Taking care of past due balances is a big fight, be it for dental or any other industry. If we talk about the dental industry, the increased number of deductibles and expenses have compelled practices to come up with innovative and contemporary ideas that make easy to pull payments from patients.
If your dental practice is still lacking behind and not following innovative approaches to deal with patient collections, now is the time to push the boundaries.
The studies/research done in the past has also clearly proven that there are many patients who in the past skipped dental examination or cleaning owing to potential dental care costs. Another study revealed that patients in the USA with insurance encountered a lot of problems paying their dental bills. Similarly, there were other patients who came across the same problem without insurances. So, as per the research, it is clear that paying dental bills is a huge concern for most of the patients.
At Capline, we can help practices reduce the bad debt in collections by putting your practice in a better position. Listed below are some of the ideas shared by our experts that ensure your dental bills are covered in a timely manner:
Set payment expectations prior to the appointment
Make sure to verify all patients in advance. This will help set payment expectations before the appointment.
This should further be communicated to the patient during the process so that they can easily decide whether they wish to continue ahead or not.
Inform patients about past due balances
If a patient fails to pay past balances, for any reason, you must tell them clearly. You can make use of email or invoices to remind patients of their payments before the due date arrives.
You can still continue to follow up if the payment has not been made. Our experts keep following up to make sure that you get paid on time, without any hassle.
Outsource Us for Your Practice’s Billing and Collection Needs
If your in house methods stop working, don’t hesitate to contact us. At Capline Dental Services, we can take care of your practice’s bad debt by keeping collections high. Our collection strategies will give your practice a leg up to move towards increased revenue and patient retention.
These days dental practices have to deal with a lot of challenges that not only hinders their revenue cycle but also brings patient care to a standstill. This is the reason practices started outsourcing dental billing and collections that allowed them to focus on their core service, i.e. patient care. The benefits of outsourcing dental practice appear to outweigh the negative. Listed below are a few warning situations that indicate that you must outsource dental billing and collection services:
Your Revenue Comes in Slowly
Whether it’s patient billing for their outstanding balances or insurance firms reimbursing you for your provided services, your practice has to be paid fully once the treatment has been done. Therefore, it is extremely important to get paid on time to remain profitable.
The best you can do is to monitor your Accounts Receivable. This will give you an idea of how quickly you are being paid. By outsourcing RCM services, you will be able to track AR time. Our experts will create a report indicating how much of your AR is 30 days old and how much is over 90 days old. Once you identify the problematic areas, you will be able to come up with an ideal solution.
Your Claim Denials Are Too Frequent
Claim denials indicate a lot of issues that may be present in your practice. If a claim gets rejected for any reason, you may not be getting as much money as you should. Secondly, claim rejections and denials also indicate a lack of expertise or staff training. Rejections and denials also require a lot of time to submit, correct and resubmit them. This takes a lot of your staff’s time, thereby distracting them from providing quality patient care.
The best part is that by outsourcing billing and collection services you get to work with billing experts who make sure to process your claims accurately. This will help minimize denials.
Your Staff Is Overburdened
Providing high-quality care amidst all the paperwork burden becomes unmanageable. But, if you outsource billing and collection services, your staff will be relieved of the paperwork burden and be able to focus only on delivering high-end patient care. Your staff will become more proficient and responsible for their intended task. While everyone is working efficiently, your practice will be able to produce more in a shorter time span.
By outsourcing billing and collection services from us, you will experience a steady flow of claims going in and cash coming out. Not only it helps in improving your practice’s bottom line but also streamlines productivity.
To keep patients coming back to your practice and to maintain a healthy flow of revenue, dental practices need to understand their unique expectations. This helps in delivering effective patient care and also make the billing process streamlined.
Patient billing is one of the most important tasks a practice has to cope with on a daily basis. While your office staff is busy handling the paperwork, the patient care related to your practice is often ignored. Not only this but also there are other aspects that get affected owing to a bad billing practice. In this article, we will be sharing all the necessary steps you must take to streamline patient billing and keep your patients happy.
Here’s what you can do:
Fight Claim Denials
In order to prevent denials in the future, it is important to understand the common reasons that cause denials. Denials can occur due to the following reasons:
To prevent errors related to patient’s critical data, our verification experts acquire patient information over the call both before and after the registration.
Get Pre-authorization Done Correctly
The amount of time your staff spends on getting pre-auth done from insurance companies could be spent on patient care if you outsource pre-authorization to us. Some insurance plans state that if a patient looks for services requiring preauthorization, however, fail to obtain pre-auth, the patient is liable to pay the price. If the payment is denied by the insurer, the cost of treatment will directly be collected by the patient. This not only impacts the patient experience but also the bottom line of your practice.
