Dental insurance claims can account for about 50% of your overall revenue. As a dentist, you likely see that percentage and realize or already know, “wow, getting insurance claims paid needs to be a number one priority for my dental team!” And you’d be right.
However - making insurance claims a priority is easier said than done.
Insurance carriers have specific rules for filing claims in a timely manner. Did you know some plans have a timely file limit as low as 90 days and others as high as 365 days?
It is important to submit your claims to the proper insurance carrier before they hit timely filing deadlines. Tracking these claims can be exceptionally time-consuming. That ever-growing insurance aging report looms in the back of your mind, reminding you of all of the claims that remain outstanding and unpaid - and your team barely has time to sit down and work through it.
Dental ClaimSupport is an outsourced dental billing service that takes care of tasks like working the outstanding insurance claims report. Through our 10+ years of existence, we know just how much time and expertise working the outstanding insurance claims report takes.
No matter the dental billing company you prefer - outsourcing can be an excellent resource for maintaining a healthy cash flow. Most importantly, outsourcing can keep your outstanding insurance claims over 30 days past due at less than 10% of the total insurance claims outstanding.
In this article, we will take you through 3 ways outsourcing your dental billing can help you maintain outstanding insurance claims older than 30 days past due report, thus leading to your practice bringing in more revenue from previously unpaid insurance claims. This will also lead to an overall financially healthier dental practice.
1. The outsourced biller has the time to dedicate to working the insurance aging report every week
When you outsource your dental billing, your remote biller will spend their time zeroing in on your insurance aging report. They do not have patients in front of them or other tasks to tackle, taking time away from the research it takes to work through the aging report.
If you’re exploring outsourcing your dental billing, your team likely has other responsibilities in front of them. When you have someone handling the time-consuming nature of the insurance aging report, it allows your administrative team to focus on your schedule and productivity.
It also gives your administrative team more time to improve patient service and create relationships building trust and confidence in your practice. They’ll be able to focus on their efforts that will prevent patients from slipping through the cracks. This means they can spend time contacting patients with unscheduled treatment who may have forgotten they need treatment.
These are all important tasks that also need attention - splitting time between this and the aging report will not lead to success. You need people committed to each with no other distractions.
When there are distractions, it makes it easy to push insurance claims to the side. They aren’t right in front of your team, staring them in the face as an uncompleted task. Like we said, unpaid claims loom in the background, AKA on the outstanding claims report or the insurance aging report.
Because an outsourced dental biller’s only responsibility is to get your claims paid, they don’t have to worry about all of those other tasks. They can hone in on moving through the aging report in peace, utilizing web portals and calling each insurance company, and doing research on where each unpaid claim went wrong.
Outsourced billers will have time to focus on several claims at once with no interruptions
Outsourced dental billers have time to sit down and prioritize which claims are oldest, and need to be visited ASAP. A big mistake we see dental offices make when working the outstanding claims report or insurance aging report is focusing on getting high dollar claims paid first.
We get it - those will get you a big deposit from insurance. But insurance unfortunately gives you only a certain amount of time to get a claim paid or appealed.
Claims can be denied for the simple fact of timely filing. There is also a window of time between when you were notified of the claim denial and when they will still reimburse it.
Your outsourced biller will have the objectivity, expertise, and time to know this and get those older claims paid promptly.
Speaking of time - an outsourced dental biller can work more quickly than one of your in-house team members. Let’s get into that next.
2. The outsourced biller can work the insurance aging report quickly and efficiently
We don’t point this out to sound like a child saying, “I can do this faster than you!”
We say this because the outsourced dental biller will not only have more time in the day to be laser-focused on your insurance claims, but they also have the expertise to work through the unpaid claims quickly and efficiently.
What may take your team a few hours (due to all of those office distractions we mentioned above) would take an outsourced biller a fraction of that.
Yes, they are distraction-free. But they also do this for a living! They see aging reports every day, so they know how to efficiently go line by line, claim by claim, making calls to insurance companies, and even getting multiple claims handled on one call.
If your insurance aging report is high - the outsourced biller is going to spend extra time clearing off that list
The insurance aging report is a list of every open claim that hasn’t been paid - so if this list is quite long with many claims that are over 30 days old, your aging report will need extra attention.
Usually, we recommend working the aging report once a week but if an outsourced biller sees an extremely long insurance aging report - that will likely be the main priority and first big project for your dental billing company. The time required to work through the report completely depends on the amount of time it has been neglected.
Having a team of experts dedicated to researching and resolving your outstanding insurance claims can decrease the amount of time it will take to work on this report in the future.
Once the report has been given its first “deep cleaning,” it should be on somewhat of a maintenance system moving forward.
After a few months of hard work, you’ll start to see your collections percentage increase through this dedication to the insurance aging report.
3. The outsourced biller has the strategies and expertise to get each claim paid
Last and likely the most obvious - the outsourced dental biller is going to have the expertise to get your claims appealed and paid.
The outsourced biller looks at the insurance aging report strategically with a problem-solving mindset. They know how to research these claims in the most effective way and understand how to communicate strategically with each insurance company.
Outsourced billers see claims appeals like a chess match where they fight tooth and nail to get your claims paid. Each insurance company has different requirements and policies, and the outsourced billers understand this through their years of training and work.
The outsourced biller will also have the skills to avoid denials - shrinking the aging report
Here’s the other thing about outsourced expert billers - they know how to strategically work the insurance aging report, but they’ll also help you submit more accurate claims that will prevent claims from being denied - keeping the aging report lower.
The biggest reason insurance claims end up on the aging report is due to denials. These denials could be due to:
- Outdated insurance claim forms
- Incomplete or incorrect information on the claim
- Unreadable information or files
- Contractual denials
- Sent to the wrong carrier
- Documentation doesn’t support the code billed
- No explanations on the claim form
- Trying to juggle everything in the office
These are all headaches the outsourced dental billing company can alleviate. This will then lead to more accurate claims and fewer outstanding claims on your aging report.
Eager to learn how else outsourcing a dental billing company can improve your billing process?
When you outsource your dental billing, you’re investing in the process that will make your dental practice profitable. Adding experts to your arsenal will streamline and improve the financial health of your dental billing process. In other words - you’re going to make more money, and the aging report is just one piece of the puzzle that the biller will improve.
Dental ClaimSupport can be a tool for helping your practice make more money. Our expert billers prioritize unpaid claims, and work to get your practice in an ideal place financially so that you can stop worrying about if your team could make the time for insurance billing.
However - paid insurance claims are not the only benefit you will reap from outsourced billing. Outsourcing your billing can even improve your patient experience. Learn how this is so in our Learning Center.
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