You’re a dentist looking into outsourcing your billing. You’ve seen how complicated dealing with dental insurance claims can get. Your team is feeling burned out trying to do it all: insurance billing, office management, patient check-in and out, patient billing, scheduling, answering phones.… It’s a lot.
If your dental billing process is under-performing, you’ll see it in a low collection rate and possibly the attitude of your employees. You want them to enjoy their work, but insurance billing headaches put a damper on everything.
Through our 10 years of collecting insurance for dentists, Dental ClaimSupport’s billers have seen what it takes to efficiently handle insurance claims in order to get them paid.
To celebrate our 10-year anniversary this year, we’re sharing 10 ways outsourcing your dental billing adds value to your dental practice. Even if we aren’t the dental billing company you choose, you deserve to enjoy all the benefits of outsourcing your insurance billing and you should know what they are.
Let’s get into the 10 ways outsourcing your dental billing can add value to your dental practice.
1. Your insurance collections will increase
The main reason you’re looking to outsource is likely because your insurance collections are not where you want them to be. Truly, your insurance collections percentage is lower than 98%, there’s room for improvement, and outsourcing can help with that.
Insurance companies work tirelessly to avoid paying on claims. This might sound dramatic, but it’s true! They’re always finding new ways to deny your claims, and the work it takes to get claims appealed can sometimes not work for dental teams. So - insurance gets to keep your hard-earned money.
For an outsourced dental biller, every claim is worth fighting for. And they have the systems and expertise to do it efficiently.
After a few months of consistent, quality work with the outsourced biller, you will see your collections increase
Let’s keep it realistic, after one week or even one month of working with an outsourced dental billing company, you shouldn’t expect much change.
Here’s the thing about insurance billing: consistency is key.
Your outsourced biller is going to consistently submit claims, post payments to your practice management software, and follow up on unpaid claims from your aging report.
This consistency is going to steadily increase that collections percentage as you see more and more successful claim appeals that turn into posted payments, AKA money in the bank.
For metric recommendations on how to evaluate the work of your dental biller, visit our Learning Center.
2. Your dental billing process will be more organized and streamlined
The first step to taking control of the income you get from insurance claims is improved processes. And this is something the outsourced dental billing company is going to prioritize.
A streamlined billing process means that everyone on your administrative team knows their role and responsibilities in the process. Because each step of the billing process depends on the previous step, it’s important that - from that first call from the patient to schedule an appointment, to the claim being closed and payment posted - everything goes smoothly.
Your outsourced biller will share tips and best practices for each part of the dental billing process
While your biller will likely only handle insurance billing, they still have a wealth of knowledge on insurance verification and patient billing.
They will share this knowledge with you if they notice that your insurance verification process needs some improvement. Their success in getting your claims paid depends on you properly verifying each patient’s benefits and properly creating their insurance claim - so it’s crucial that your team completes this step properly. This is something the outsourced biller can advise on.
If your team also struggles with properly billing the patient their out-of-pocket cost, the outsourced biller can advise on this as well. While they will not be facing the patient, they can help your team learn how to properly calculate the patient’s out-of-pocket estimate and share best practices on your processes for billing patients.
3. Billing headaches for the administrative team will go away
As we mentioned before, insurance billing is time-consuming, complicated, and requires a lot of attention to detail. If your administrative team has other responsibilities such as office management, patient billing, scheduling, and patient check-in in addition to insurance billing, they’re likely feeling stretched thin.
When you outsource your insurance billing, that big, fat, time-consuming task disappears from their checklist. All of a sudden they don’t have to call insurance to follow up on claims, or research why a claim was denied. They can focus on the tasks in front of them and even take their time on these tasks.
Your administrative team will have a better work-life balance
Your employees deserve to enjoy the work they do. They can’t enjoy anything when they’re stuck on the phone with insurance companies. They might even not have time to take a lunch break.
When your employees don’t even have time for a lunch break, is that the kind of workplace you want to run? Of course not!
Through outsourcing, your team members will be able to have that time back in their day.
They can focus on patients and move through their workday with ease because there aren’t unpaid claims looming in the background that they know they have to get to at some point. The outsourced dental billing company is taking care of that for them.
Speaking of time with patients, that’s our next piece of value that outsourcing your dental billing brings.
4. Your dental patient experience will improve
When you have to spend your time on the phone with insurance companies, you don’t get to interact with patients as often.
Your personal touch and human interaction are what make your dental practice unique. Through outsourcing your insurance billing, your team won’t feel stressed, and won’t be distracted by other tasks when speaking to patients during check-in or check-out.
Your patients can tell if the work environment is stressful
You’d be surprised how easy it is to feel a hostile work environment. If your team is constantly stressing over getting all of their in-office tasks done in addition to insurance claim follow-up, it’s going to create unease within the office.
Patients can sense if your team seems rushed or distracted, and that can take away from a positive patient experience.
Outsourcing your insurance billing can help your team get back to that customer-service mindset where they are focused on making a dental visit as easy and pleasant as possible for every patient.
