You know that feeling when you’re making a decision, and you won’t feel confident in it until you get a second opinion? That’s usually because that second opinion is going to offer an outsider’s perspective on whatever you are trying to decide. Remote assistance for your dental practice is precisely what a good dental billing company offers.
As a dentist, you’re interested in outsourcing your insurance billing because you think it will help your practice make more money, but you’re also concerned with how your practice is running as a whole. You have a feeling some things are slipping through the cracks. The aging report might be higher than you think, outstanding patient bills are piling up… You want these cracks mended.
A dental billing company ourselves, Dental ClaimSupport can confirm that remote billers are going to see how your practice runs when they sign on to work with your team. They might not be there in the office, but over the years our billers have seen dental teams improve their processes and systems through our billers’ simple observations and applied suggestions.
These processes could range from how they handle insurance verification, patient billing, or creating claims.
In this article, you will learn the benefits of having an objective point of view, such as a billing company, work with your office. This point of view will notice small missteps and offer solutions to make not only the lives of your dental team easier but also the lives of the remote billers.
When we say “make lives easier,” what we mean is saving both parties from headaches, wasted time, and wasted money.
These are three ways your outsourced billing team can help things run better for you and your dental team.
1. Notice how your team handles insurance verification
Insurance verification is one of the first steps in the dental billing process. In some ways, it lays the foundation for how the rest of this patient’s bill life cycle is going to go. Insurance verification needs to be performed right after you are off the phone with that patient after you’ve received their insurance information and put them on your calendar for an appointment.
Insurance verification can affect not only your claims being paid but also your patient’s experience
It’s easy for our billing teams to notice when an office is not properly performing insurance verification because they will notice claims repeatedly being denied due to inaccurate information, or inactive benefits.
When you verify patient benefits, you’re making sure you have all of the information needed to file an insurance claim. This includes the name of their insurance provider, member ID number, name of employer, group ID number, and telephone number of insurance provider.
Having all of this information will give your team the ability to either look at their full breakdown of benefits in their insurance portal or have the number to call insurance and have a representative break it down for you over the phone. Knowing the patient’s insurance benefits will help you understand their plan and how it will affect their payment.
If all of this information is accurate, their benefits are active and not maxed out, you’re good to proceed with the procedure, the patient bill, and the insurance claim.
You will also be able to communicate to the patient what kind of expense they can expect from the procedure, and you won’t have to chase them down over the phone about an outstanding bill because you charged them the correct out-of-pocket amount in person. This creates a frustrating experience for the patient if you get that amount wrong.
If there are outstanding patient bills in the dental software and claims are being denied because of inaccurate information, the remote biller is going to know insurance verification isn’t being handled properly. They will be able to give some helpful advice to your administrative team that will help streamline the billing process.
2. Improve the accuracy of aging reports and insurance collections reports
The remote billers you hire will be able to check out the reports within your dental software. They will be able to deliver to you accurate reports of how your collections and aging report are performing.
Insurance aging report growing? Ask these 3 questions (Learning Center article).
A remote biller can check the numbers within your dental software objectively to make sure they are accurate
When only one person is running these reports and delivering the results, it’s easy for inaccuracies to happen. Many dental office leaders outsource because of errors and inaccuracies on claims and patient records. A good remote team helps improve these numbers specifically by bringing fresh knowledge and sharp focus to the insurance side of dental billing.
Having a second pair of eyes on your work is especially helpful when it comes to running reports on your work. Take this article you’re reading, for example. I am the Content Manager and my job is to write these articles for you.
However, I always have at least one other set of eyes read my drafts to check for mistakes, even if they’re small. Sometimes when you’re too close to a project, you can’t see it objectively and notice where it needs improvements.
You’d be surprised how easy it is to add an extra zero or leave a typo uncorrected when someone’s busy, tired, and working all on their own.
This is why a remote billing team is useful in making sure your aging reports and insurance collection reports are not only improved but also accurate and as current as they can be.
Let’s be honest: both the remote biller and your dental team want your practice to make more money
As you probably know, dental billing companies set their fees based on a percentage of your practice’s revenue. Remote billers also get paid based on the amount of insurance payment they post. That’s a powerful incentive to collect every penny, that’s missing from the traditional salary structure in most dental offices.
Because of this incentive, your remote billers are going to make sure your practice is bringing in as much money as it can. They directly benefit from it!
So the billers are going to be analyzing your reports, looking for ways to improve your billing system, including giving tips for what your team can do on their end to make the process more efficient.
3. Catch anything sketchy happening within your billing system
Warning: we’re going to get a little negative for a second.
We have seen dental team members commit illegal acts at the office regarding the practice’s revenue. This could range from embezzlement to outright theft of funds from dental practice.
We’ve seen some people take small amounts from the bank account and adjust the software numbers so that no one notices, and we’ve seen some take for their own personal use the virtual credit cards sent to offices from insurance.
Because remote billers also work using your dental software, checking numbers and running reports, they are going to notice anything off course. They reconcile the numbers at the end of every day that they work on your office's claims, so they know how every balance should add up. If something looks wrong, they will tell you, the dentist immediately.
Unfortunately, this happens more often than you would think. This is why it’s a huge benefit to have an outside perspective running your numbers making sure everything looks clean and accurate. It could prevent anyone from stealing from you or committing fraud.
Ready to feel at ease with a billing company offering an objective point of view of your practice?
Everyone could benefit from a little help from their friends. As a dentist, you’re an expert at helping people care for their dental health. You fix everything from cavities to bone loss because that’s your amazing skill set.
It’s the same way with financial health. If something was hurting your business health, you’d want an expert to help you do something about it, wouldn’t you? That’s the unique value of working with an expert dental billing company.
Dental ClaimSupport billers are there to help your dental practice run better, collect more money, and become a place to thrive in your work. And the billers can offer logical solutions to billing problems because of their expertise.
Learn more about what our billers notice at practices, and how they are trained to perfect your billing system by reading our article, “How does Dental ClaimSupport educate their billers?”
Related Posts
Dental billing resources