3 min read
2025-08-14
Patient checks feel free. They are not. Between staff time, deposit runs, and posting errors, the average derm practice burns far more than $2.50 a check. Here is the math, and a faster way out.
Walk past your front desk on any Friday and you will probably see it. The pile. A growing stack of patient checks waiting for someone to do something about them. Most practices treat this pile as free. It is not.
What checks actually cost you
The check itself is free. Everything around it is not. Run the math on a single patient check at a typical dermatology practice:
Front desk staff time to receive, log, and stage the check: 2 to 4 minutes.
Office manager time to batch deposits and reconcile to the practice management system: another 2 to 5 minutes per check.
A weekly bank run, or a mobile deposit session that pulls someone away from patients.
Posting errors, lost checks, and the occasional "we never got that" call from a patient.
At a fully loaded $35 to $55 an hour, you are looking at $3 to $7 per check before a single error or write-off. Multiply that across 80 to 200 patient checks a month and the pile starts to look like a part-time hire you did not approve.
What $2.50 buys you
Lemma's Medical Lockbox costs $2.50 per check. Patients send their checks to a dedicated lockbox address. We open, image, and post them. You see the funds, the image, and the patient match in your dashboard the same business day.
That is it. No deposit runs. No "did you log this one" pings. No mystery checks at month-end. Your front desk goes back to greeting patients. Your office manager goes back to actual management.
For most dermatology practices, the breakeven sits well under 100 checks a month. Above that, the lockbox is the cheaper option from day one.
When it actually pays off
The math gets sharper when you stack a lockbox on top of how Lemma already handles money. ACH transfers cost $0 and wires are a flat $15, so paying vendors and collecting from payers does not eat the savings. Operating cash earns 1.75% APY while it sits, and your funds are FDIC-insured up to $10M per entity through the IntraFi sweep network. None of that requires a new login or another bank.
If your practice is mostly card-on-file and you only see a handful of checks a month, the lockbox is overkill. If you see 50 or more a month, or you run across multiple locations, the spreadsheet usually closes itself.
FAQ
Common questions