Hello, and welcome to another in our series of free PSEN practice management webinars. Tonight's session will focus on fraud, how to help protect your practice, and will be presented by the ASPS Endorsed Partners Care Credit. My name is Catherine Bourne, the Online Education Program Developer, and I'm happy to welcome you to tonight's program. Please note that all participant microphones will be muted during the webinar. We will have a question and answer session at the conclusion of the presentation. If you have any questions regarding any of the information being covered tonight, you may submit questions at any time during the presentation by simply clicking on the chat window at the bottom of your screen. We encourage you to submit your questions early. We'll try to answer as many questions as possible. Due to the high number of participant questions, however, all questions may not be answered. Today's speaker contact information will be provided on your screen should you have questions following the webinar. Our guest speaker tonight is Jonathan Smith, Senior Vice President and Chief Credit Officer for Care Credit. Jonathan has been in the consumer finance industry for over 14 years. He began his career within risk managing, operational risk, credit policy, and directly interacting with regulators as part of Care Credit's bank leadership team. At this point, I would like to welcome him and turn the program over to Jonathan. Thank you, Catherine. And just thank you to the ASPS and PSCN for the invitation to speak here this evening. I hope that I can impart some knowledge that will be beneficial to each of the people that have attended and that you can take something back to your practice. Just one note, I may use the term staff, office manager, or patient coordinator interchangeably. Know that when I refer to whoever this person is in your office, it's the person who's handling payments in your office because that's really your point of potential for fraud. So let me just flip here to the first page and we'll get going. So I thought this evening we would talk about three major topics. One is just an overview trend in the cost of fraud, the cost to our businesses and to consumers in terms of fraud. Also how we as Care Credit and Synchrony Financial, how we protect your patients and your business. And then lastly, the kinds of things that you can do within your practices to protect yourself. And for each of the payment types, whether that be cash, check, or credit card. And then specifically how interacting with Care Credit, how you can also help us to protect consumers out there and protect your patient's identity. So with that, let's just go to a quote here. I thought this was a good way to start. The FBI labeled Slick Willie Sutton the Babe Ruth of bank robbers. And he was a prolific bank robber in his day. And when asked why he robbed banks, his answer was pretty simple, because that's where the money is. Well, today the money is no longer behind the teller cage. Frankly, the money is in consumer information. It's in electronic data. And in today's time, all of us are going to electronic data. Electronic medical records, electronic banking. We keep all of our information on our personal computers. And so fraudsters know this, and they're after that information. One thing that I think all of us should understand is that Care Credit, Synchrony Financial, even you in your practice, you want to make the interaction with your customer, with your patient, our cardholder, we want to make that interaction simple and easy. You need to know that fraudsters know that too, and they'll exploit that. They'll challenge you to make it simpler for them to commit fraud. So you've got to have a balanced approach. We have to balance simple protections with simple and easy to make it easy for your patient, our cardholder, to proceed forward with their transaction and the treatment that you're delivering. I think we also need to know that fraudsters are well organized. They get up like each of us. They get up and go to work every day. And they have sophisticated tools and information. And the use of the Internet, as I mentioned before, for all aspects of business now, whether it be point-of-sale transactions or medical record-keeping or bank record-keeping, et cetera, it's made it easier for this data to be stolen. Stolen identity and credit card information are the bread and butter of fraudsters today. They don't go rob banks at gunpoint anymore to get real money. And then they use that information to buy high-valued items that they can resell. In the past, that would be electronics and things that they can interchange easily or transport easily like gold and diamonds. But more and more they're using things like gift cards. That's become very popular because it's very easy to resell those on the open market. There is a legitimate open market out there to sell gift cards. If you give a gift card to a store you don't particularly care to shop at, you can get about 80 cents on the dollar today just by going on the Internet and selling it. And the fraudsters know this as well, and they exploit it. In that little graphic I have there at the bottom, you can see it. It can be a multitude of people that are involved in ultimately committing this fraud, the hacker that gets the information, the carder that puts that information onto a card, a magnetic stripe that they can then go and use at a point-of-sale terminal with a retailer or in your practice. And by the way, they're not very inventive. They've been known to use hotel room cards. They have mag stripes on them. They'll embed the magnetic stripe information of a credit card on that, swipe it on a terminal, and it's good, and they'll use it. And then, of course, they'll use that to purchase gift cards and ultimately to resell it in a way that brings cash back into their pocket. And I think healthcare providers