The relationship between a dental office manager & insurance biller: 3 facts

Like most workplaces, the relationships between team members of a dental office play a huge role in how the office operates. Specifically, the office manager’s relationship with everyone can make a huge impact on how the dental practice is run. They oversee every aspect of operations, and how tasks are executed. 

This hierarchy can get a little dicey when an outsourced insurance biller is thrown into the mix. Your dental office has just hired a remote biller to handle insurance billing, and the office manager is thrown off by adding a mystery member to the team. This “risk” shouldn’t hold you back from exploring the option of working with a remote biller.

We sometimes see office managers show the same hesitancy when dental offices first sign on with us at Dental ClaimSupport. And we understand! It’s a big change, and suddenly there is a new member of your dental team who the office manager can’t really “oversee.”

This can cause some distress for office managers who are used to being in control of every aspect of the office, including insurance billing. 

In this article, we will explain the ideal relationship between a dental office manager and a remote, outsourced insurance biller. This relationship is extremely important because when it thrives, your dental practice’s stream of revenue also will. 

When these two people don’t see eye to eye, it can defeat the purpose of hiring an outsourced dental billing company, which was hired to help your practice bring in more money.

That’s why we’re going to address a few common issues we see when it comes to this relationship, and paint the picture of how this working relationship should look. 

1. The outsourced biller does not replace the dental office manager

Let’s start with the biggest fear we see with dental offices: Does the remote biller replace the office manager?

Your office manager isn’t going to lose their job unless they give you a reason to fire them. And a remote biller is there to help the office manager. This is the perspective that the office manager needs to have when a biller is hired. 

This person is going to let the office manager focus on other tasks around the office, instead of being worried about a growing aging report and a low insurance collections percentage.

The outsourced dental biller and office manager will work together to increase the practice’s revenue

As we said, the biller is going to relieve the office manager of the strain that comes with insurance billing. The biller will cover the following tasks: 

• Submit claims through your clearinghouse 
• Follow up and address any issues from the clearinghouse  
• Resolve problem claims that didn't pay 
• Overturn denials and downgrades with necessary appeals 
• Work your aging report
• Post your insurance payments
• Reconcile your insurance payments

Through expertly performing these tasks, your office manager won’t need to stress about making sure they are done by whoever can make the time on the administrative team.

These responsibilities may have even fallen to your office manager at some point. But now, they are handled by someone who isn’t also trying to balance running a dental office.

Through this expert focus, your office is going to bring in more money because someone is dedicated to getting your claims paid by insurance. 

Your office manager can help the outsourced biller by making sure the rest of the office is run efficiently. This means insurance verification is a smooth and consistent process, claims are being created quickly and accurately, and anything else that may affect billing is being communicated to the remote biller. 

Combined, the office manager and outsourced biller ideally should make an all-star team that brings your dental practice more money and more efficient processes.

2. The outsourced biller is going to help your office manager perfect processes throughout the office

Most outsourced billers have other coworkers, AKA other remote billers, with whom they can share strategies and knowledge when it comes to insurance billing. 

But because of also spending so much time working with dental offices, and seeing what works and what doesn’t work in the billing process, our billers can share a lot of advice and tips when it comes to any best practices. 

This is when the office manager can maybe feel a bit defensive, but it’s important that they retain the mindset of improving the dental office in order to be more productive. Because the remote biller is an objective, outside perspective looking at the dental practice, they can see where some current processes fall short and could be reworked. 

For example, a remote biller is going to know pretty quickly if a dental office doesn’t have a streamlined process for insurance verification. We’ll get into that next.

The outsourced biller will communicate to your office manager where consistent mistakes are being made

You know when people say, “it’s the way it’s always been done” when they don’t want to change things? Well, like our ever-evolving world, that just doesn’t really cut it as an explanation. 

If a process, like how you do insurance verification is causing consistent mistakes on insurance claims, which leads to denials - it’s time to update that process.

When the remote biller submits claims and keeps seeing denials for reasons like patient information errors, they will know that the insurance verification process needs to be addressed.  

The remote biller will have a conversation with your office manager, and instead of being critical and reactive, they will be proactive in offering solutions to inefficient processes. 

The two can then work together to create a process that works specifically for your dental office. 

3. The state of the relationship between the dental office manager and biller is mutual 

Hey, it’s not all up to the open-mindedness of the office manager to create a healthy relationship with the dental biller. It takes two! The outsourced biller should be communicative, a hard worker and have good time management. 

You should consistently evaluate your remote biller to make sure you are getting the services you pay for. Because your insurance billing is such a huge part of your revenue, it’s important the person in place handling this responsibility is held to high standards. 

Also - sometimes the remote biller assigned to your office just simply does not gel with your office manager or team in general. For most billing companies, you can speak to someone about trying a new biller if this is the case. 

The working relationship between the office manager and remote biller can directly affect how much money the practice brings in, so it’s important that both parties work hard to cultivate it.

Work successfully with an outsourced biller by getting your office manager on board

The services you count on from an outsourced dental billing company are made more challenging if your office manager isn’t on board. There needs to be open communication between both parties, and collaborative teamwork. 

Dental ClaimSupport prioritizes relationships and communication amongst the dental offices we work with and also our own internal teams. Creating and nurturing healthy working relationships is one of our main goals as a company. Working towards a common goal can help your business be successful.

Getting your dental team on board to work with a billing company can be challenging, but the rewards you can reap will be worth it. Work hard to communicate the importance of your office manager’s role in this transitional time, and with the right mindset, they will be ready to learn and evolve. 

To continue learning how your team can work successfully with a dental billing company, dive into our Learning Center.