Nothing is worse as a dental professional than spending all day on the phone with insurance, trying to reach the right person to get a dental claim paid. You’ve been there, done that. And now that you’ve outsourced your insurance billing, you’re done chasing down dental insurance claims.
You’re wondering now, as a part of the dental administrative team, what you should spend your time doing. What’s going to make the practice most successful, now that our dental insurance claims process is being handled by outsourced billing experts?
Dental ClaimSupport has spent over 10 years helping dental teams heal the financial health of the practice by taking over the dental insurance claims process. Through these years of experience, we know the most important things your team can now focus on.
In this article, you will learn how to best spend your time as a dental team now that you no longer have to chase down dental insurance claim payments.
While this can be a huge relief for the team, you’ll still need to channel your energy into other important tasks. These tasks include providing outstanding patient care, insurance verification, strategic billing, and the cultivation of a modern and profitable dental practice.
1. Deliver outstanding patient service
When you don’t have to lock yourself in an office to handle the monotonous billing tasks such as posting claim payments, following up on denied dental insurance claims, and working the insurance aging report - you can spend more time on patient service.
This means you can spend more time conversing with patients. When they come into the office, you can check them in, ask them about their day, and talk to them about the procedure they are having done that day - even if it’s just cleaning.
Building a relationship with your patients will also help relieve any patient anxiety they may feel before their treatment. If you’re stuck on hold with an insurance company, you certainly won’t get a chance to chat with the patient like this.
Creating personal relationships with your patients leads to stronger patient retention
Not only does adding a personal touch to your patient experience make the patient feel better, but it also helps retain patients and your regular stream of revenue.
Unfortunately, patients do not always recognize good dentistry. They just know you and your team were nice, and they had no discomfort.
When you create personal relationships with patients, you can keep them in your dental family for years! Don’t underestimate this type of patient service. It can really affect your number of patients.
For example, when my mom moved to Atlanta, GA, she found a dentist that she loved and kept going there for years. Then she had me and my sister, and she started taking us to that dentist. And guess what? As an adult, I still go to that same dental practice!
It’s a good feeling (from a patient’s perspective) when you find a dental practice that feels familiar and homey. That’s what you can provide for patients when you aren’t bogged down by your dental claims process.
2. Dental insurance verification
It’s easy for your dental insurance verification process to take a backseat when you’re busy with getting dental insurance claims paid. Here’s the thing though - when your insurance verification process is streamlined, you’re going to face fewer denials in the first place.
When you outsource your insurance billing, appeals are already being handled by someone else. But that still means it’s time for you to prioritize your insurance verification, if not for the biller’s sake, for your patient’s sake.
Verifying insurance will help you keep your patients informed on what their estimated out-of-pocket expenses will be. The patient will also understand how much their insurance should cover.
Being able to properly perform insurance verification creates a better line of communication between you and the patient.
Organized and streamlined patient billing
That line of communication we talked about? It’s due to the insurance verification, which leads to easy collection from the patient.
Organized and streamlined patient billing is beneficial for you because you are collecting what you’re owed, but it also means the patient knows what they owe and has no objections.
A smooth patient billing process can be attained more easily when you can hyper-focus on insurance verification, properly educate your patients on their benefits, and explain their out-of-pocket costs. Fewer surprises mean fewer objections! And you can make this happen when you aren’t also responsible for the dental claims process.
3. Proactive and strategic scheduling
Taking time to fill the schedule, follow up with patients about their appointments, and account for no-shows feels impossible if you’re also handling dental claims. And this is a crucial part of the practice’s stream of revenue that needs to be handled.
Unscheduled treatments are both good health care and revenue opportunities. You may have many patients who have come in and have a treatment plan that requires them to come in again. And the patient has not yet scheduled a time to return for treatment.
You’ll also have extra time to help patients strategically use their benefits. You can help them use their maximum before the end of the year, or divide up their visits between this year and the next so that they do not max out so quickly.
This creates trust between you and the patient, leading to more patient retention, as mentioned above.
Read more about 4 ways to help dental patients use their benefits by the end of the year in our Learning Center.
4. Curate a modern and profitable practice
Making sure your dental practice is modern and up to date can lead to higher profitability. But continuously updating things around the practice is a big task to take on.
A few things you should keep updated at your dental practice include:
- Practice management software
- Insurance verification software
- Computer systems
- Furniture, artwork, and decor
- Scheduling processes and systems
There are also marketing tasks to handle. You might be a healthcare provider, but a dental practice is still a place of business. You need strategic ways to draw in new patients. This could mean posting on social media about your dental practice, updating the website to make it more user-friendly, asking patients to submit a Google review, or implementing a referral system for current patients.
Taking time to do this creates a more appealing environment for patients and keeps your practice competitive with others.
Ready to learn more about what you can expect from an outsourced dental billing service?
You now understand how you can best spend your time now that you no longer need to spend hours on your dental insurance claims.
To make your practice even more profitable, you can now dedicate your time to patient care, insurance verification, patient billing, scheduling, and modernizing your practice.
Dental ClaimSupport can help practices have the time in their day back to handle tasks such as those mentioned above. Our billers will be the ones chasing dental insurance claim payments to get your practice what it has earned.
Ready to dive deeper into what you can expect from a dental billing company? Visit our Learning Center and get a better understanding of what you can gain from outsourcing your dental insurance claims process.
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