are particularly at risk here. You often have everything on that consumer, on your patient. You have the patient's name. You have their address. You have their social security number. You have their contact phone number. You have everything that's needed to commit fraud, and, you know, that makes it at risk. Fortunately, you don't have a lot of that information. You might have hundreds or a few thousand patient records. They're electronically available. Well, the average hacker is actually after millions or tens of millions of data points with which they can resell. So you're less vulnerable to hackers, but you're still vulnerable to fraud. Let's take a look at the fraud trends that are happening annually right now. Globally, fraud is increasing at a double digit rate every year, and there's no end point in sight. That's pretty good. You know, if you have a practice that's growing at double digit or if care credit is growing at double digit, that's successful, right? Well, fraudsters are very successful, and it's costing over 12 million Americans. They're being victims of fraud. And this is not just identity theft that you hear about in the newspapers these days where Home Depot or some other major retailer has lost consumer data. This is actually where they've been a victim. Someone has actually gone out and got credit or used their credit or used their bank account in a way that actually cost the consumer. And, of course, that cost is expensive. It can actually drain your bank account or damage credit and hurt people for many, many months or years trying to repair that or recoup their costs. And, of course, there's cost to businesses. I suspect that many of you are on this phone call tonight because you've been a victim of fraud in your practice. And, you know, here's a stat for you. Approximately 1% of all online revenue, that's the top line, 1% of all online sales is lost to fraud annually. And, you know, these fraud losses are a tax to all of us who are paying for these consumer goods, who are using these credit cards, et cetera. That's just an added tax to all of our businesses to keep up with these fraudsters who are putting billions of dollars in their pockets. So that's pretty dismal and scary, I know. I want to talk just for a moment about, you know, some of the things that Care Credit and Synchrony Financial do in collaboration with your practice office manager to ensure that we understand who is being presented, you know, for an application for credit or presenting their credit card there in your practice. ID checks at point of sale, we require those for all applications. If your patient is applying for Care Credit in your practice, your office manager should know that they need to check two forms of identity. And you can see there we've got some examples of the primary ID that's required. And you can see those are all government issued IDs. Someone should have at least one of these. And 99% of the time they have their picture on the front. There are some states that don't require pictures for Amish and other folks for various legitimate reasons. But 99 point something percent of all primary IDs have pictures, and they're government issued. And then, of course, we ask for a secondary form of ID for our applications. And you can see here that we just ask for a different credit card. And you don't even have to write down the credit card number. We prefer you don't, in fact. Just look at the credit card, see that it has the same person's name on there as the applicant, and use that as their secondary form of ID. For another bank to have given that credit card, they've already done the ID checks that are required. They've already ensured that this person that is asking for credit is legitimate. I should stop and talk for just a moment about what we fraud, the folks in the fraud industry, fraud prevention industry, talk about three-factor authentication. I didn't put it here on the page, but I thought it would be enlightening for you. Three-factor authentication means in order for me to know who I'm dealing with, I have one of three factors with which I can draw from. I can ask that person something they know. We've probably all experienced that if you've been called by a bank and they may validate your identity by asking you your mother's maiden name. That's a great example of that. Or they may ask you they're starting to get more and more inventive. You've probably seen this on some websites where it says, you know, name your childhood best friend or name the color of your first car. And those are things that you know and use to identify you later should we suspect that there may be fraud involved. The second factor authentication may be something you have, and these ID checks here are a prime example of that, something you have in your wallet. And then a third example is something that you are, and you may have heard about this in the news, you know, like iris scans or DNA checks or fingerprint checks. Those are actually fairly hard to implement, so I don't really know of any bank that's using something you are as a way of identifying you. So we're pretty much relying on something you know and something you have to validate the identity of the person. So when we receive an application that we suspect fraud on, and there's a variety of tools we use to detect potential fraud. It might be a difference in address from what the Bureau tells us. It may be a number of factors. And actually the government requires us to protect consumers. That's called red flag guidelines when certain of these factors come up. When they do come up on an application, before we can approve that application, we're going to append it or cue it. And basically that's a message back to your office manager to give us a call. And so when your office manager does call us, we're going to probably ask to speak to the consumer and ask them some of the things that they