processing solution that ensures that clients claims are finalised in the shortest possible turn-around time.

DentFin turned to SMS messaging as a vital part of their claims processing solution. Malinda Harper, CEO of DentFin, started using the BulkSMS Text Messenger in 2006 and it has become an invaluable tool in ensuring payment reminder notifications are sent to patients.

DentFin’s SMS communications within its administrative process consists of a two-step patient billing reminder service on behalf of their clients. According to Harper, “We send two SMS messages to every patient once they have visited one of our clients. The first SMS is a standard SMS message that informs the patient of the balance due and the second SMS, sent as a Mobi-gram message, is sent shortly after the first and comes with a PDF attachment of the patient’s statement.”

“The ability to send PDF statements using the Mobi-gram feature is essential to our business and has proved to be far more effective than emailing statements to the patients. PDF statements sent via email would often end up in trash folders or could not be opened on certain computers,” says Harper.

Harper then goes on to say that the use of Mobi-gram messaging has a high read rate and has also improved the time in which payments are made by patients because they are able to view the statement on their cell phone immediately after they received initial SMS message.

“DentFin’s use of the Mobi-gram to send PDF statements is a unique use of one of our newest features. It is encouraging to see our clients effectively embracing this innovative payment reminder tool in the healthcare sector,” says Dr Pieter Streicher, managing director of BulkSMS.com.