Any dental practice must focus on all areas of operations and not just care and service. More importantly, the dental team needs to have a firm grasp of RCM, or revenue cycle management. This helps the practice to stay sustainable and profitable. Timely and accurate dental billing is imperative to attaining positive cash flows. A practice needs to consider dental billing automation as part of its growth strategy.
There are times when a practice can lag when it comes to dental billing due to a crunch in resources or a lack of time. In addition, dental billing comes with costs and takes up more time than planned. The team also needs to chase patients for making payments, and this can be a challenging task. Here is where dental billing automation can be an effective solution for the practice. An automated dental billing service can help save time and money, as well as improve business outcomes.
A sizable number of practices are still depending on outdated systems. A dependency on manual operations and postal services adds to the cost and is also not very accurate. If the practice switches to an automated dental billing system, there are multiple benefits that can be accrued.
The team can avoid wasting money on conventional modes of printing statements and sending by post, and alert patients of the pending dues through emails or electronic messages.
Automating patient billing services can be beneficial to the dental practice for several reasons, as below.
Dental billing can be cumbersome and stressful for the billing team. It takes time to manage dental billing, send patient statements, and then follow up with patients to clear pending dues. Costs can include mailing system fees, stamps, stationery, ink, etc.
The tedious task of billing can be delegated to highly skilled resources from the dental team. But this can be detrimental to the practice, as other critical tasks would have to be managed by others. With dental billing automation, the practice can help speed up the billing process considerably. This helps in saving time for the dental team and also improves accuracy.
The automated dental billing software selected by the practice must sync with the existing practice management software. The team can opt for a monthly flat fee that can become a big money-saver. It can also help to save resource time that was usually spent on routine tasks such as printing and mailing of patient billing statements, as well as follow-up calls. This ensures there are no extra follow-ups or time spent on calls or emails.
Billing for services rendered and reimbursement by the insurance company are interrelated. There are chances that an insurance estimate for a patient is not accurate, and the practice needs the insurance company to make payments that can then enable the team to ascertain the patient's balance.
On receiving payment from the insurance company, the team can check for any balance payment that needs to be made by the patient. If there is a balance, the software reaches out to the patient automatically. Since the software is in sync with the PMS, the amounts mentioned in the follow-up messages match the patient’s balance in the PMS. Hence, dental billing automation leads to accurate patient billing and more effective follow-ups.
Automated dental billing software also has a backup of the insurance payment posting and claim payment notations in the PMS. If a patient responds with a query of why a balance payment is pending, the patient can be told about a notation left in the PMS by the insurance company of the balance amount payable.
Selecting dental billing software for a practice does not just save time and money. It can also affect the relationship with the patient. When the dental practice switches to patient billing software, the team can email all regular patients about the new software being adopted by the practice.
Patients can be updated about outreaches that will now reach them through emails and text messages. The team can send prompts to patients about dues payable, and payments can be made through cards or digital wallets. Patients can thus receive an accurate and personalised payment experience. Billing software solutions also permit patients to see
their transaction history with the practice on the patient billing portal.
The billing process involves several steps, and these include claims, coding, insurance, and compliance. On completion of billing, the team needs to follow up with patients. These steps increase the probability of errors and delays.
When the practice introduces robust billing software, the scenario changes completely. It enables the timely completion of billing processes without compromising accuracy. A complex and cumbersome process gets standardised, and steps such as eligibility verification and claims submission happen faster.
The software systems can review claims through algorithms just before all claims are sent to the insurance company for payment. This aids in faster reimbursements from the insurance company while lowering the chances of claim denials. The load on the dental team gets reduced. They get additional time to focus on delivering quality care to patients and not just on paperwork and patient details.
When the dental team must manually undertake all billing processes, there is a high chance of mistakes in claim submissions to the insurance company. These errors are a primary cause of claims being rejected by the insurance organisation. An absence of accurate patient data, wrong usage of codes, and incomplete patient information can give rise to frequent claim denials.
Repeated errors and denials cost the practice time and money that can be easily prevented through automation. A robust software system confirms data accuracy in real time and
speeds up the billing process. It ensures accuracy in coding and patient insurance eligibility and detects forms that have incomplete information.
Automation can have a direct impact on the cash flow of the dental practice. Manual billing by the dental team can delay claims submissions and even payment denials from the insurance organisation due to errors in form submission. While such incidents impact cash flows, they can be prevented by opting for an automated billing process.
When a dental practice combines dental billing automation with expertise, it improves efficiency and lowers the chances of claim denials. Moreover, diligently selected billing software reduces human effort and sends reminders to patients and insurance companies within a stipulated time frame, which results in positive cash flows for the dental practice.