know now. Tell us your mother's maiden name. Tell us if you ever lived at one of these addresses, things of that nature. And then we're also starting to use what we call one-time password. You know, since cell phones have not been out there that long actually, smart phones have been out for less than ten years. Time flies, right? But, you know, more and more people are keeping their phone numbers really for life. And it doesn't matter where you live in the United States. You can move across from the East Coast to the West Coast and people keep their cell phone number. And banks and LexisNexis and other data collection agencies know that phone number. And so we know it too. And so when we get an application for someone we might suspect fraud for, we might text them and say, we just texted your phone number. Let us know if you received that and give us the six-digit code that we texted you. And if they can give us that, we have pretty good confirmation it's not a fraudster. So those are the kinds of things that we do when we receive an application in collaboration with your office manager doing ID checks to make sure that we really know who that applicant is and that that applicant has not had their identity stolen. Next I want to move on to some basic protections. And really what I'm trying to show you here is what I mentioned earlier, that we want to make it simple for your patient to interact. You want to make it simple for them to interact in your office. And we want to make it simple for them to interact with us. And so there's a convenience factor we have to think about. And then we also have to think about risk. If we make it too convenient and there's high risk, then we're likely to be taken for fraud. And so I just put these three symbols in here to relate where I think each of the different tender types stand today. I put check out here, personal checks and cashier's checks as high risk. And frankly, they're not very convenient anymore. I mean, when was the last time you stood behind someone at the grocery store who was writing a personal check, right? It's really not that convenient. There's still folks that want to do it that way, but it's lost its convenience. Thirty years ago it was convenience. It's not today. And it's very risky to you. And then there's cash, of course. And frankly, we all have a few dollars in our wallet, but carrying a lot of cash is not very convenient. My ATM doesn't let me take out more than a few hundred dollars in a day. And so if I need a lot of cash, it's not very convenient to take and get it out. And then, frankly, it's not very convenient for your office manager and your practice to have it in your office. You don't want a lot of that stuff around, right? And then, frankly, it poses some risks as a result, and we'll talk about those. And then maybe no surprise, since I'm from a credit card company, I would put credit cards as low risk, but I truly believe they are low risk as long as some rules are followed. And then I think they're highly convenient. So let's talk about some of the controls. And this takeaway here, the best defense that you can have in your practice is well-trained employees and solid business controls. And you have to own those controls. So let's talk about cash. I mentioned that I think it's a moderate risk, and it is. You know, you have to perform some basic checks to ensure that you're not accepting counterfeit bills. And then you have to establish procedures to secure that money and to deposit it quickly to get it out of your office and out of your hands. And then you also have to have sound employee auditing practices. You know, Ronald Reagan once said, trust but verify. And I think that's kind of the motto here is while, you know, you want to be able to trust every one of your staff in your office, frankly, no one person should control the cash completely. They shouldn't be the one accepting the cash and then making the bank deposit and then ledgering that as well. When you do that, you know, someone's going to be tempted. You really should have separation of roles and responsibilities and have a second employee who is auditing and watching pieces of that process. Maybe you have your office manager accepting the payment and someone else, maybe yourself even, making the deposits at night. And then, of course, there's some tools that you should have. You know, a basic tool is a counterfeit detector pen. These are inexpensive to have. In any bill larger than $20, you should be using that counterfeit detector pen on. Also, there's more sophisticated equipment you can put in that actually takes a quick image of the bills and makes sure that they are legitimate bills. You should have a secure place to lock that cash in, a drawer with a key. And then you shouldn't let that cash stay there very long. You should be depositing that nightly. And, frankly, you know, I think all of us have probably seen the nightly news of someone, you know, waiting out in the parking lot because they know the routine of a business owner. You really want to vary the time that you make those deposits so that someone can't pinpoint your trends and habits and take advantage of that. I want to move on to personal checks. I'm going to talk about cashier's checks separately. But I do rate these as high risk. You know, the risk is on the business or the practice that is accepting these checks to ensure that the check is legitimate and to know that there's sufficient funds. There's a variety of things that you can do to check for legitimacy. You can want, number one, you know, is this a patient that you have a relationship with that you know? Or is this someone new that is not known to you? If it's someone new, you should be a little bit more cautious. You should look at the, you know, the treatment plan and how much you're performing before you know that the check is good and has cleared. Are you performing an