You’re a dentist who specializes in something such as pediatric dentistry, prosthodontics, periodontics, or endodontics. Because your services are different from general dentists’, you may think you can’t benefit from outsourcing your dental insurance billing like your general dentist colleagues.
A substantial amount of the work you produce is filed to insurance, which means you have claims waiting to be paid. You’d like to put this revenue stream on autopilot so you can more fully focus on your patients. That’s when having a team of claims experts can smooth your path.
No matter your specialty, your practice needs to streamline the insurance collections process, because spending time getting claims paid should not take time and energy away from your patients or practice.
Since its inception, Dental ClaimSupport has worked with all the specialties mentioned above. We often find dentists who are under the impression they can’t use our services because they are specialists, not general dentists.
So let me ask you this...
Do you have a billing process? Do you accept dental insurance? If either answer is yes, you can help your patients understand their options, and collect the most revenue when you have a dedicated claims support team serving your practice.
In this article, you will learn how specialized dental practices can benefit from our extensive experience with dental claims. You will then see how our services can help you operate more efficiently no matter your specialty, through outsourcing.
3 ways your dental specialty can benefit from outsourced dental claims support
As we review your specialty, several things happen to ensure you get the right support. Among them:
- Find the right fit: First, we use your information to look for the best fit among our nationwide pool of billing experts. You work with billing experts based on their knowledge and experience with your software and your areas of specialization.
- Ensure the education: Second, we ensure your biller has the latest training in the proper CDT codes that impact reimbursement.
- Do the work: Third, your biller does the work. They do this through proper claims submission, posting and reconciliation of deposits with EFTs, ERAs, and insurance credit cards, and thorough claim research. You know your accounts are accurate and your billing process is streamlined. You can confidently focus on your patients’ care
Dental billing obstacles by dental specialty
We have worked with several types of specialty dental practices. All of them accept insurance and need help facilitating their billing process. It’s a complicated process!
Here are some specific billing challenges that we’ve experienced through the years, by dental specialty:
1. Periodontists
Many periodontists work with medical insurance in addition to dental because there is often an oral-systemic link to gum disease. Because these two processes are separate, it can make things complicated for the person responsible, which can lead to mistakes if they aren’t an expert biller.
2. Endodontists
Endodontists have the most straightforward billing. Although not many codes are used in endo, the billing process is the same, and these high-dollar claims need dedicated focus. Root canal retreats and other endo procedures often end up in the appeals process. Endodontists treat dental trauma and are increasingly finding the need to submit claims to medical insurance.
Having a dedicated team devoted to 100% claims processing allows your endo team the win-win of focusing on patients without the headaches of insurance.
3. Pediatric dentists
Many pediatric dentists see patients with Medicaid-based care. Keeping up with which procedures are and are not covered under Medicaid can be a big challenge, protocol-wise.
Also, what pediatric office doesn’t see tons of kiddos? The more kids you see, the more claims get sent. Pediatric offices are arguably the best fit for outsourcing because of the sheer number of claims being juggled.
4. Oral surgeons
Oral Surgery oftentimes also uses benefits on a medical plan, especially when the surgery is trauma-related. We see certain parts of oral surgery procedures billed incorrectly, such as anesthesia and post-surgery medications. These are areas where an experienced outsourced dental billing company can help avoid missteps and payment delays.
5. Orthodontists
A lot of times, it’s hard for ortho offices to follow up on insurance aging reports in a timely manner because ortho payments are sometimes semi-annually, quarterly, or even monthly. We’ve seen where aging reports aren’t being worked on often enough to get claims paid by insurance. It’s also easy for claims in process for the duration of ortho treatment to be simply forgotten about, and fall through the cracks.
As a result, orthodontists have inflated aging reports and aren’t getting paid in a timely manner. Working the aging report on a regular schedule is a standard service we offer as a dental billing company, so orthodontists could definitely benefit from the higher collection rate that results from the extra help.
All of these different specialties face certain challenges when it comes to their billing process, and these are still challenges a billing company with extensive experience can help with.
How can a dental billing company help you, given your specialty?
If you have a specialized dental practice and you need to get your insurance collections percentage up and your aging report numbers down, you could greatly benefit from working with a dental billing company. If you’re questioning whether or not these services apply to your practice, ask yourself these questions:
- Do you collect money from insurance?
- Does the claims process overwhelm an office manager who needs to take care of additional administrative tasks in the office?
- Are you struggling to create an organized and streamlined billing process at your practice?
If you answered yes to any of these, you are qualified for outsourced dental billing services.
Take the next steps in helping your dental practice bring in more money
Every practice could use help on their insurance billing. It’s complicated and time-consuming, which is why Dental ClaimSupport’s experts take such pride in relieving practices of that task. Being specialized in a specific area of dentistry doesn’t mean your billing process doesn’t need the same type of attention as general dentists.
Learning what it means to work with an outsourced dental billing company (specialty aside) is an important step before researching and choosing a company.
Figure out if outsourced dental billing is for you by reading more on what it takes to be qualified to work with one.
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