Insurance billing in your dental practice often proves to become forth as an extremely complicated thing. There are many patients who come across issues with their bills either being very expensive or showing unexpected balances. Billing errors in any dental practice are quite common. Fixing billing errors can be a very tiring process. It requires an expert’s assistance to understand and fix billing errors. When you hire a Dental Billing and Collection Company, you not only minimize the chances of errors in your billing process but also improve the patient experience.
Dealing with billing errors in your practice
Since the process of billing involves multiple parties, chances of errors occurring are quite high. Be it an inaccurate code or a mistyped value. Regardless of the reason, it is very important to monitor your bills and EOB forms.
Balance billing– Balance billing can definitely get your practice in trouble and make your patients furious. It is the process of billing a patient for costs over and above their deductible, coinsurance, copayment and the amount the insurer is obligated to pay. When a balance remains even after these payments and the patient is billed for the same, problems can definitely arise.
Duplicate billing– It is one of the most common billing mistakes that practices commit. It is very easy for a duplicate billing to occur for a process. Duplicates usually occur at the time when a patient and doctor analyze the same treatment or procedure for a patient.
Issues in verifying patient’s insurance coverage– The insurance coverage of a patient can vary at any time, even for regular patients. Therefore, it is important that the provider verifies the member’s eligibility every single time services are offered. Providers who do not assess the patient insurance coverage before serving them are likely to have the claims denied. Claim denial can be very expensive and difficult to deal with. So, it is important to check coverage before the service. This prevents delayed claim payments in the future.
If your practice submits a claim without checking the patient’s coverage, the claim will be denied. To prevent such errors, you should always keep your staff informed about verifying patient eligibility in the initial stages and also investigate the causes of claim denials when they occur.
Mismatched or Outdated billing codes– A claim may be denied if a wrong or mismatched code is entered. To prevent revenue loss, it is very important for practices to check and understand the new billing protocols and how they may affect billing. The treatment code and diagnosis code should always be reviewed to make sure they match.
Including incorrect patient data– Insurance firms rely on the correct data to find your patients in their databases. Even a misspelling on a patient’s name can lead to a claim denial.
The first thing you can do is to have the patient check their records before they come in for an appointment. This opportunity can also be used to get additional information related to insurance. Also, cross-check your claim with the patient’s records. It will help in catching the subtle errors easily.
So, these are some common errors that your practice must avoid. This will eventually improve the practice’s cash flow along with a streamlined operation that multiplies your chances of surviving in today’s competitive landscape.
