The cost of revenue cycle management services vs. in-house dental billing: 5 questions answered

Managing the millions of dollars that move through your dental practice is a  monumental, never-ending project. Between navigating complex dental insurance rules, patient balance billing, and the inevitable follow-up for both, expecting one in-house team member to handle all your dental billing may be unrealistic.

You’re facing a key decision: Should you partner with a dental revenue cycle management (RCM) partner or hire an in-house insurance coordinator? Dental Claim Support (DCS) has helped countless dental leaders work through this exact choice.

It’s a balancing act to boost revenue while keeping costs manageable and scaling with your practice’s growth. You’ve made a smart start by asking, “What will dental billing services actually cost?”

To answer that question with a real-world example, let’s focus on our most popular service: Insurance billing.

In this article, we’ll outline the cost of hiring a full-time insurance coordinator and compare it to the cost of Dental Claim Support’s insurance billing services. And because staffing costs vary widely across the country, we’ve launched a new pricing calculator that creates a customized comparison based on your costs and service needs. 

We’ll also answer 5 common questions about the costs of dental RCM services versus in-house insurance billing. After you’ve considered the pros and cons of both options, you can use our calculator to make an informed decision that fits your practice’s budget and growth plans. 

Key takeaways on comparing the cost of revenue cycle management services versus in-house dental billing: 

• Outsourcing to an RCM provider usually means continuous operations, while in-house staff are subject to time off and turnover.
• Outsourcing to an RCM provider isn’t meant to replace your current staff; it’s meant to help you avoid hiring additional staff.
• Many RCM providers invest in advanced billing technology and automation that improve accuracy and reduce claim denials — a costly approach for in-house teams to implement.

To make it easy, here’s a pricing comparison calculator

Our pricing calculator makes it seamless to compare our cost to hiring one or more full-time insurance coordinators.

You plug in: 

• Your monthly collections
• How much you plan to pay an insurance coordinator (hourly or annual salary)
• Benefit options that add to the expense of an insurance coordinator

The calculator automatically determines DCS insurance billing pricing based on your monthly collections, then shows them side by side. Try it out!

Use the calculator here

1. How much do RCM services cost for dental insurance billing?

There is one factor that affects your costs for RCM services to handle claims: the amount of insurance revenue collected each month.  

These are the DCS service pricing tiers based on total insurance collections, with the discounted monthly fee for each tier:   

Pricing Example #1: Danny’s Dental Practice collects less than $40,000 in a given month, so their monthly invoice from DCS will be $1,400 (our Base Rate). 

Pricing Example #2: Donna’s Dental Practice collects $150,000 in a given month, so multiple tiers will be applied incrementally with discounts for higher tiers. The first $100,000 collected will be based on a 3.5% fee, then the next $50,000 in collections will be based on a reduced 3% fee.

Learn more about DCS pricing. 

2. How much does a dental insurance coordinator cost?

According to ZipRecruiter, as of June 2025, the average hourly pay for a Dental Insurance Coordinator in the United States is $20.58 an hour. To simplify our calculations, let’s round that up to $21 per hour.

An insurance coordinator earning $21 per hour with average benefits will cost you around $55,428 annually. Their pay comes to only $41,832 per year, but unlike contractors and outsourced staff, the actual cost of W-2 employees averages 1.25 to 1.4 times the base salary range.

This means you can expect your total costs for any employee to be 25% to 40% higher than their compensation.

This additional overhead includes employer taxes such as social security, federal and state unemployment, Medicare, workers’ comp insurance, and other payroll costs, as well as any benefits you may offer, such as paid time off and health insurance.   

Read more: 3 ways to grow your dental practice without growing your team

3. Will you save money by hiring RCM services versus hiring someone in-house?

Let’s look at an example using that national average hourly pay rate for an insurance coordinator. Again, your total costs with average benefits would be approximately $55,428. The monthly cost would be $4,619.

However, if you’re collecting $45,000 in insurance collections every month, your monthly insurance billing fee with DCS would be only $1,575. 

For $45K in collections, you’d save $3,044 each month by using our insurance billing services—that’s $36,528 in savings per year. 

Below, our calculator results display the difference in costs from our example.

But what if your practice collects more? What if you intend to pay an in-house coordinator more or less than the national average?

Remember, you can use our pricing calculator above to do a customized cost comparison using collection amounts and pay rates specific to your own dental business.

As this example shows, you can indeed save money partnering with RCM experts for dental billing versus hiring a full-time in-house coordinator. Even if the labor costs were cut in half for a part-time employee, the monthly savings of $734 adds up to $8,808 in savings per year.

RCM services with Dental Claim Support are priced to save your business thousands of dollars yearly over the cost of in-house staff.

4. What if we have multiple people handling our billing in-house?

You need to consider how many employees you will need to handle all your dental practice’s daily revenue-related tasks for insurance billing, such as:

• Insurance verification
• Claims submission
• Posting dental insurance payments
• Insurance aging report follow-up
• Appeals or resubmissions for denied claims

And there will also be daily patient balance billing tasks, including:

• Sending statements
• Processing payments
• Follow-up calls for late payments

For example, some dental teams have a billing team of one or more insurance coordinators with the office managers working alongside to manage the revenue cycle, but others have 2 or 3 coordinators dedicated to dental insurance.  

The greater your production and monthly collections, the more in-house staff you will need to manage the paperwork. Having multiple in-house employees handling your revenue cycle will impact your overall costs, and this must be considered in any calculation.

Our cost comparison calculator assumes 1 full-time in-house coordinator for every $100,000 in monthly collections, but you can customize the size of the billing team by adding or removing coordinators.

5. Are there other benefits to DCS insurance billing versus in-house billing?

Partnering with RCM experts can be more cost-effective, and there’s more to outsourcing than just saving money. You’ll gain these other benefits as well: 

1. Streamlined processes, faster payments. RCM experts continuously stay up to date on the best practices to manage your insurance claims. Their processes for claim submission and follow-up ensure your insurance claims will be paid as quickly as possible on the first submission. 
2. Higher revenue, better cash flow. Because RCM experts are using their knowledge to submit and follow up with your insurance claims, you’ll lose fewer claims to timely filing and collect more from patients. Their dedicated daily attention enables steady cash flow.
3. Increased patient satisfaction. With RCM services, your in-house team is empowered to create a stellar patient experience instead of being bogged down with insurance claims management. They’ll finally be able to offer focused customer service, personalized treatment plan presentations, patient check-in, and more. 

Related: Dental providers thrive with outsourced revenue cycle management: 5 key benefits you’ll see

Ready to save with expert revenue cycle management services?

To recap, here are 5 questions we answered: 

1. How much do RCM services cost for dental insurance billing?
2. How much does a dental insurance coordinator cost?
3. Will you save money by hiring RCM services versus hiring someone in-house?
4. What if we have multiple people handling our billing in-house?
5. Are there other benefits to DCS insurance billing versus in-house billing?

Cost is inevitably a major factor when you are considering how your revenue is managed, but cost savings is just one benefit of bringing on an RCM provider like Dental Claim Support. 

Partnering with revenue cycle management experts can be a less expensive option, and it also improves cash flow, raises revenue, and increases profitability—and importantly, it allows your in-house team to spend their valuable time on patient relationships and other vital tasks that grow your practice or group, such as: 

• Filling the schedule
• Marketing the dental business
• Following up with unscheduled treatment
• Providing outstanding customer service

DCS provides end-to-end RCM services that empower your team to put patients first and collect more revenue with more ease.

To learn more about how revenue cycle management services can increase your profits, schedule a call with one of our experts.