To manage a profitable dental office, it is not enough to provide excellent dental treatment. Dental practices require a lot of skills and experience to succeed. One of the most significant components of the profession is the dental billing process. Increasingly complex dental insurance codes and claims necessitate expertise in dental billing. Apart from dentistry and dental hygiene procedures, most of the tasks mentioned above can be outsourced. Therefore, you may be wondering: Why should I automate dental insurance verification?
Outsourcing revenue cycle management in dental practices eases the burden on in-house teams and practice owners by reducing unnecessary stress and employee burnout. Some services that are commonly outsourced are payroll and accounting, lab work, equipment maintenance, IT, and HR management and employment agreements. Dental practices participate with dental insurance in about 65% of cases. 50.2% of American adults have dental insurance, which makes dental billing a vital part of revenue cycle management for dental practices. Most dental practices lose 9% of their collectible revenue each year because of missed billing processes. Outsourcing dental billing to experts can help you avoid this problem.
The Importance of Dental Billing
Essentially, dental billing consists of submitting the completed treatment to the insurance company for compensation depending on the patient's benefit plan. The claim is then examined for CDT codes before being paid by the insurance company. However, there are several procedures involved, and if even one of them is overlooked, reimbursement from the insurance provider may be delayed or refused completely. This is something that dental billing professionals can assist you with.
A major dental billing step is the verification of claim information. This includes all subscriber data as well as insurance information and CDT codes. Many insurance delays and denials in payment result from incorrect or missing claim information.
On an average day in a dental office, dental administrators face many different tasks including treatment planning, scheduling, cross-training, marketing, and much more. Because of delayed dental billing processes, many dental offices do not completely collect what they are entitled on insurance claims. When you outsource your dental billing operations to a reputable company, you have access to dental billing professionals who are committed to assisting you in receiving 100 percent of what you are entitled from insurance companies for services given.
Dental billing processes are too convoluted for admin teams to figure out without spending a lot of extra time. A dental administrator spends a lot of time on the phone with insurance companies, with average hold times of 51 minutes per claim. The time that they save by outsourcing these dental billing processes that can be time-consuming can be used to schedule patients, connect with patients, set goals, and increase treatment plan acceptance.