The decision to outsource your dental billing typically comes when some preconceived expectations. And when those expectations aren’t met in the way you, as the dentist envisioned, there can be disappointment. And neither you nor the outsourced dental billing company wants that.
That’s why it’s important to know some big changes you can expect from a dental billing company.
As a dental billing company, we always want to have transparency between us and our dental team when it comes to working with Dental ClaimSupport. The dental team should always be informed of what they should expect from us. Setting the expectations helps maintain a healthy and honest working relationship.
In this article, we will share 3 things your dental offices should expect from a dental billing company. Understanding these changes or improvements you can expect will help you not only know if an outsourced dental billing is right for you in a general sense, but it can let you know that you chose the right billing company.
So, let’s get into 3 things you can expect from your outsourced dental billing company.
1. A clean insurance claims process
A huge benefit to outsourcing to expert dental billers is a streamlined insurance claims process, and this is something you should definitely expect from your dental billing company.
Remote dental billers have been around the insurance billing block several times, and they know how to improve processes that will lead to more accurate insurance claim submission, and those claims being paid faster.
When your insurance biller comes in, they’re going to take note of what your current dental billing process is.
- What is your current process for verifying patient benefits?
- How soon after a procedure are you creating insurance claims?
- How often are you posting claim payments?
- How often are you working on your Outstanding Claims/Insurance Aging report?
The outsourced billing team will look at these processes to decide whether or not they are being optimized for higher insurance claims collections.
The outsourced dental biller will share the best dental billing process practices to help you collect more
As your remote dental biller takes over the insurance side of your billing process, they will share some knowledge with you to help improve the entire dental billing process.
Every part of the practice process - from the first call with the patient to the insurance claim payment being posted, and everything in between - each part affects the other.
So, although the outsourced biller is mainly handling insurance billing, they will need your team’s help getting the entire process on a streamlined track. This means they need to be gathering accurate patient insurance information so that when the dental biller submits your claims, they’ll see fewer requests for information and have fewer denials to appeal.
This will lead to your practice getting the money it has earned faster!
Through their insurance billing skills and overall knowledge of the dental billing process, your entire billing process is going to be streamlined and in a sense, “cleaned up.” This will lead to everyone on the team understanding their role in the process, little to no hold-ups when it comes to insurance verification or patient billing, and claims are submitted accurately and efficiently.
2. A go-to person on all things insurance billing
As your dental billing process gets cleaned up, your dental team is going to learn a lot from the expert dental biller.
Something you should expect from outsourced dental billing is having a go-to person that you can easily communicate with to improve your insurance claims collections. This outsourced remote biller is like an extension of your in-house team and is happy to answer any questions your team may have about dental insurance.
Dental insurance can be pretty confusing, especially when it comes to write-offs, procedure codes, and Coordination of Benefits. Your team should feel empowered to reach out to their biller with questions about these topics in order to feel more confident when they come up.
The outsourced dental biller has access to other expert billers creating a large pool of insurance knowledge
One of the biggest advantages of outsourcing your dental billing is the expertise and knowledge your dental team will have access to.
Yes, you’ll have an expert dental biller (or possibly multiple depending on the size of your practice), but they also have their own colleagues they can go to with anything about the niche topic of dental insurance.
This wealth of knowledge can give your dental team an edge that other dental practices lack. And through this knowledge, your dental team will feel far more confident going about their work and this is something even patients will notice.
So - you can expect to learn a lot from your remote biller about all things dental billing.
3. Improved insurance collection numbers
Improved financial reports will be a result of a streamlined, clean dental billing process. This is something you can certainly expect from your outsourced dental billing company. They will likely send you daily emails to show you their progress but you can also access them yourself in your practice management software.
Some dental billing companies send a financial report every day.
For example, at Dental ClaimSupport, our billers send Daily Insurance Deposit Report to reconcile the entire day’s insurance earnings. This report gives you a snapshot of what payments were posted that day. This, of course, isn’t a big picture report but it is something you can track to see that things are moving in the right direction.
Give enough time for your dental practice’s numbers to improve
You can expect improved financial report numbers when you sign on with a dental billing company.
Here’s the catch - these numbers aren’t going to improve right away. It will likely take a few months before you will see your collections begin to increase and your insurance aging report decrease.
This is truly the best way to measure the success of the company you hired as well, and if the numbers haven’t improved over the past few months, you can evaluate whether or not to let the billing company go.
Some great goals to set are:
- Collecting at least 98% or more of your net production each month.
- To have your insurance claims that are over 30 days NOT exceed 10% of the total outstanding insurance claims.
With a clean and efficient claims process and the help of your remote biller, you should expect to hit your goals!
Curious to learn more about the expectations vs reality of working with a dental billing company?
The big changes at your dental practice that you can expect are:
- An efficient clean claims process
- A new extension to your team as a go-to dental insurance billing expert
- Improved insurance collections and reporting
Knowing that this is the baseline of what to expect from your dental billing company sets the foundation for a great working relationship.
Dental ClaimSupport always makes it a point to lay out the expectations we have for dental teams, and we always want to know the practice’s expectations as well.
When either party has a false expectation of the other, it can lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings that can halt productivity. That’s why it’s important to understand this in the beginning stages so that everyone is set up for financial success.
To learn more about the expectations vs reality of working with a dental billing company, visit our Learning Center
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