CHAPTER X
GETTING FEES IN ADVANCE
It is one thing for patient and physician to agree upon a fee. It is another thing for the physician to get the fee in advance. Still, it can be done in most instances, but it requires diplomacy of a high order. It is frequently, one might say almost invariably, the case that, after the fee has been tacitly agreed upon, the patient will enquire:
“How is this fee to be paid, Doctor?”
“In advance,” the doctor will reply in a mild, it-doesn’t-matter manner.
“Isn’t that rather hard on the patient, Doctor?”
“It is the only way in which we can protect ourselves. If we extended credit indiscriminately many patients, when assured that they were well started on the road to recovery, would disappear, and it would require long, expensive litigation to collect from them, even if we could get service on them here, which is doubtful. The average man, Mr. ——, has a queer idea about the obligation of a doctor’s bill. It is the last thing he will pay voluntarily, even when almost miraculous benefits have been obtained.”
“Don’t you ever extend credit?”
“Oh, yes. When assured of a man’s financial responsibility and honest intention, we are glad to accommodate him in a reasonable way if it is inconvenient for him to pay cash.”
In this, as in naming the fee, the physician must create the impression in the mind of the subject that payment of the fee is about the last thing he is thinking of. There must be no anxiety, no undue haste to get the money—at least not so that the patient can notice it. Switching the conversation for a few moments back to the case itself, in order to get the patient’s mind diverted, the doctor will finally say: