So you have one provider or admin in your small dental practice. You wonder if you can benefit from outsourced dental billing. Do you need a certain number of patients? Or a minimum amount in claims you file per month? You might even think, “Sure, my front desk person can handle 10 claims a day!” So what’s the best business decision?
When you’re in the office, your first priority is helping patients. You will not be able to get all the insurance claims paid properly, even if it’s slow at times. And if you multitask between billing and other tasks, then your claims process is going to hold you back.
At Dental ClaimSupport, large and small dental practices benefit from our insurance billing services. Whether you have multiple locations or a small office and a front desk team of one person - outsourcing can be the most profitable choice to improve your insurance claims revenue and your revenue collection process.
This article will share 3 ways even small dental practices benefit when they outsource their insurance claims process.
When you have a proven insurance claims process in place, you will collect more from your insurance claims, no matter the size of your practice.
1. Practices of any size collect more when facing dental insurance companies with expert support
No matter what your dental practice looks like as far as size goes, you’re going to deal with insurance companies.
Even if you’re only submitting 10 insurance claims a day, the process is time-consuming and complex. You’re having to not only create and submit the insurance claim but also track down unpaid claims. This means going through the insurance aging report, line by line, and calling the dental insurance companies.
As we all know, insurance companies will keep billers on hold for hours, or even drop calls. It’s a well-known stall tactic and a huge waste of time, especially since your team has other responsibilities on their plate.
Your team will need extra time to attend to patients and possibly take other steps to grow the practice
We don’t mean to assume every practice wants to be huge - plenty prefer being smaller. But if collections are low, your team will need extra time to tend to patients while also making efforts to bring in new patients.
If your practice is a small startup that does intend to grow, your team will definitely need the extra time spent on marketing to new patients and getting referrals from current patients.
Not to mention, creating an amazing patient experience is crucial to the health of your dental practice.
If you have one person on your front desk team, and they are stuck on hold with an insurance company trying to get a claim paid when a patient walks in - it’s going to force the patient to either wait or for your team member to drop the call. And that claim will spend another day on the aging report.
2. As long as one person is creating claims - your practice can outsource its claims process
Obviously, we cannot speak for every dental billing company. But as long as there is someone creating the insurance claims the dental billing company can most efficiently handle the rest.
Once the claim is created in the dental practice management software, the biller will be able to access it remotely, make sure everything looks accurate, attach the appropriate documentation, and submit it to insurance. They will then spend time doing the following:
- Posting all insurance checks and EFTs
- Working and analyzing insurance aging reports
- Taking proper adjustments
- Primary and Secondary electronic attachments
- Correcting missing patient information
- Deposit detail match and reconciliations
- Appealing denied claims
When your team doesn’t have to worry about the above tasks, the responsibility of just creating the claim seems small in comparison. This is the bare minimum that needs to be done in order to make outsourcing work.
Create the claim as soon as the patient’s treatment is over
Creating a claim is the first step in the process of collecting revenue from insurance. When you are creating a claim, you will go into your dental software and enter the procedure code.
The software is set to indicate whether that code is going to be submitted to the insurance company or not. Let’s assume it is.
All your team would be responsible for is the gathering of the patient information, and insurance information. This is all information you’d obtain when checking the patient in (or ideally, before the day of their appointment during insurance verification).
The dental billing company would then look over that claim for you, attach the necessary documentation based on the procedure code, submit it and see it to the very end - aka when it’s paid by insurance. This will free up time for your administrative team members to work on keeping your schedule full.
3. Your administrative team will learn a lot from the dental billing expert while handling your insurance claims together
If you’re a small practice looking to grow, you should look into a service to handle your insurance claims. These types of services can also train your staff on dental billing. Even if you aren’t looking to grow, this is a great opportunity that many billing companies provide.
And no dental administrative team is too small to learn more.
This can also help your dental team feel empowered in their roles, understanding the billing process from start to finish. They can learn how to create accurate claims efficiently, the ins and outs of CDT procedure codes, Coordination of Benefits (COB), and other hard topics that they need to understand - whether you outsource your dental billing or not.
Your small practice can avoid billing mistakes that lead to legal trouble through training
When it comes to complicated topics with rules such as CDT, COB, dual insurance, and posting payments, there are legal and illegal ways to obtain payments for your work. Even if it’s unintentional, your team could be illegally getting paid for an insurance claim.
Unfortunately, “I didn’t know” about compliance is not going to hold up in a legal review. It’s everyone’s job to know how to do things legally at the dental practice, especially when it comes to billing.
So really, training your team on billing with an outsourced dental billing company can help you avoid legal troubles that could threaten your dental license and reputation.
Training should really be a priority second to your insurance claims, and you can have the best of both worlds when you outsource. This access to knowledge and training is invaluable for small dental practices.
Ready to grow your dental practice’s revenue through outsourcing your insurance claims process?
Even if you aren’t trying to grow in size, you should always be trying to grow your stream of revenue. And that can be done by collecting nearly 100% of your insurance claim payments. It’s what you’ve earned as a practice and if you keep seeing denials, you need to do something about it, no matter your size!
Dental ClaimSupport can work with dental practices of all shapes and sizes and knows how to accommodate administrative teams even if they’re comprised of just one member.
You can learn more about how to grow your income through outsourcing by reading our article, “10 ways to add value to your practice by outsourcing dental billing.”
Related Posts
Dental billing resources