Working the insurance aging report is an important and time-consuming responsibility in dental billing. How does an insurance aging report work? Many billers struggle with knowing when to work the aging report, and how to fix problems with dental claims. It’s important to get this right because your income depends on it.
Getting claims reimbursed by insurance can result in (on average) about 50% of your dental practice’s overall income.
As an outsourced dental billing company, our billers at Dental ClaimSupport specialize in working insurance aging reports, we even have courses on best practices. Our advice to in-house billers is to set aside time every week to sit down and go through the insurance aging report. There are, of course, common mistakes we see often.
In this article, you will learn about 3 of the most common mistakes we see billers make when working insurance aging reports. By knowing these mistakes, you’ll also learn the correct way to work these claims in order to maintain cash flow into your dental practice.
Mistake #1: Prioritizing high dollar claims over aged claims
Many dental billers will go to work their aging report, see a high dollar claim that will put a lot into their practice’s bank account if it’s reimbursed, and prioritize it.
As tempting as this is, it’s not how you should look at an insurance aging report.
The insurance aging report is a list of aged claims. What’s considered “aged” in the dental billing world are claims that have been submitted yet not paid, and how “old” they are. Get it, aged? The longer these aged claims spend on the aging report, the less likely they are to be paid.
Sure, you could spend hours working to get one high-dollar claim paid, but you could have also spent all the time trying to appeal claims that were denied months ago.
Think of it as a rebate voucher. You have a letter promising you hundreds of dollars if you file a proof of purchase. All you have to do is find your document, mail it in, and your check will come. You don’t want the voucher to expire before you finally decide to do something about it.
Ideally, you would work on the claims that have aged the most first so they don't get so old you can no longer collect on them.
Instead, work backward on your aging report, starting with the oldest claims
Claims can be denied for the simple fact of timely filing. There is a certain window of time with each insurance company that a claim can be sent for reimbursement (usually 180-365 days depending on the policy). There is also a window of time between when you were notified of the claim denial and when they will still reimburse it.
Most practice management software, such as Dentrix, OpenDental, and Eaglesoft, have a similar setup for the insurance aging report. The report lists all open claims by insurance carriers. It also sorts the claims by age, hence the name “aging” report.
This makes it easy to see which claims should be your priority. You need to get your oldest claims resolved first because their window of being paid is smaller and closer to ending.
Mistake #2: Not organizing claims by the insurance company to work through them faster
When working the insurance aging report, you need to be efficient. Like we said above, time is money.
During this process, we see dental teams stick to line-by-line, sometimes calling one insurance company multiple times a day for several different claims.
The good news is, you can work through multiple claims at once with one insurance company!
Check out this article to learn more about how to decrease your insurance aging report.
Instead, group claims on the aging report by insurance company
Work smarter. A good strategy we always recommend to offices and to our own billers when working aging reports, is to inquire about groups of claims under the same insurance company.
This means when you’re working an aged claim, if you have any other claims under that insurance company, ask about those too while you have the insurance representative on the line.
We’ve all been on hold right? Well, while on hold, you can also work other claims within that insurance company’s web portal or a different insurance company web portal to knock out more claims and be as efficient as possible. That’s working smarter!
Once you’ve got a representative on the line, you’ll then ask all of your burning questions on each claim: Has the claim been paid yet? If not, why not? What is needed to get the claim paid?
Grouping insurance claims by the insurance company can save you a ton of time when working the aging report.
Mistake #3: Spending time on insurance claims before they age 30 days
If this mistake sounds similar to #1, it’s because all of these mistakes and solutions depend on one another to have an ideal over 30-day insurance aging report under 10%.
Some insurance coordinators will submit insurance claims, and fixate on the claims they have most recently sent, wanting them to be reimbursed ASAP.
Hey, it’s a normal mindset to have! But insurance companies love to take their sweet time paying your dental practice.
Dental plans follow established prompt payment laws with most states. Depending on the type of plan, they legally have anywhere from 30-45 days to process a claim.
In other words, there’s no point in researching a claim that’s 14 days old, as you’ll probably find out the claim is in process and set to pay. Don’t waste your time here. Your time could have been focused on a claim over 30 days needing actual attention and research.
Instead, wait until enough processing time has passed before you try to follow up on a claim
If a patient was seen today and a claim was created and sent, that claim is 0 days old.
If the same claim has not been processed/paid in 30 days, meaning you don’t have a deposit in your bank account or a check in your hand, then that claim has aged 30 days and needs to be researched.
Instead of fixating on newly filed claims, work on the ones that are 30+ days old, and once the more recent claims have reached that age, you can begin focusing on those when working your aging report.
Remember, you want to sort of work “backwards” on your aging report, starting with the oldest claims.
Learn to decrease your aging report to collect more from insurance claims
Insurance billing can sometimes feel like a constant uphill battle, especially when it comes to chasing down insurance claims. Working the aging report is, unfortunately, a continuous task that will always be a part of the billing process.
Don’t let insurance companies dictate how much money you bring in. Avoid these mistakes when working your aging report to get paid what your practice has earned.
Dental ClaimSupport’s billers spend much of their time in dental practices’ software taking care of aging reports for them. This is an option for you if your team does not have the time to dedicate to their aged claims.
To learn more about how to decrease your aging report in order to have less of a daily workload, and fewer outstanding insurance claims, visit our Learning Center.
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