expensive treatment and delivering it all up front only to learn 10 days later that the check is not good or it doesn't have sufficient funds? You know, you'll take a complete loss for all that work. Is the check drawn on a local bank? Does the address on the check match that on the identification of the person presenting the check? Does the signature match? Is the check number low? You know, I think more sophisticated fraudsters know to get fraudulent checks with higher numbers on them, but the unsophisticated fraudsters don't. So that's an easy check to make. If the check number is low, it may not be a legitimate check or it may be on a new account that may not have sufficient funds on there. You know, I wrote this on the bottom here. If so, you really do want to do business with the parent to make sure that the parent actually is presenting the check and has presented their ID, et cetera. Some of these things are what I would call duh, right? It's like, no kidding. But you really have to make sure that you've written this down in policy and trained your office manager to actually do these things. Do not assume that these things are being done. So, you know, real quickly, just the basic tools. Know what to look for on every check. You may want to use a vendor that can help verify the check before the treatment is rendered. More and more banks are using check services that will actually report the balance of the bank account holders and the balance of the bank accounts. So you may want to use a vendor that can help verify the check before the treatment is rendered. It will actually report the balance of the bank account holders, their account. It will report the balance on that account and tell you through this vendor whether or not there are sufficient funds. So, you know, if you're regularly taking checks, you may want to take advantage of that. Obviously, you want to match the identity. And if you're at all suspicious, you should call the bank. The bank will talk to you. And the bank will tell you if that's a legitimate check or not. Okay, so next I want to talk about cashier's checks. I've got to tell you a quick story before we get into this. I was selling a car a few years ago on auto trader. And, you know, normally people want to come and look at cars and test drive them and then make an offer. And then, you know i sold a few cars as well actually take them to their bank and they can give me a cashier's check right there in their bank and i know that's pretty good that way right but i want to have some of our had someone uh... send me a cashier's check in the mail and they had even seen the car yet so you can imagine my fraud antenna was really waiting i was really thinking this can't be legitimate who buys a car unseen and it sure enough two days later the email me in the state hey i'm sorry you know that check we sent you that you that was for more than what we agreed upon can you just wire us the difference and we've all heard about this scam but i gotta tell you the scammers the fraudsters wouldn't be doing this if there were people that were or allowing it to be done to them if it wasn't profitable so i just i just say this warning also i i had a uh... a practice a doctor here in the local area southern california who called me and said actually i was a victim of this uh... did fifteen or twenty thousand dollars of surgery uh... and uh... or were scheduled to do that and someone sent him the cashier's check and in the person canceled and after they just wire the money back to them your your fraud antenna should be waiting at that point what what they've done if they've given you a fraudulent cashier's check that you may take fifteen days or more to clear or to not clear for you to know that it didn't clear and they've actually to wire them immediately the money so they can take that and run so you should be very very cautious on that so enough storytelling there but if you have any any doubt you should call the bank it's drawn on to have the check verified i did that when i was presented that fraudulent check and within seconds they were able to tell me that was a bogus check don't accept it and then you know as i described you should really uh... be thinking about the other fraud indicators that the patient is out of town if the consult was done without them present in the office whether you Skype or FaceTime you know you you should really uh... pay attention to those fraud uh... indicators you know the other thing too in i see that sometimes within uh... checks that are given to us for remittance on various accounts that sometimes the bank that is drawn on is very very slow to inform us that there was insufficient funds or that the check wasn't good i have seen as long as three weeks before i got told that a check wasn't good that's really slow and i you know i don't understand uh... those banks that respond so slowly but uh... listen you should think about uh... how your bank notifies you of a bad check or a check with insufficient funds if it's by mail you may want to ask them can you send that to me via email or you know something that i suggest uh... and we'll get into this a little bit later uh... with how care credit notifies you of disputes set up a dedicated fax number actually have a fax numbers and eight six six number but when i receive a fax i don't have a fax machine it comes directly into my personal in email inbox i receive it within seconds of that fax coming and it comes directly to me so you don't think about if you had uh... you know someone in your practice that was causing you harm uh... you know one of your staff and uh... a bank needed to notify you but this person was able to you know receive that fax or receive that snail mail and divert it from your attention continue to commit fraud for weeks or months before you really became aware you may want to set up a dedicated number that comes directly to you for