Dental billing services include multiple tasks such as claims, codes, and payments. The team must also focus on follow-ups for successful claim submissions and reimbursements from insurance companies. Effective billing helps to keep the dental practice financially stable by boosting cash flow.
While a dental practice must have top priority for patient care, it also needs to prioritise an effective dental billing process. One needs to note that dental billing is a complex process and needs a team that has experience and expertise. The practice can also consider outsourcing dental billing to a specialist. How much does dental billing cost? This is what the team needs to understand the cost before deciding on an ideal option.
Many dental practices do exhaustive research on potential companies for handling dental RCM and billing services. These experts have knowledge of all billing requirements, such as codes, compliance, etc. This gives additional time for a dental practice to focus on patients and treatment.
Any dental practice will consider costs as a major variable for deciding on whether to rely on an outsourced billing partner or develop and strengthen an in-house team to manage all billing requirements of the practice. Can dental billing services be an economical choice from a long-term perspective? Or will it add to the list of expenses incurred to run a practice?
The dental practice needs to understand if the cost of outsourcing will be a burden or if the practice be able to use the help of dedicated experts to enhance operational productivity in areas of billing, insurance eligibility verification, and claims management.
Handing over the reins of billing and claims management to professionals can result in a lesser number of errors and claim denials, and thus, the practice can witness stronger cash flows over time.
For making a decision, one can make direct comparisons between an internal hiring setup and outsourcing a billing team. One can make a comparison by taking insurance collections from the insurance billing only and not from patient revenues or any other service. Only then can the practice comprehend how much dental billing costs.
We can consider the average annual salary of an insurance coordinator to be USD 66,000, as this allows us to work at a higher side of salary expectation for a candidate with a few years of experience.
Accounting for compulsory federally mandated benefits and dividing that number by 12 months, the cost to the employer per month for an in-house Dental Insurance Coordinator is USD 6350.
Most dental billing and RCM firms hired for insurance billing services charge a fee of around USD 15000 to collect an amount of about USD 50,000 per month. It works out to about USD 1550 per month.
Hence, a salaried insurance coordinator gets paid about USD 6350 compared to about USD 1550 as a monthly retainer fee. The average monthly savings is in the vicinity of USD 4000 per month.
From an annual perspective, the outlay for a year for an insurance coordinator with the mandated benefits is USD 76,200, while the annual fee as a retainer for an RCM company is approximately USD 18,600. This leads to an annual savings of USD 57600. This amount can be used by the practice to invest in training or new automation software.
Moreover, the practice need not worry about attendance, sick leaves, etc. of the employee, since the outsourced partner has a full-fledged team managing tasks for all dental practices. Hence, there would always be an executive available for the practice at any given point in time.
As mentioned above, the example considered for the explanation of cost outlay comparisons was only for insurance billing. While there are many components in RCM support for a dental practice by an outsourced RCM company, a few factors to consider are as follows:
Insurance revenue
The fees charged for insurance billing services will usually be proportional to the quantum of revenue derived through insurance claims from insurance companies.
Size of your dental practice
The bigger the practice in terms of locations and number of patients, the higher the volume of claims to be processed. The practice might need an additional resource to manage the heavy business demands for timely processing and claim submissions.
New practice establishment
It is usually recommended that a newly established practice collaborate with an outsourced RCM or billing partner at the start in order to stay ahead of the curve amidst stiff competition. For a newly opened practice, there is a need for a new software setup to undertake any service. This includes a setup cost for the practice, fees, claims, etc.
Multi-location dental practice
When the practice operates from various locations, this has a bearing on the monthly fee at the overall level and will depend on the number of locations where the practice operates, as well as the volume of collections at every location.
Types of services required
For a large practice, there might be several services required and outsourced. The greater the number of services outsourced, the higher the monthly retainer fee.
At first glance, the thought of using outsourced services might be considered expensive, but on doing the math, the practice can weigh the financial benefits of outsourcing RCM and billing services to the right partner. This can lead to a savings of thousands of dollars as compared to building a full-fledged in-house team.
Over time, the dental practice can evaluate the ROI by using the services of outsourced experts while focusing on delivering quality care to patients. The practice can consider using services such as insurance & patient billing, provider credentialing, claims management, etc.
The monthly fee plays a role in a dental practice for deciding whether to use outsourced services or build an in-house team. With a partner in place, the practice can spend time nurturing the business and providing quality care to patients while enjoying a better ROI.
