For a dental practice, maintaining an in-house billing and collection team can mean a big financial outlay. This means that the practice needs to consider salaries and benefits that will to overheads and affect the bottom line. Billing and collections may need both full-time and part-time staff, and, dependent on the workload and patient volumes, the responsibility may extend to other staff members. For growing practices, it might make sense not to hire an in-house team but to consider outsourced dental collections through a specialist.
Over the years, the task of billing, collection, and follow-up with insurance companies was always done by in-house teams. With growing competition and evolving demands of patients, it makes sense to seek the service of an expert for outsourced dental collections. Such a move can enable the practice to trim the costs of training, maintenance, and salaries. The practice can save on paying the staff on an hourly basis or for frequent training.
Dental practices make money through patients and insurance companies. They are dependent on patients for a large part of their revenues. Outsourced dental collections can offer quality service through interactions with insurance companies and ensure cash flow to the practice.
There are many points to consider why an outsourced partner can help reduce revenue losses for the practice.
The outsourced partner must have an advanced billing and collection software platform to help push revenues and lower denied claims. The software must be able to provide alerts when any aberration is noticed. The software can generate frequent billing and outstanding reports that enable the teams to track all dues to the practice from patients and insurance companies.
In a competitive scenario, a practice must ensure superior customer service in addition to quality treatment. An outsourced team that is courteous and smart in addressing any patient queries can make a big difference to the practice. A faster response time through trained staff leads to better interactions and a higher customer retention rate.
The practice can select an outsourced partner based on the requirements and volume of business it generates. Based on the scope level and level of customer service needed by the practice. Once the terms are set, the practice can have a dedicated team focusing on patient collections without any additional expensive overheads due to salaries and benefits.
Outsourcing can help a dental practice when an analysis of past performance indicates red flags, such as a collection rate that is less than 98% and an aging report is high. When less than 98% of dental insurance claims submitted for payment are paid, then there needs to be additional attention paid to such a situation. If more than 10% of the aging reports indicated unpaid claims of over 30 days, special attention needs to be paid to resolve these.
This indicated that the staff at the practice does not have the time to work through the aging report and take remedial action. When the staff is overloaded with additional responsibilities, it signifies that the billing process costs more than the income accrued, and hence, outsourcing can play a vital role in taking remedial action.
If the practice has not received compensation for claims submitted for a long period, then there is a high probability that payment might never happen. This means that the practice might have to write off dues that affect revenue and cash flows.
When faced with frequent write-offs, the practice can consider using an outsourced partner to focus on billing and collections. The outsourced specialist can focus on reducing claim denials and completely reducing the possibility of any write-off.
The outsourced specialist is an expert in creating clean claims and in extracting dues from insurance companies and patients.
There are chances that the existing team is often overloaded with billing and collections in addition to other tasks as needed. The practice in such situations must explore outsourcing the task to a specialist. Billing is complex, and collection needs to be persistent and rigorous to keep the cash registers ringing.
Handing over the task of collections to a specialist also enables the team to focus on other core areas, as well as reduces the need for hiring and training additional staff. The outsourced team can see things differently from the existing dental team, as it has an outside perspective as well as proficiency in billing and collections.
The existing team might not convey any issues or problems to practice owners, or they might not be able to perform at peak levels due to inadequate training. Hence, an outsourced partner can negate all staffing issues that a practice can have and get results accordingly.
If the practice is witnessing a steady drop in the number of patients entering the practice, it needs to evaluate the existing billing or administrative team and consider how an outsourced expert can help to retain patients while also boosting collection rates.
An outsourced firm has expertise in effectively managing billing and collections. Patient billing and collections need to be handled well, as this can affect how your insurance billing is handled. An incorrect amount collected from patients could mean that an inaccurate claim has been submitted to the insurance company. This can result in a higher rate of claim denials, which in turn leads to unhappy patients.
When a practice is facing a drop in patient collections, it could be due to patient billing and insurance verification being handled inefficiently. An outsourced company can ensure effective insurance eligibility verification, billing, as well as collections that result in lowered claim denials, satisfied patients, and positive cash flows for the practice.
The practice needs to have its software system regularly updated. This is because an outsourced partner will remotely work within your dental software. When the software is not updated regularly, this could lead to inefficiency. This results in lowered collections.
When the practice hires an outsourced expert, it will need to update its software, and this means the regular work-saving features and other automation tools that make the workflow efficient. This not only empowers the outsourced team to achieve collection targets as per the expectations of the practice but also ensures that the practice stays compliant as per regulatory guidelines.
Billing and collections are the lifeline of the practice as the need to be profitable is critical. Patient collections constitute a large volume of revenue for a dental practice, and outsourcing billing and collections saves time and effort. In addition, it adds to the overall operational efficiency of the practice while also delivering quality care to patients.