5. Your team will gain billing knowledge that will make them more confident
Feeling confident at your job can make a huge difference in the quality of work and happiness in a role.
When you outsource your dental billing, you’re essentially adding an expert to your administrative team who is there to not only handle insurance billing but also help your team understand parts of the billing process they may not.
By the biller sharing this information with your team and helping educate them, they will feel more comfortable and confident in their roles.
Your employees feeling this way is invaluable to most employers, and an outsourced biller can help nurture that confidence.
6. You will have a better understanding of your practice’s financial health
If you’re looking to outsource your billing, you’re probably looking at your Practice Software reports and hoping to improve them.
When you work with a billing company, they will also be looking at those reports very regularly. They will update you when there are improvements and let you know where there needs to be a focus.
Most outsourced billing companies will even send a daily deposit report that will let you know everything your practice collected that day, and your team can make sure it matches what’s actually in your bank account.
Because there will be someone focused on increasing a huge chunk of your revenue (the insurance side), you will be consistently updated on what those numbers look like.
7. Your team will have billing experts to help with any questions or concerns
Not only will your team have access to the biller paired with your dental practice, but technically you will have access to the knowledge of that biller’s colleagues.
Dental insurance billing is such a niche topic to be an expert in, and it can be difficult to find experts who know the ins and outs of how insurance rules and regulations work.
There are community groups and chat rooms your team could join, but having direct access to a pool of experts really puts your dental team ahead of the curve financially. These experts can answer questions regarding those extra complicated topics such as:
- Coordination of Benefits
- Medicare in dental billing
- CDT codes
- ICD-1-CM codes
These are topics every dental professional struggles with at one point or another. That’s why the knowledge of the billers is so valuable.
8. You will have extra eyes on your revenue as a safeguard against embezzlement
The fresh eyes of the dental billers provide an objective perspective of your dental practice. They will not only be able to see where your processes can improve, but also when anything sketchy is happening, such as embezzlement within the dental practice.
Unfortunately, embezzlement is almost always committed by someone within the dental practice. It is typically an employee who has been working at the practice for at least a few months and has established a basic level of trust with the rest of the team and the dentist.
The outsourced dental biller will be looking at your posted payments every single day, so they will see if something looks off.
The dental biller provides checks and balances within the practice
If there’s anyone who is going to immediately notice something odd when it comes to your billing, it’s your remote biller.
As we mentioned, they typically run daily deposit reports that keep track of all of your collected revenue. Because they’re constantly looking in your software to post payments on outstanding claims, they’re going to know when something doesn’t add up.
And because their success as an outsourced service depends on a clean billing system, they will have no qualms about reporting inconsistencies immediately to you, the dentist.
9. You accomplish the work of a full-time expert at a fraction of what their salary would be
Although your remote biller won’t technically be your employee, they are a part of your team. They have the same goal you have: get claims paid. And they’re incentivized to do so. It’s how they get paid!
They’re also a fraction of the cost of a full-time insurance coordinator. While the entry-level cost of outsourcing may be close to a thousand dollars per month, it’s far less than the cost of the salary to hire a dedicated dental biller.
One of the biggest myths about dental billing is that it’s more expensive than hiring an in-house insurance coordinator.
Compare the cost of an outsourced dental billing company vs a full-time insurance coordinator
A qualified, experienced insurance coordinator’s salary is around $50,000 annually. The short answer: If you’re paying more than $18,000 per year for accurate insurance billing services, you’re paying more than you should.
To compare, a dental billing service typically charges you based on how much you collect from insurance claims monthly. For example, at Dental ClaimSupport, if you receive up to $40,000 a month in insurance (only) payments, your monthly payment to the dental billing company will be around $1,300.
Paying $1,300 per month for 12 months = $15,600. That’s a big difference from $50,000. And you’re still getting a seasoned expert to perform the same task.
For a deep dive into this cost comparison, visit our Learning Center.
10. You and your dental team will no longer have to deal with insurance companies
Imagine the freedom to put down the phone and work with your patients, knowing all your payments are going into the bank.
You and your team will no longer have to deal with insurance companies.
Once your team creates and batches the claim, the biller will take it from there to make sure it is paid. They will:
- Submit the claim to the appropriate provider
- Follow up with aged claims
- Do research on why claims have been denied
- Work to get these denied claims appealed
- Post each claim payment to your practice management software
All of these tasks entail communicating with the dental insurance companies, and the outsourced biller has it covered.
Ready to figure out if outsourced dental billing is right for you?
Outsourcing your dental billing brings value not just in the form of financial success, but also a happier, healthier, calmer work environment. Your team will feel less stressed while an expert handles the insurance claims, and they can focus on patients.
Dental ClaimSupport is an outsourced dental billing company that promises to alleviate the headache brought on by insurance companies and help you cultivate an overall healthier dental practice.
To learn more about if outsourced dental billing is right for you, read our article, “5 signs your dental practice needs a billing company.”
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