Dental claims service: 3 factors that affect a practice’s results

You’re ready to work with your chosen dental claims service, and you’re eager to see results. Your team has struggled to keep up with the dental insurance claims work, and the dental claims service you’ve hired should generate faster insurance income and resolve issues on the aging report. What kind of results can your dental practice expect?

Well, there are a few factors to consider that will directly affect the results that the dental claims service will provide. 

Dental ClaimSupport is a trusted dental billing partner that has helped dental teams create easy claims income from their billing process. Through over 10 years of working with dental teams, we’ve seen what factors can affect the results customers expect from our dental claims service. 

In this article, we will explain 3 factors that affect the results you see when you first start working with a dental claims service provider. Understanding these factors helps you know what expectations your service team can meet when work begins with your in-house team. 

These factors can also help us avoid misunderstandings that could lead to disappointment in the results you see from the dental claims service. 

Understanding these factors can set up your working relationship between your in-house team and the biller for success, leading to easier insurance revenue for you.

1. The amount of time since your insurance aging report has been worked through

When you work with a great dental billing company, your insurance aging report is going to be cleaned up. So you will get to see those positive results… however, what can be affected is the time it takes to clean up that aging report. 

If the list of unpaid insurance claims has not gotten attention for some time and your insurance aging report is lengthy, this will affect the time it takes to see results from the dental billing company. The longer it has been neglected, the longer it will take to research and resolve issues with unpaid claims. The biller working with you will make cleaning up your aging report their first priority, making sure your oldest claims are paid first. 

Many practices expect to see results within 2-3 weeks of working with a dental billing company. 

At DCS, we typically tell offices they can expect their numbers to noticeably improve starting about 2 months in. And this may take longer if you have a long insurance aging report that needs extra attention. 

So, if this sounds like your dental practice, this is something that can affect the time it takes to improve your numbers.

2. How well your team communicates with the dental billing company

Communication is key, especially when working with a dental billing company. Your biller is like an extension of your in-house team. They might not be in the office, but they work on your account daily! And because of this, communication is crucial. 

We’re not saying your office manager and your biller need to be emailing back and forth every single day. But the biller will need to have a proper point of contact if they have a question or concern about an insurance claim. 

If the biller needs more information from your in-house team about a claim, there needs to be someone who can answer the biller in a timely manner. Your claim reimbursement rate depends on it! 

The more easily you communicate the more efficient your claims process becomes. And this can greatly improve your revenue. 

We understand that working with a billing company is an adjustment, and it may take some time to find the best way to communicate. You’ll be including a new person in the billing process that you were used to handling yourself. 

As you transition to more of a leadership role, you have more impact on building good communication between your office team and your biller. Helping everyone get what they need will directly affect the results you will see from the dental billing company. 

And if that communication is a constant uphill battle - the result is likely not going to be what you want. So it’s important the biller and your team come up with a line of communication that works for them. 

3. The amount of detail and quality of your supporting documentation

A common reason for a large number of insurance claim denials is the lack of necessary details in the clinical notes. Insurance adjudicators notice very quickly when clinical notes and documentation aren’t sufficient enough to show why the procedure was necessary. 

The absence of detail allows more opportunities for denials. When your dental billing service keeps going back to your team for more detailed clinical notes, this increases the time it takes to resubmit the insurance claim – but it gets you paid. 

So, we’ll share the advice we share with every dental professional, whether you’re choosing to outsource your billing or not: Always include as much detail as possible in your clinical notes or documentation. This speeds up processing for the insurance claim and can also protect your office should any questions come up.  

Thorough clinical notes include all of the patient’s personal information (name, birthday, insurance ID number, address), and their clinical dental information such as x-rays, intraoral photos, and detailed notes and narratives.

This will help your billing process move along more efficiently because all of the facts needed to support your claim for reimbursement will already be included in the documentation. It will help the biller have all of the information they need to submit the claim you’ve created, without badgering you about missing details, or having to rework them to appeal denials or answer additional information requests from insurance companies.

Ready to work successfully with a dental billing company?

Hiring a dental claims service can help you not only clean up and streamline your dental billing process, but also collect more from insurance companies. By understanding the factors that can affect this process, you can know what to avoid that will give you negative results. 

This can also ensure you have a healthy, transparent partnership with the dental billing company you choose. 

Easy insurance income isn’t a pipe dream — it’s your reality when you work with Dental ClaimSupport. To learn more about how to work successfully with a dental billing company like DCS, read our article “3 ways to your practice can work successfully with a dental billing company.”