19 Aug 7 Dental Billing Tips Guaranteed to Speed Payment
Plan in advance how you can ensure reliable cash flow
In the dental billing world, after you treat a patient, an entire insurance bureaucracy can stand between you and being reimbursed for your medical claims. Minor details can derail payment. But if your dental practice is to prosper, you need the revenue flow coming in. What’s the best way control your dental billing so you’re at the receiving end of a reliable cash flow?
Let’s discuss seven ways you can get ahead of the curve in dental billing and avoid these obstacles.
What are the dental billing challenges that your practice faces? And how can Medusind help you overcome them?
First and foremost: verify your patient’s dental insurance!
Dental billing starts with the moment a patient calls to make an appointment. When that happens, if they’re a new patient, be sure to get all their insurance information over the phone. When an existing patient calls for an appointment, confirm the fact they have the same insurance coverage and no details have changed.
Then verify their insurance benefits. While you’re verifying their benefits, confirm the estimate of what their out-of-pocket costs will be. Let the patient know the extent of their financial responsibility.
Insurance education for your patient
Your patient may think their dental insurance covers 100% of all the work you’ll ever need to do with them. Unfortunately, no. That’s why it’s your job to educate them on their insurance benefits and let them know what their out-of-pocket expenses will be, so there are zero surprises when the bill arrives.
Before a procedure is delivered, many dental practices ask the patient sign a treatment plan that describes the full fee, estimated insurance, and the patient’s estimated amount due at the time of service. In your treatment plan, you can include payment options, informed consent to treatment, and the signature of the patient, parent, or legal guardian. Scan the document and give the original to the patient.
But what if they’ve reached the maximum for their insurance benefits for the year? The dentist can decide if the work can wait until the benefit year renews.
What if the patient can’t delay treatment until the next benefit year? Then discuss with them alternative payment methods to meet their dental billing needs, including credit cards, monthly auto-debits, and CarecreditⓇ.
How are you processing dental insurance claims?
If you want to be reimbursed in a timely manner for your dental billing, ask yourself: how is my office submitting dental insurance claims? Does your office have a designated insurance billing coordinator? Or does the job go to whoever happens to be free?
It’s a real advantage to assign one person in your office the job of dental billing, so they oversee each claim from creation to submission to payment. This staff member should originate the claim within 24 hours of the finished treatment. Then they should batch the claim and submit it through your clearinghouse.
Is your claim fully documented?
Before you submit your claim, be sure all providers have completed their clinical notes, supportive documentation, x-rays, and images. These should be saved in your patient’s chart in your electronic records.
Your staff should know that any replacement of previous dental treatment must be recorded in the clinical notes. You’ll have to submit this information to the insurance company with the date of the previous placement when you do dental billing. If you replace a missing tooth, ask the patient when the tooth was extracted; it’s necessary information that must be included when you file the claim.
Chop through your insurance aging report
Don’t forget: most insurance companies declare a time limit on when they’ll pay a claim. It’s known as timely filing in the world of dental billing. As a result, it’s imperative that you tackle the oldest claims first, since their timely filing expiration date will come first. That’s why it’s crucial to get control of your insurance aging report. If you miss the timely filing date, you can lose the cash owed you forever.
Here’s how your insurance aging report works. If your claim isn’t paid after you first submit it for dental billing, it’s added to your list of unpaid insurance claims. This is known as your insurance aging report, representing outstanding claims organized according to which insurer the claims were submitted to.
It’s easy to neglect your insurance aging report. It can be tedious and seem like a back-burner task not meriting immediate attention. But the financial health of your dental practice depends on chasing after your unpaid claims.
Whittle away on your the insurance aging report at least every week to get control of your dental billing. Designate an employee to analyze each claim and learn why it was denied or hasn’t been paid. Then they should contact the insurance company to obtain payment and learn why resubmission is necessary.
To guarantee timely filing, work from oldest to newest claims.
Make posting and reconciling your payments a daily habit
Every day, post your payments to your practice management software and reconcile them at the close of the day. Create a daily deposit report that details all the new funds you received. By reconciling at the end of every day, you’ll be able to keep track of payments and strengthen your dental billing process. This will help you identify errors or even possible embezzlement.
Educate your staff on dental insurance billing on an ongoing basis
Dental insurance regulations are constantly updating and changing. That’s why it’s important to invest in continuous training for your dental staff, whether it takes the form of enrolling them in online courses or attending an annual conference. They should be up to date on the latest CDT coding changes and general best billing practices. How can they leverage technology to automate your dental billing process and make billing easier for patients?
Give your staff a break
Here’s another tip: with all your staff’s other responsibilities, it can be very challenging to ask them to keep on top of the latest dental billing techniques along with coding and regulatory changes. Many times, it’s much more cost effective to save on labor costs and outsource your dental billing to a third-party provider like Medusind. This frees up your staff to execute your practice’s primary focus—taking care of patients.
Medusind is considered a national leader in dental billing—and especially in dental insurance verification—and we get results: a 10-15% increase in collections revenue and a 40% reduction in labor costs devoted to billing.
Interested in learning how your dental billing could be better managed? Contact us and let’s see how partnering with Medusind could save your serious money—and boost your checking account.
