So you have experienced outsourcing insurance billing and with everything now cleaned up, you’ve decided to do this in-house going forward. Maybe you simply prefer to switch back to in-house billing for other reasons that matter to you. Either way, you’re going to need a success plan to maintain cost-effective insurance billing.
As an outsourced dental billing company ourselves, we understand that sometimes even great relationships will end. When it comes to outsourcing really any service, you have to find what works best for your specific dental practice.
In this article, you will walk away with 3 ways to continue your insurance billing success at your dental practice, even after you let go of your outsourced insurance billing service. From the importance of having a plan for the billing responsibilities to investing in dental billing education for your team, you can make this change confidently knowing you have the right tools.
1. Have a plan for your insurance billing responsibilities
Since you are letting go of your dental billing company, you need to have a plan to ensure your team has the knowledge and skills to do just as good a job with your insurance billing.
Your remote biller was handling a huge chunk of your revenue, and it’s important that someone immediately takes it over, continuing to submit claims in a timely manner, work to appeal denied claims, and regularly work the aging report.
Ensure your new team member has the needed experience with insurance billing
This is arguably the most important step you need to take before you let go of your outsourced biller. If there are multiple people working on your insurance billing just to “get it done” and it’s unclear who is accountable for the process, this lack of supervision over your process will lead to mistakes and longer reimbursement times.
Your insurance billing cannot sit on the back burner until you find someone. Hiring someone to handle your insurance billing who is experienced and not wearing too many hats needs to be planned out ahead of letting go of your outsourced biller.
An important consideration: Remember why you outsourced your dental billing in the first place. Outstanding claims are a symptom of a process that didn’t work.
Figuring out how to process claims and keep your aging report low can be tricky, but it’s crucial to hire someone who knows what they’re doing when it comes to your insurance billing.
It shouldn’t be passed off to your office manager, or someone with other responsibilities at your practice. It’s a full-time job that requires a lot of time and attention to detail, in order to be successful.
Whoever you hand this responsibility to needs to be accurate when it comes to claim submission and appeals, have good time management skills, and have a team-player mentality in order to make sure the practice is profitable.
Sometimes, when reading someone’s resume - it’s not enough to read that they can do the job. It’s also a good idea to assess their insurance billing skills in some way to verify that they know what they are doing. That way, you know you’re getting a high-quality biller to take care of your insurance claims.
2. Keep your outsourced dental billing company on to help with the transition
We can’t speak for other dental billing companies, but at Dental ClaimSupport, if you’re considering letting us go, you can have a conversation with your point of contact about the transitional period.
During this transitional period, you’ll be either looking for a biller to replace us or in need of help when it comes to training and overseeing your new biller. Assisting with the transition process is something we can plan together and do for you.
Training, tracking numbers, and overseeing the new biller is time-consuming
Keeping up-to-date about dental billing is in itself is another job. If you don’t have someone who can take the time to train your new biller on the software, processes, and details that come with insurance billing, you need to keep the billing company on to help with this.
They can also help evaluate whether or not your new biller is going to maintain and improve your collections percentage. If you leave access to your software, the outsourced billing company can track numbers and the performance of their replacement.
This way, if you need to find a different biller or continue outsourcing your insurance billing, the billing company is still keeping track of everything.
The goal is to set your dental office up for success during this transition and make sure all of the steps of the insurance billing process are covered by someone who can make your dental practice productive and profitable.
3. Consider investing in dental billing education
If you are unable to hire an experienced insurance coordinator and must pass your insurance billing to a team member with little insurance experience, we strongly recommend investing in their education.
Because this part of your billing process is so important, it’s worth spending the time and money to level up your biller, making them an expert on getting your insurance claims paid.
There are rules, regulations, and codes to constantly stay up to date with when dealing with insurance billing, so it’s important to have tools that grant access to this knowledge, in order to be a profitable dental practice.
Accurate knowledge can transform your insurance claims process from an overhead cost into an income generator for your dental practice.
To prevent claim denials and payment delays, do research on ways to educate your dental team to handle insurance billing
There are no college courses on dental insurance billing, but there are still a lot of resources out there for your team. You can find online courses, books, and consultants to help educate your team on the best practices of insurance billing so that you don’t miss out on valuable income.
With or without a dental billing company - continuing education is always a good idea for your dental team. We continuously educate our billers as well.
Insurance coverage guidelines change all the time! Your team needs to adjust to these changes and file claims accordingly. Also, the ADA updates codes every year. Sometimes codes are added or deleted. Sometimes code nomenclature is changed to further specify the correct use of the code.
Your team needs to be up to date with these changes to avoid claims from being processed incorrectly or denied outright.
Continue your dental practice’s success after making this big change
You may decide to try managing your claims in-house, even after successfully outsourcing your insurance billing. And you’ve got to do what’s best for your dental practice. It’s important to have a plan in place for this change so that you can continue being successful, and maintain control over your income.
We do suggest you have a Plan B: If you find your revenue gets bogged down by endless insurance no-pay tactics, restoring your outsourcing relationship is an option. Outsourcing your dental billing is still a valid strategy to control the chaos insurance billing can cause for your practice.
Insurance companies make it more difficult every day to get claims paid, and you shouldn’t have to continuously worry if or when you’ll be paid that money. You can have a successful, profitable practice if you have a strategy in place to keep educated and experienced billers on your side with access to tools to continuously learn about insurance.
Dental ClaimSupport offers a lot of resources for those hoping to dive deeper into their dental billing education. Even if you do not wish to use our billing services, you can still join our Dental Claims Academy, purchase our books, or even explore our Learning Center.
To learn more about how to run a successful dental practice, read our article, “5 reports necessary for running a successful dental practice.”
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