It is important to provide the correct CPT code before the service has been provided. We obtain authorization for any treatment that requires it.
Following Up on Unpaid Claims
Accumulating unpaid claims can have a significant impact on the revenue and cash flow of your practice. We implement a standard process to handle all unpaid claims. This saves your practice’s time and makes sure that all claims are filed on time.
The right professional approach to manage billing can make a critical difference in building rapport with patients and improving revenue for your practice. Connect with our billing and insurance verification team today to know how to reduce claim denial losses.
Being the most crucial aspect of a dental practice, billing and collections is one important area that should be nurtured well. To maintain the livelihood of your practice, it is important to get reimbursed at the right time. Therefore, practices must look out for ways that can keep their collection numbers under control. Collecting payments sometimes turn out to be a terrible experience when the office staff is seen overburdened with clerical work, patient dealing and a lot more.
The ultimate quick fix to get rid of such hassle is to contact an expert dental insurance billing service provider. Dental billing is strictly related to the cash flow, therefore, it should not be avoided and taken care of properly.
At Capline, we have encountered a lot of issues related to accounts receivable. To manage accounts receivable properly, it is important to handle everything thoroughly. So, whether it’s patient payment, billing claim or payers, everything needs to be in sync. Remember, if you fail to figure either one correctly, you will see a drop in the numbers.
With so many billing mistakes happening around, we have assembled the most common ones that your dental practice must avoid while managing patient collections.
Failing to Track Reports and Check Accounts Receivable
Do you want to leave your practice as a guessing game? If no, you need to have a clear understanding of the different sides of funding. It is important to track denial rates, accounts receivable and other funding expenditure related to your practice. This helps in spotting the challenges your practice is facing. To balance patient care with the practice’s success, you must be financially sound. If you are still missing on claim submission and patient collection, take a moment to reconsider all of them to successfully maintain the financial health of your practice.
Delay in Claim Submission
Claim management should be as effective as possible. It helps to keep the revenue cycle streamlined. Claims must be submitted within 24 hours and practices must track claims. If the deadline for resubmission passes, your practice might miss out those funds.
Sending Confused and Complex Patient Statements
A study by 2017 InstaMed report says, “More than 70% of patients are confused by billing statements and insurance policies.” It is important to present statements that are easy to understand. You can also send them contact information for further assistance. The statement should not come out as a surprise to patients. If that’s the case, they will definitely deny paying. So, the best you can do is communicate upfront about the type of charges they can expect.
Now is the right time to consider and review your policies and rework on them to move towards an error-free billing and collection process.
According to the recent survey conducted by the American Dental Association, approx. 65% of patients rely on insurance to help them pay for the treatment they want. However, there are times when a claim gets denied or delayed for a variety of reasons. Claim denials can hurt both Dental Insurance Billing Company and patients. Every once in a while when a claim gets denied, it leaves patients with huge dental bills.
To prevent such scenarios in the future, let’s understand the top reasons for claim denial.
Common Causes for Claim Denial
The Treatment Procedure Is Uncovered
When patients opt for dental care, the first thing they worry about is whether their dental insurance will cover it or not. So, whenever the patient opts for treatment that wasn’t covered by the insurance policy, there are increased chances of a claim getting denied.
Error in Entering Patient’s Information
Sometimes a claim gets denied because of simple errors like a misspelled name, policy number and so on. Our experts go through the information carefully and correct any kind of errors before processing a claim. If there was an error on the part of the provider, we ask them to correct it.
Claim Denied for No Pre Authorization
It is seen that 80% of claims get denied with no authorization being obtained. There are some dental treatments that may require prior authorization. It is quite obvious for payers to get prior authorization for complex dental treatments like surgeries. As a part of our eligibility verification process, we work closely to mitigate denials from having an incorrect code on prior authorization.
Claim Denied Due to Issues in COB
COB or Coordination of Benefits is a term used when patients have two or more health insurance plans. There are certain rules that decide which dental insurance plan pays primary, secondary or tertiary. Providers need to ask patients whether they have primary, secondary or any other carrier. Once the information is acquired, we can easily use it while billing the insurance carrier. This ultimately reduces the number of delays or denials.
Claim Not Filed on Time
One of the major issues practices encounter is when claims are denied for timely filing. Since each carrier has its own set of guidelines and policies, it becomes important to stick to them. Claims are often denied for timely filing when the claim was submitted on time but not received by the insurance carrier.
