Healthy flow of revenue is the backbone of every healthcare practice. Same is the case with Dental billing. However, a lot of Dental practices deal with bottlenecks that are responsible for reducing efficiency and hinders the growth of the practice.
The biggest threat to any dental practice’s success is the lack of profits or cash flow. Healthcare providers often try to fill the loopholes but there are chances that something or the other might get missed.
Now is the time to think about how you can increase efficiency and eliminate bottlenecks in the way of your process. This blog highlights the issues that might be affecting your efficiency as a dental provider.
Effective Coordination with Patients
Effective dental billing starts the moment a patient calls to make an appointment. If it is a new patient, make sure you get all their insurance information over the phone. If it is an existing patient, make sure that they have the same insurance as before to avoid any discrepancies.
After verifying the insurance benefits and confirm the estimate of what their out-of-pockets costs will be. Tell the patient then and there if they have some responsibility for payments.
Insurance Education for Your Patient
The patient might think that their insurance covers all the treatments and services provided to them. However, that is not always the case. The healthcare provider must educate the patient about their insurance benefits so that they can also understand that they have some payment responsibility.
If a procedure is not covered by insurance inform your patient about it so that there are no surprise payments at the end. Before delivering such procedures, the dental practice asks the patient to select a treatment plan that describes the full fee, estimated insurance cover, and out of pocket expense of the patient.
Practitioners can include payment options, informed consent to treatment and the signature of the patient, parent or the legal guardian. Scan the document and give a copy to the patient.
Sometimes patients cross the maximum benefits of their insurance. Then the dentist can decide if it can wait until next year or if the insurance is renewed. If the patient can’t delay the treatment, then the providers discuss alternative payment methods to meet their requirements. The payment plans can include credit cards, monthly auto debits, and CareCredit.
Processing Dental Insurance Claims
Getting reimbursed in a timely manner is what all healthcare practitioners want. If you want to reach the optimum revenue, ask yourself how my practice is submitting insurance claims? Do you have a dedicated insurance billing coordinator or does the job go to any staff available.
These questions will give you a reality check about your process. Having a dedicated person for the job of dental billing is a real advantage. The expert can oversee each claim from creation to submission to payment. The individual should create the claim within 24 hours of the treatment. Then they must create a batch of the claims and submit it to the clearinghouse.
Extensive Documentation of Claims
Before submitting a claim make sure that all the documentation is done accurately. All the providers must have completed their clinical notes, supportive documentation, X-Rays and images, this should be updated on your patient's chart in the electronic records.
Your staff must understand that any replacement of previous dental treatment must be recorded in the clinical documentation. This information must be submitted to the insurance company with the date of previous placement while doing dental billing.
Every single detail, for instance; if you are replacing a missing tooth, must be included in the claim while filing it for reimbursement.
Understand the Insurance Aging Report
Most of the insurance companies declare a time limit about when they will pay the claim amount. This is known as timely filing in the world of medical billing. this raises the importance of handling the oldest claims first as their timely filing expiration date will come first.
If you miss the timely filing date, you might lose the reimbursement forever.
Let's understand how your insurance aging report works. If a claim isn’t paid after first submission, it is added to the list of unpaid insurance claims. This is known as the insurance aging report. It signifies the pending claims in an organized manner.
Neglecting the insurance aging report is very easy given its tedious process. It does not require immediate attention, but it has the power to significantly disturb your organization’s revenue.
You must take a look at the aging report at least once a week to get a hold of it. You can also designate this duty to an employee who will check each claim and determine the reason for denial. They can also take it up to the insurance company and resubmit the claim with required rectifications.
Posting And Reconciliation Should Be a Daily Habit
Develop a habit of posting your payments to your practice management system daily and reconcile them at the end of the day. Create a daily deposit report that documents all the funds you received. This way you will be able to keep track of payments and strengthen your dental billing process. This also helps you identify errors and possible embezzlement.
Educate Your Staff About Dental Billing Insurance Regularly
Dental Insurance Regulations keep on changing constantly. That is why it is important to invest in regular training for your dental staff. Enroll them for a short session every day or at least once a week to check if they understand these regulations.
The staff must know about the latest CDT coding changes and general billing practices. Make them understand how they can handle the administrative tasks and make the process easy for patients.
Bonus Tip: Give Your Staff a Break
Keeping up with all the CDT codes and their updates is difficult for your staff as well. Keeping them on top of the latest dental billing techniques and regulatory changes is difficult. You can rotate the duties so that all the handle equal responsibilities and get enough rest.
Outsourcing it to professional medical billers is also a great way to give your staff some rest.
How Outsourcing Helps?
Outsourcing medical billing to professionals like Eminence RCM is a great way to release all the stress of documentation from your staff.
Eminence RCM is a medical billing company that helps a lot of organizations as well as small practices in managing their medical billing. Their team of professionals are well-versed in all the elements of medical billing and updates about all the regulatory changes. This takes off a huge responsibility of documentation from your shoulders and gives you time to focus more on improving patient care.
Eminence RCM is making good quality patient care accessible to everyone by providing seamless medical billing easy, giving providers time to focus on patient care.
.png)