such an important thing so that's enough about checks i want to get on a talk about uh... credit cards now here i really do think that uh... credit cards are a small risk uh... they are uh... you know secured by uh... the bank if there is fraud if you've done your part uh... and we'll talk about that then the bank assumes the risk for fraud the bank owns that fraud uh... and uh... and and you don't and the consumer doesn't as you all know the consumers are protected from fraud as well if they have their identity stolen or they have their credit card stolen or they they're hacked and uh... someone uh... you know creates a counterfeit card and uses it elsewhere i just had this happen in fact just last week when my american express card had a two hundred dollar transaction on there that i didn't authorize it when it was in thailand or for something in thailand i called them they immediately recredited that money and sent me a new card i was protected completely there are some things that you do have to do and and you know that there's the warning there that first bullet typically banks will charge back for non-compliance so make sure that you know the compliance rules for the cards that you accept mastercard visa american express etc there are some basic rules uh... you know the biggest one frankly is to swipe the credit card right when you swipe the credit card it proves that the card was present and it allows the bank to receive the complete uh... information that was on the magnetic swipe uh... stripe in that swipe and they are you able to use that as authentication uh... generally though you should identify the customer you know that you know the patient you should be looking at the credit card and saying yep that's the patient's name uh... again you should be avoiding key transactions uh... it may be a good idea to match the the card number on the receipt to the physical card again the counterfeiters out there are using what they call blanks i'd describe the hotel room key card but they also have uh... more legitimate looking credit cards out there that they just put the magnetic swipe stripe information in there but that what's on the stripe does not match what's on the front of the card and so it's a good idea to check on the receipt that the credit card number matches what's on the receipt and again understand the basic elements required on your transaction your bank that you use for your mastercard visa american express and then lastly maybe i'll just talk about EMV this is in all the news uh... since october first you know EMV or the chip has been out there for years in europe uh... the US has been slow to adopt that uh... but uh... there's been a general agreement uh... that uh... they'll have it in place by october first uh... my experience has not been so good i've been out to my local grocery store and drugstore and sure enough they're not requiring what they call the dip which is to insert the card into the terminal so it can read the chip on the card and validate it they're still swiping and so that just means they're using the magnetic swipe i would strongly encourage you to install an optional uh... uh... capable terminal for this EMV and that that's going to really just protect you completely if you dip the card it's able to validate the chip in there and again if there's any fraud that occurs after that it's on the bank it's not it's not on you or the consumer so i want to transition and talk more specifically then about the care credit card and when you go to transact with the care credit card a lot of our patients uh... don't present the card in fact your office manager will often look up to the card holder accounts account number and then use that to transact and so we got to be very careful here when the card is not present we require two ID checks as i described earlier and we ask that you retain the documentation that you did those two ID checks if you're not able to swipe the card uh... most of our providers uh... don't care to have our terminal sitting on their desk we understand that we have you know our online uh... care credit uh... pro uh... portal for our uh... providers to go to your office manager to go to they log in and they're able to transact there which is great so if the card is presented that's great they just need to check one ID you know i want to talk about this next bullet payments over phones i had another doctor describing to me uh... they lost eighteen thousand dollars from a fraudster uh... patient had all the work done completely and then uh... uh... the way they had paid for it was their their cousin i think it was as they described him has a care credit account and my cousin will call you and give you the account number and you can transact and they took it that way they never saw the cousin they never did any ID checks and as a result sure enough it turned out to be fraudulent uh... and when we ask for the you know i the ID check documentation it wasn't able to be provided and that provider was liable for that fraud because they didn't do the basic checks it's really important that you know who you're transacting with and so don't take a payment over the phone there's no way of verifying who's on the phone with you period you know watch out for the cardholder uh... have a different name than the patient now this can sometimes happen you know if i'm paying for my daughter for example uh... you know maybe my name on the card but but you're you're treating my daughter that's fine but i need to be there since i'm the cardholder i need to be there for the transaction i need to be the one signing the receipt i need to be the one showing you my identity so that you know it's me take your patient's word for it uh... and in fact that they're pressing you on it again they're trying to make it simple right if they're pressing on you to make it simple your fraud antenna should be waving that that maybe