You are an office manager trying to figure out the best practices for dental billing, and you have a lot of questions. It’s a complex process! There are several steps you must follow and accuracy is imperative. No pressure. One of those basic questions ends up being “how often should I post my dental insurance payments?” Seems like a simple question, but you’re overwhelmed and need answers and recommendations from people that have been there.

A new patient just called your office and asked if you accepted their HMO. Your staff doesn’t know the answer to the question. There are a lot of specific abbreviations and acronyms in dental insurance terminology. It’s common to get tripped up on it. Understanding these terms is important for anyone in the insurance or billing industry, or anyone that deals with insurance on a regular basis. We get it, this can feel like homework… You already went to dental school and worked hard, and learning dental insurance basics can feel monotonous. In this article, we’re going to make it really simple for you to understand one of the most basic components of what dental insurance is: HMO versus PPO. While HMO is generically used, most dental plans are referred to as DHMO or DMO, with the D indicating it is a dental plan, not a medical plan.

2020 had a huge impact on all of us. It feels like everything has changed, for better or for worse. Many of the dentist offices we work with had to restructure their staff, let people go or move people to other positions.

Outsourced dental billing is a variable of your practice that you haven’t been able to dedicate enough time to, whether you are an office manager, a dentist or the owner of the practice. Perhaps you are all three, in which case, you are truly in need of someone else to take care of your billing. You’re spread too thin and you need something you know will make sure you’re collecting what you’ve earned from each patient and dental insurance company. Dental Claim Support (DCS) is an outsourced dental billing company that is focused on lifting the burden of sending all dental claims, posting insurance payments, and researching all claims on your outstanding insurance aging report. Every nitpicky detail about dental billing, every frustration you may have about collecting payments, will be taken care of by an account executive who has spent years helping dental practices around the United States with streamlining their billing process.

Like every place of business, it takes time to perfect the billing process. We all have our own systems and like to do what makes sense to us. While there isn’t an end-all, be-all step-by-step set of rules for billing, there are some common questions that are likely to be asked in the process, one of them being, “how often should my dental office be sending insurance claims?” Whether you are an experienced billing coordinator, just trying to increase your collections percentage, or a brand new practice owner learning the ropes on getting paid by insurance companies, this is an important question to know the answer to!

You are in the market for a new dental practice management software. Your modern dental practice is currently utilizing out-of-date and inefficient software that is slow, glitches constantly and all of this makes posting payments a huge pain, plus they aren’t being posted in a timely manner.

Have you ever gotten yourself in trouble without even realizing you were doing something wrong? Of course you have, we all have! In the dental billing industry, it is a common mistake for dentists to use stock dental narratives without realizing this could get them in trouble. A narrative in the dental industry is a description of the patient’s problems and procedures. This is something you might see documented in clinical notes or the patient’s medical history. Stock narratives are default descriptions that cover a wide variety of symptoms, problems and procedures. Think of it like a “default” setting on your phone.

You don’t have to be “old” to be behind on technology. Plenty of dental offices are still using dated software simply because it’s something they’ve always used and are familiar with it. Change is hard, especially when it comes to learning a new piece of technology. It can be annoying, frustrating and seem unnecessary. At Dental ClaimSupport, our goal is to set you up for success, so having a newer software will in turn, help us increase your collections percentage. We believe dental offices need to convert to newer dental softwares for the same reason people need new cell phones. The main reason being, the software is outdated. If you are currently operating on a Dentrix, OpenDental, Eaglesoft, Curve, there is typically no reason to switch unless you just prefer one over the other. These tend to be the major softwares that most are converting to from the older softwares. Other reasons to switch softwares may include larger practices with multiple providers, paying providers based on production and/or collections, multiple locations, or they want to convert from server to cloud based softwares.

When it comes to outsourcing your dental billing, we understand the hesitation. You’re thinking, “I need a more organized, streamlined way to run my billing department, but how can I trust these people? Isn’t there a way I can just do it myself? Am I up for starting a working-relationship with people outside of my organization?” Signing on to work with total strangers that you rely on to solve problems is easier said than done. Will they really produce outcomes? Will they truly support you along the way? Or will they force you to sign a year-long contract and leave you to fend for yourself?

Whether you’re new to the field of dentistry or trying to maneuver a new software for your practice, understanding the insurance aging report meaning, and how to process this report is a must! Knowing how to run the report and understanding the information on the report is vital for the health of your practice.