Using a Dental Billing Company: The Shortcut to a Sustainable Dental Business

Nearly 90 percent of children and 70 percent of adults are covered by dental insurance, and with insurance billing, comes the need to learn hundreds of Dental and Medical billing codes that are updated annually. Each claim must also comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and meet a specific timeline. 

Of those patients that pay out of pocket, two in three do not pay their bill, resulting in lost revenue and creating the need for costly collection efforts that may not work.

Dental billing in the 21st century is not a simple process—that’s why dental practices need a 21st-century solution. A Dental Billing Company is that solution. 

What Can a Dental Billing Company Do for Your Practice?

Outsourcing your billing reduces errors and overhead, while simultaneously streamlining the collection process. You’ll see more revenue, spend less to achieve it, and receive your funds faster. Let’s take a closer look. 

Clean Claims

One of the biggest advantages of dental billing outsourcing is the assurance of clean insurance claims. A “clean” claim is one that is properly coded, contains the necessary supporting documentation, and is timely. In other words, it’s a claim that will not be rejected for missing documentation or information, resulting in a prompt payment to the office.

According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), upwards of 30 percent of insurance claims are denied, and 60 percent of those claims are never paid in full. Billing errors can slow down your payment system and increase your overhead in paying for billing that should have been completed correctly the first round, or at worse, result in lost revenue to the practice and to you as the Provider.. 

Lower Overhead

Training qualified dental billers is expensive when completed.  However, many practices do not invest into their front office’s training, leaving many billers to make mistakes or quote incorrect policy and guidelines of the plan due to being “self-taught”.  Mistakes add to your employee overhead in the minutes and hours it takes a biller to correct their mistakes or trace a claim, let alone loss revenue. Keeping up with annual coding and regulation changes requires ongoing specialized training. That alone can reduce your overhead costs, but dental billing professionals also handle other aspects of the billing process, such as obtaining pre-authorizations for procedures, fielding patient billing inquiries, and negotiating with insurance companies, reducing your need for additional support staff. 

Shorter Billing Cycles

A Dental Billing Company has the advantage of a singular focus—they are not trying to handle patients while in the process of filing claims. That gives you the advantage of an entire team of dental billing professionals working continuously to ensure your billing cycle runs smoothly without the cost of hiring and training that team. 

Clean claims also play a roll in this department. A properly billed insurance claim can be paid in less than 10 business days, whereas rejections are often left ignored for months on end, leaving a claim that may not be paid at all.  Not receiving insurance compensation in a timely manner as well may be upsetting to your patients and a poor reflection of your business practices.  Many patients find themselves irate when being notified of a remaining balance months later.

Get to Know the Dental Billing Service Features

Now that you understand the advantages of hiring a Dental Billing Company, you are probably wondering what a Dental Billing Company actually does—you might be surprised to learn that it’s much more than just billing.

Here are a few service features that you can look forward to:

• Dental Billing

The core of the service provided by dental billers does revolve around the collection of payment for dental services rendered. That includes filing claims, billing out-of-pocket patients, sending payment reminders, negotiating with insurance claims, requesting pre-authorizations, and working to collect past-due balances, among other tasks.

Effective dental billing also involves proper record keeping and accounting. Dental billing professionals use the latest dental accounting software to ensure that your financials are accurately tracked and easy to process come tax time. 

• Fraud Examination

As a whole, the healthcare sector loses $68 billion to fraud every year. Medical identity theft is a growing problem in the United States as the cost of care increases. That means there’s a real chance that, at some point, you’ll have a patient commit fraud—if you haven’t already. 

A Dental Billing Company will properly vet patient identity and financial information. That includes verifying that the insurance or payment method provided is valid and that the person presenting it is authorized to use it.  

Outside of patient-initiated fraud, a dental billing professional can also ensure that your practice isn’t left open to fraud accusations by guaranteeing accurate, legally compliant billing practices. Not all fraud charges are a result of intentional actions—sometimes, simple misunderstandings can lead to severe consequences. 

A Dental Billing Company who is part of the ACFE will as well monitor your practice to protect you from fraud and embezzlement by your team members.  

• Patient Recall Program 

Patient recall programs encourage existing patients to schedule new appointments, whether that be for an overdue cleaning or to continue a treatment program.

The relationship between dentists and patients is a major factor in a dental practice’s success. Patient recall must be handled with delicacy and professionalism to avoid losing patients. Dental billing professionals are trained to handle these sensitive matters.

• Team Training

To help lessen staff resistance to new billing processes, Dental Billing Companies offer team training as part of their services. This helps staff understand how to submit procedure information to the billers so that they know what to bill for and have everything needed for the billing process. 

It also keeps the entire team—in-house and out—on the same page as far as how billing at your practice works, what to do and when, and how to answer patient questions regarding that process. 

Team training isn’t just an initial set-up offering either. Ongoing interaction between your Dental Billing Company and staff can enhance patient experiences and improve efficiency.

• Dental Practice Management Services

Aside from both the accounting and billing side and the general practice of dentistry, there is also the management of the entire practice to consider. This area is where inventory and supply chain management, among other administrative duties, come in.

This particular service can be very advantageous for offices that are just getting started or that have a staff shortage. Management oversees the intricacies of team management, service quality, and sometimes even customer relationships. This broad scope of possible tasks can easily overwhelm newly opened or understaffed practices.

If your office already has a management system implemented, outsourcing billing and administrative tasks will allow you to focus on your patients and grow your practice.

• Search Engine Optimization

In this day and age, a business is hardly considered a business without an online presence. The internet has evolved into a digital marketplace, and without a strong online presence, your business could be left behind.

Marketing, from a business perspective, can be just as important as the service that the business itself provides, which is why ranking through search engine optimization (SEO) has become more competitive than ever before. 

Handling marketing yourself is not as easy as it seems. Search engines like Google use complicated algorithms that are continually updated—building a website that generates steady appointment requests is not a one-and-done process. 

Getting yourself ahead of the game can be achieved by either allotting extra effort into mastering SEO yourself or relying on professionals from a reliable dental billing company to do it for you.

• Website Design

Designing a website is no easy task unless you already have a background in website design. Learning how to make your own website takes time and effort, which are both luxuries you may not have in excess.

While professional website designers are widely available, many website designers aren’t familiar with dentistry. That’s why it is better to have your website designed by a dental billing company specializing in dentistry.

They understand your target market and can create a site that attracts not only new patients, but also improves patient satisfaction by providing useful tools to make payments, check charts, and more.

Success Shared by Practicing Professionals