To prevent such issues, it becomes mandatory to file claims within the time period.
By implementing these tips, you will be able to optimize claim processing for your practice.
Dental offices are crowded places wherein office staff has multiple tasks that require to be completed before the day finishes. This is the reason answering patient calls come across as a hurdle to them. So, in spite of greeting patients with their queries or scheduling their appointment, the office staff tries to get off the phone as quickly as possible. This, in turn, leads to poor patient base and unhappy customers.
If patients get a feeling that their query is not valued, they would schedule appointment with another provider and never come back to you. This results in customer abandonment. Imagine how your dental practice would look like if it lacks a great patient base? We know you would never like to deal with something like that. So, we are here to help. Capline makes sure that you offer quality care to your patient while we keep an eye on the billing, scheduling and verification process of your practice.
We help by converting your patient calls to appointments, thereby generating revenue for your practice. To help your practice, improve patient care and revenue for your practice:
We make it easy to create and track all existing patient appointment activity and new patient registrations via practice management software.
When you outsource Dental Billing and Collection Services to us, your front desk team has only a single task and that is to focus on patient care. They can now take more time to answer patients on the phone. A high level of patient care is also guaranteed with this. This way your patient ends up feeling valued and cared for the service. This method of treatment maximizes customer loyalty and retains them with you for years.
Our billing team will make sure that there are fewer billing errors because what happens with the billing ultimately affects your practice’s bottomline. An inexperienced dental biller will face difficulty keeping up with the changes in dental billing, however, when you outsource us, we will get the job done correctly and efficiently by providing patients with an accurate bill.
There has been a huge concern about patients complaining that doctors rush through appointments and do not invest time in handling the queries of customers. Since most of the effort is involved in completing the paperwork and seeing patients, there is no time left to schedule actual appointment. Our experts at Capline get the paperwork done and free your office’s staff time, thereby allowing you to build personal relationship with your patients as well as delivering high level of patient care.
Redefine patient care and get passionate about your practice again by leaving the paperwork to us.
The health of your practice is more or less interlinked to patient payments. Therefore, it is important to ensure patient collections are as adequate as possible. At Capline Dental Services, we work with your practice to improve collections. Our specialists examine patient benefits and insurance information to calculate the estimated total cost for patient care. Patient billing statements produced by our team are quite effective to facilitate faster payments.
At Capline Dental Services, we create patient statements that are easy to read and understand. To make sure that your practice delivers patient statements that multiply revenue, here are following tips to consider:
Accuracy in billing
To maintain billing accuracy, we work on claim rejections, resubmission of correct claims and also appeal submission to process timely patient statements. These patient statements are reviewed further to ensure accuracy. Our team sends patient statements regularly on a monthly basis. Sending regular and timely statements increases the chances of obtaining timely payments in return.
You also might face a situation wherein patients become non-responsive to their bills. Here, you need to set in place the policy for outstanding balances.
Be upfront
It is important for any practice to collect patient payment at the time of rendering service itself. To do this, practices must have the patient’s insurance information beforehand. Confusing bills and frustrating collection can derail treatment experiences for patients. A negative patient experience ultimately impacts reimbursement. Bad experiences make it difficult to collect unpaid balances and also impact patient retention.
Providing patient’s insurance information
One of the most annoying parts of a patient’s experience is to deal with dental insurance. This troubles more if the provider does not help them understand the system. Adding a section about their insurance status not only adds to the authenticity of their bill but also helps in delivering a better patient experience.
Use practice management software to automate patient statements
Eliminate the time your office staff spends on paperwork by making use of a practice management software. It allows you to send out statements in a timely manner while improving your bottom line and simplifying the collection process.
The patient statements designed and passed this way have a greater impact on your practice’s revenue and patient retention. Therefore, it is important to focus on delivering best-in-class patient care by improving patient forms/statements.
Find more information here about our Dental Patient Statement Services
When a practice, especially the one dealing with complex billing attempts to do everything on their own, problems will definitely cross the path. There is a lot to deal with in addition to just delivering quality patient care. These days practice suffer a lot owing to staffing overhead cost, overwhelming administrative burden and lack of knowledgeable experts to take care of their billing needs. The billing department of any practice has to deal with a lot of paperwork which results in errors and declining revenue. This brings the need to outsource this to a billing specialists who can take the burden off your office staff and help improve your practice’s bottom line.
Other than this, there are some other ways that can help streamline operations to reduce the burden. Let’s explore some of them.
Outsource billing services for your practice
When you outsource your billing needs to experts, you have increased chances of getting your claims submitted on time. This minimizes the chance of rejection, fast claim approval and ensures maximum returns for your practice.
