Dental insurance verification services: Let's compare the top 3 providers

We hear it a lot: dental front desk teams hate doing insurance verification—and we get it! Insurance verification is tedious and time-consuming, but those up-to-date details entered accurately are key to the prompt reimbursement of your dental claims. That’s why dental insurance verification services are a great resource—and here’s how you choose the right one for you.

Dental insurance verification (IV) is the first step of your revenue cycle, and it’s a critical one. It sets the stage for how easily you’ll collect payment from both dental insurance and patients. Even a single small typo in a birthdate or policy number will result in a denied claim and possibly a confused or angry patient who disputes their bill.

Claim denials and patient billing disputes will delay payments, slow cash flow, and can hurt your bottom line through write-offs. 

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That’s why so many dental businesses turn to dental insurance verification services: when experts manage this daily task for you, you and your team can focus on patient care and other high-value tasks.

But how do you choose the right dental insurance verification vendor?

A good place to start is by comparing company history and reputation, service features, pricing, and reviews—and to help make it easy, we’ve done that here for you. All the information we found on our top 3 choices is straight from each company’s website, LinkedIn profile, and Google listing.

Key takeaways on choosing a dental insurance verification service vendor:

• Your best fit depends on your practice size, patient mix, software, and interest in bundling IV with other revenue cycle services.
• While the insurance verification vendor’s website will offer you plenty of information, list any lingering questions to ask their sales representative.
• Your experience with the sales team can tell you a lot about how a company will treat you as a client or customer.

What features do you need from insurance verification services?

First and foremost, which features are required for effective insurance verification services, and which are helpful but not necessary?

Essential must-have features

The insurance verification must include:

• Eligibility confirmation and coverage active status. If coverage is inactive, your claim may be outright denied. Knowing beforehand saves you the work of filing a claim that is sure to be denied.
• Benefit breakdowns. You must know what kinds of services are covered (e.g., preventive, major, implants, etc.), frequency limits, waiting periods, etc., to determine if the procedure will be reimbursed.
• Deductible, annual maximum, patient responsibility, and co-insurance. So you can calculate an accurate out-of-pocket estimate for the patient’s treatment presentation and collect accordingly at the time of service or through balance billing.

Optional nice-to-have features

• Write-back and auto-posting into PMS. This eliminates manual data entry and human error, and it also ensures consistency across records.
• Clear turnaround time. The ideal is within 2 to 3 days of the appointment, though some IV vendors accept verification requests the previous day or the same day.
• Integration with your practice management software (PMS). A seamless automated data flow eliminates friction, delays, and data entry errors, so you’ll have the right information at the right time.

Now let’s see how our top 3 insurance verification service providers measure up…

Insurance verification from Dental Claim Support (DCS)

In 2012, DCS was founded by 3 office managers who had served individual and group practices in the dental industry.

Davy Clay, Ryan DeLettre, and Josh Smith headquartered DCS in Savannah, Georgia, and grew through remote teams from coast to coast, including expert billers, salespeople, marketers, IT, and operations. This nationwide team of billers continues to grow to increase company capacity while maintaining a high level of service for dental practices, emerging dental groups, and dental service organizations (DSOs) across the United States. 

DCS has 250+ employees.

Our insurance verification pricing tiers are explained on our website, along with pricing for each of our solutions. Starts at $2.50 per eligibility check.

DCS has a rating of 4.9 on Google with 180+ reviews.

DCS’ insurance verification service features include: 

• Acquire the carrier’s basic PDF report for each scheduled patient 3 days before their appointment 
• Complete the Standard IV form for insurance companies that don’t provide basic PDF
• Upload PDF or Standard IV form to PMS documents
• Write back information into the insurance benefits section of PMS 
• Same-day turnaround (optional)
• Seamless integration with most PMS

Read more about DCS Insurance Verification Services here.

Insurance verification from eAssist

eAssist Dental Solutions was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in American Fork, Utah. eAssist was founded by Dr. James Anderson and Sandy Odle. Henry Schein, Inc. has acquired a 70% majority interest in eAssist.

According to LinkedIn, eAssist has around 629 employees. 

eAssist’s prices for insurance verification services are listed on their website. Pricing starts at $225 per month for up to 30 verifications.

eAssist has a rating of 4.8 on Google with 244 reviews.

eAssist’s insurance verification service features include: 

• The most up-to-date insurance benefits for your patients.
• The ability to accurately estimate insurance and patient payment portions.
• Peace of mind that comes from knowing a patient’s insurance status at the treatment planning stage.
  • eAssist’s insurance verification services are tiered based on how many verifications are needed per month and range from standard verification to extended verification to premium.

Insurance verification from Medusind

Medusind was founded in 2002, and its current CEO and Group President is Vipul Bansal. It is headquartered in Miami, Florida. 

According to LinkedIn, Medusind has around 2,808 employees.

Medusind does not list prices on its website. You will need to contact a sales representative to learn more about their pricing. 

Medusind does not have a business Google listing. The listing associated with their headquarters’ address has a Google rating of 2.7 with 3 reviews.

Medusind’s insurance verification service features include: 

• Proprietary QuickVerify™ to verify your patient’s eligibility and benefits information.
• Real-time eligibility and benefits for all appointment types
• Consolidate complex data
• Works with all existing PMS

Who will you trust with your practice’s dental insurance verification?

To recap, we covered:

1. Which features are required for effective insurance verification.
2. The optional that are nice to have from an insurance verification vendor.
3. The essential information for our top 3 dental insurance verification providers: Dental Claim Support (DCS), eAssist, and Medusind

If you run a mid-size or growing practice with heavy reliance on dental insurance and want deep integration with reliable expertise, DCS is a compelling choice. If you already use DCS Insurance Billing or other DCS services, there may be a service bundle to discount your costs.

Similarly, if you already use eAssist’s billing, then eAssist’s insurance verification service would be very convenient, just make sure it offers all the features you’re looking for. Due to its size, eAssist should have the capacity to accommodate the biggest DSOs.

Medusind may be a good choice if you also have medical billing needs or prefer a large revenue cycle management provider, but you’ll want to press for clarity on the features of their verification services.

DCS appears to be the only dental insurance verification service provider with automatic write-backs to your PMS. If you contact eAssist or Medusind for more information, ask if their service includes this hands-free automation.

DCS and eAssist are both transparent about their pricing, with tiers and costs listed on their site, plus they both have near 5-star overall ratings with over 180 Google reviews from their happy clients. Medusind, however, requires a consultation for pricing and has only a few reviews that average to a rating under 3 stars.

Ready to find your perfect fit? Book a free 30-minute consultation with DCS and share your practice’s layout, volume, PMS, and patient base to see how DCS can make your insurance billing easier and get you paid faster.