this is a fraudster you need to do the ID checks is the bottom line there let me go on to the next page here i want to talk a little bit about disputes we don't have a lot of disputes but when we do have a dispute it's painful for everyone i know it's painful for you in the practice in your office manager it's potentially painful for the cardholder uh... as well as us but you know as a bank we're required by law to have a process for accepting disputes i have to tell you that about seventy percent of all disputes we receive are related to services that have not yet been delivered or completely delivered and so there's there's a refund that's due for the undelivered services and that's what the patient is disputing about they're expecting that refund and so you know here i just want to say look you know by our our uh... agreement with each of you uh... you you're not gonna pre-fund for services that you can't deliver fully within thirty days and typically most practices transact the day of services and the services are fully delivered at the end of that day except for maybe some follow-up treatment and that works perfectly so that's what i recommend is that you fund when treatment starts you should also uh... you know during the consult or before the treatment starts you should have a treatment plan that the patient is acknowledged and signed and in that treatment plan i would highly recommend that you show what is refundable and not refundable you know your surgical suite costs you money to have prepared you may have an anesthesiologist and other staff members that need to be there on that surgery day and if the patient just fails to show up you know you're out uh... certain costs you know forget the opportunity costs and your time you actually have to pay that anesthesiologist for being there or may have to pay for that surgery center to be there prepared for that surgery and so it's appropriate that you would show that there are certain fees that if they don't cancel within a certain period of time or before the surgery date that it's not refundable but you have to spell it out right there so you know back to the dispute if the services aren't fully delivered i highly recommend that you refund the customer do this when the patient stops treatment for some reason they've they've stated that they're not going to go forward for a variety of reasons who knows what that is and there's something that's owed to them i recommend that you you refund them at that point and then also i just uh... you know want to reiterate the written financial policy recommend you have one care credit has sample financial policies that you can use that you can modify to fit your practice and it's available out there uh... on our care credit website what happens if you get a dispute first of all we're going to notify you via fax uh... we as part of the enrollment process we ask for your fax number we believe this is probably the best way to communicate with you quickly and so when we receive a dispute notification we fax you immediately uh... about that dispute we try to tell you what it's about and we give you twenty one days by law i can't take longer than that to respond so if we do send you dispute notification we recommend that it's okay for you to contact the patient and attempt to remedy the situation that's absolutely the right thing to do if for example they didn't complete all their treatment and there's something owed to them you can try to reschedule them and get them in to complete that if you can't do that though you need to refund that money and do that you know as quickly as possible in fact you should do that before you respond to the dispute notification and then when you do respond to us via fax you know it's okay to summarize the treatment that you've delivered it's okay to include that treatment plan that the patient signed it's appropriate to say that we refunded you know the residual balance and we're set you know net net of zero you can include copies of the signed application, sales receipt, treatment plan whatever you think is needed or that we request there in the dispute notification send that back to us while we're required by law to take this dispute by the patient we in no way want to be the arbitrator we want to just simply notify you of the dispute and then if you can send us all the information that says i delivered the services I refunded any money that was owed etc then we're going to fall in your favor and that'll be the end of the dispute so I want to talk about the next thing and this happens rarely but it is painful when it does happen so I just want to mention it sometimes those dispute notifications go unanswered and when they do I'm required to do a charge back this is law but charge backs you know disputes are not entirely preventable I want to talk about that for a moment right we're not entitled to make everybody happy all the time my mom is never happy with the eggs when we go to a restaurant that are served they're almost always going to go back to the kitchen that's just the way it is right so we're not entitled to no disputes but we are entitled to no charge backs they are completely preventable if your office manager is trained to respond to a dispute so you know first of all I would ensure I would ask you to ensure that your fax number is accurate in care credit records so that if we do get a dispute and we do have to send a dispute notification that that's getting to the right place and then as I mentioned before I highly recommend that you set up an e-fax this e-fax can come directly to you to your office manager to someone that you trust to make sure that the response happens and doesn't just languish there on the fax machine or worse yet get thrown away with a pile of you know junk mail that comes via fax right highly recommend that you do that and then you know frankly again the chargebacks are avoidable in that