Billing is a rigorous and time-consuming process. There are times when billing can cause holdup in other essential tasks. However, when you outsource billing experts for your dental practice, you can definitely concentrate only on patient care as the rest will be handled by the team of experts.
Use of practice management software
To manage the operations behind your practice efficiently, the use of practice management software helps. These days many dental practices have started using practice management to create better patient flow, maximize productivity and lessen stress for both the practice and patients. This ultimately contributes to a superior patient experience that your patients look out for. Therefore, you need to ensure that your dental practice has the most efficient, flexible and up-to-date scheduling system possible.
By reducing admin workload, you will be able to focus more on patient care and experience greater cash flow for your practice.
EOB or Explanation of Benefits is a document that a patient receives after visiting a dentist. It is an explanation of the procedures that were performed during your visit to the dentist. An EOB encompasses the dentist’s fee, the portion paid by your provider and any extra amount the patient may owe.
EOB can be in the form of either deductible, coinsurance or an uncovered service. It also includes an update of the total annual maximum that has been used and the amount that has been paid by the patient towards their deductible.
The EOB form generally has 4 major sections:
In addition to just showing the way a claim is being processed, EOB forms also let your dentist know whether any remaining balance is due by the patient. It elaborates a simple way to track the services you receive and the expenses associated with your healthcare. It also details what portion of the services have been paid and what portion were not covered earlier.
An EOB is filed to ensure that all services have been paid and processed correctly. It should not be confused with a bill, EOB is not a bill. EOBs are explained in the code descriptions.
A patient must look out for the below-given information while reviewing an EOB.
It is very important to understand your insurance benefits. For any queries or concerns, you can anytime reach your insurance provider. So, instead of getting surprised with unexpected billing charges, you must keep a detailed record of copays, services or any kinds of payments made.
EOB is the ultimate medium that helps you to understand how your dental insurance plan works. So, make sure to get an explanation of your benefits next time when you visit your dentist, to know about services already availed by you and services yet are covered under your insurance plan.
Confusing dental bills and collection processes derails the experience of patients coming to your practice. To prevent the billing and collection process from hurting patient experience, dental practices should focus on managing patient’s expectations and encourage them to be accountable for paying their bills on time.
One of the crucial aspects that determine the success or failure of your dental practice is COLLECTIONS. With the increasing rise in high-deductible plans, patients are coming across huge dental bills that they are not even prepared to pay. This ultimately affects your practice.
Once you are done with the treatment part, the next step would be the collection of balance in your accounts receivable. You cannot afford to lose patients or profits by not collecting balances. Right? Collecting payments becomes a piece of cake if you have expert assistance backing up.
At Capline, we can help you collect your money so that you can focus on strengthening relationship with your patients.
How to Increase Collections?
To keep your practice running through, you need a plan of action that can help you improve patient collections. Given below are a few suggested by our experts:
Be As Upfront and Transparent As Possible
Dental treatment bills can be hard to budget for. There are times when patients expect to get treatment free of charge and sometimes they fail to realize whether the insurance has covered the entire procedure or not. In that case, you need to be transparent with patients about the treatment costs. Patients who are on high-deductible plan must be clearly reminded that they will likely be paying out-of-pocket.
Open Communication
As discussed above, it is very important to advise patients about payment policies. This not only creates a streamlined partnership between patient and provider but also keep things smooth. Patients are generally confused about what they are being billed. This is one of the key reasons they disagree to pay. They simply ignore the bills that they don’t understand. Being able to consistently communicate with the patients about their bills reduces the chances of denials in billing and maintains cash flow.
Send EOB’s
EOB or Explanation of Benefits is a direct window to your billing history. The EOB gives a clear picture indicating which benefit(s)/charge(s) are covered or not covered by the dental benefits plan. It is recommended to send clear and easy to understand EOB statements to eliminate any kind of confusion in billing. It should delineate the benefits and limitations of plan along with any balance due by the patient.
Dealing With Conflicts
When there are loopholes in the way things work, there are increased chances of error. Sometimes a bill may be sent out to a patient who has already paid the bill. The reasons for the same could be a miscommunication with insurance. To keep things organized, you should simply send out the statements to address the problem effectively.
Keep Your Patients Informed About the Policies
It is important to give patients a clear understanding of the policies related to your practice. Before the treatment starts, a financial agreement must be signed that states the responsibilities of patients and when the payment is expected. Any kind of changes made in the policy should further be communicated with the patients.
So, let’s start working on these tips and see how you can expand your practice’s bottom line.
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