if you've done your your part if your office manager has done their part to take the application to document the two forms of ID uh... one note there you know in New York by law we're not allowed to transact for more than a thousand dollars within three days of the application being submitted in your practice that's a small note don't know if anyone on the phone here is from New York but if you've done your part there and then on the transaction specifically if the transaction sales receipt is signed by the patient if there were ID checks required there those were documented and in the treatment plan if you you know went to the treatment plan with the patient the patient signed it you've delivered that treatment or if they canceled and there was some non-refundable amount that you're not going to give them back if that was noted there then we're going to fall on your side and there's going to be no chargeback and so chargebacks are completely avoidable and I just want to really iterate that again this is completely in your control it happens rarely but when it does happen it's so painful uh... and I you know I talk to a number of providers uh... when it happens and uh... you know I just want to encourage you to prevent it from happening so we're nearing the end of my time we've used uh... almost forty minutes which is good we've got some time for for Q&A I do want to mention before we go into Q&A that we do have a fraud white paper available to you uh... it's available for you and your staff you can go out to carecredit.com slash pro there and you can look under provider resources and you'll see it there under professional resources if you're not a care credit provider you can call us we'll send it to you for free you don't have to enroll we'll send it to you anyway and then also you know I'll just mention uh... that uh... I've been invited also to attend the uh... ASPS show there in Boston and I'll be speaking there uh... on Saturday in Boston and so you can send your office staff uh... to that session I'd be happy to go through this again and answer more specific questions they might have and then I'll also be in the booth there all day on Saturday uh... available and the white paper will also be there so if you want to come by and pick one up there uh... you can do that as well so with that Katherine I'm going to let you take over and do some Q&A alright thank you thank you Jonathan that was wonderful uh... let me okay uh... alright I do see a question from Jay Cohen he says or he or she says are there any HIV HIPAA concerns when discussing details of services and treatments rendered for a patient who has filed a dispute that's a great question and I hear it from time to time I've been in this role for about five years and I think I hear it a couple times a year when a patient disputes they are asking us to get involved now and so there are not HIPAA concerns we've we've passed this through many inside and outside legal counsel to ensure that so I can assure you that when they say that they're not satisfied with their services or that some services have been undelivered when you when you send back uh... in that dispute notification when you send back your response and you detail out what the planned services were what you've delivered etc we don't need pictures but you can detail out as much as you want and and it does not violate any HIPAA concerns hold on just one moment I have a question that I'm going to be posting from a an attendee who can't use the chat window so let me post that okay so um... Dr. Rice said um... we had a patient cancel surgery the day of we did not refund since our cancellation policy requires week notice I had staff on hand and the surgical suite could not be canceled they signed a refund policy how would I handle this dispute sure so um... you know actually I think I just want to go back to the oops you've taken control away from me I'll just refer back to the page that uh... that I spoke to that on bring it back up here we go yeah let me just take it back there real quick you know if uh... let's say the surgery uh... the planned surgery is going to cost ten thousand dollars and that's the treatment plan etc it is not legitimate to say that entire ten thousand dollars is not refundable if they don't show up it is however legitimate to say look the cost of the surgical suite and having that anesthesiologist and that staff member there all prepared for surgery is going to cost fifteen hundred dollars or whatever it costs right and to disclose that on the treatment plan and to disclose on the treatment plan that that's not refundable if we don't if you don't call me at least a week in advance and reschedule or cancel and so if you've documented that on the treatment plan it's signed by the patient showing what's refundable not refundable and then you're able to fax that to us when uh... when a dispute happens we're going to stand behind you I hope that answers the question Dr. Wright isn't able to answer so we're going to have to assume that I will be in Boston next week so if we need more there hopefully we'll get a chance to meet and talk All right, then I think we will close this up. Thank you again, Jonathan Smith and Care Credit, for a very informative presentation. This was wonderful. Thank you, everyone, for joining the webinar. And we'll be posting the recording of this session on PSEN in the next week. If you have questions after the webinar, Jonathan's email, let me bring this up, will remain on the screen. And you can have his direct contact information. Thanks again, everyone, and good night. Good night, Catherine. Thank you.

Jonathan Smith & nbsp; is the & nbsp; Senior Vice President and Chief Credit Officer for CareCredit; Memben

healthcare fraud prevention

digital identity fraud

two-factor authentication

credit card security

EMV chip technology

employee training

dispute resolution

Care Credit