How to avoid the four most common Dental Billing errors?

Even though plenty of dental billing tools are available in the market, dental billing errors still occur! Some errors are caused by simple human negligence while some happen due to lack of knowledge. Some common dental billing errors do not just impact patient satisfaction rate negatively but dental practices’ revenue generation as well. Dental practices need to learn how to avoid these general billing errors to stay on top of their business. This article will discuss the four most common dental billing errors and how dental services providers can prevent them! 

Four Most Common Dental Billing Errors

1. Missing or Incorrect Patient Information: This is one of the most common dental billing errors. As per the reports, a huge percentage of dental bills are presented with either missing or wrong patient information such as patient name, address, date of birth, etc. Simple negligence or not verifying patient and other information during bill preparation can cause this type of error. 
2. Use of incorrect Dental Code: This type of billing error occurs when billing staff is either unaware of the latest or updated dental codes or not experienced enough to code a specific dental procedure or service accurately. Claims submitted with incorrect dental codes are likely to get denied straightaway. This will not only hamper the revenue generation but the image of dental practice as well. 
3. Bundling errors: Some dental procedures and charges need to be bundled together under a single dental code. If billing staff has entered these charges separately instead of bundling them together, it will increase the bill amount unnecessarily. Also, it can cause claim delay or denial if proper supporting documents are not submitted to clarify the bundling of charges. 
4. Incorrect Claim information: Another common dental billing error is wrongly filled claim information such as incorrect policy number, subscriber ID, dentist’s name, address, NPI, and other details. As clean claims submission is extremely crucial to increase revenue generation, it’s vital for dental practices to make sure that the claim information is filled correctly before submitting the claim to the insurance company. 

How to avoid common dental billing errors?

• Outsource Dental billing services: The best and the easiest way to avoid all types of dental billing errors is by outsourcing the dental billing services. When a team of dental billing experts handles the entire billing process, it’s likely to have almost no errors. Dental practices can consider outsourcing their billing services to a reliable partner. Capline Dental Services is one such partner providing complete dental billing solutions. 
• Train billing staff: Dental practices can avoid common billing errors simply by giving proper and regular training to their in-house billing staff. The training can include the knowledge about dental codes, filling patients and other information correctly, and how to make attention to detail a daily task. Practices can also hire trained and experienced billing staff to avoid these simple mistakes. Skilled billing staff is likely to perform fewer mistakes in comparison to inexperienced staff. 
• Stay updated with Codes: Dental practices need to stay updated with the changes introduced to CDT codes. It will allow them to eradicate errors related to coding and the billing staff would be able to code dental procedures, services, and treatment accurately that will result in clean claims submission and eventually increased revenue. 
• Communicate with patients: Dental practices can establish a clear communication channel with their patients in order to avoid errors related to patient information. While filling in patient information, billing staff can simply communicate with the patient and cross-verify all the information. 
• In-house communication: Common dental billing errors as mentioned earlier in the article can be erased easily by creating a transparent in-house communication system. Transparent communication between front-end executives (generally the first point of contact when a patient visits) and billing staff is likely to remove common billing errors such as wrongly filled patient information. 

Capline keeps it simple and accurate when it comes to dental billing. The billing experts at Capline reduce the chances of billing errors to nil and submit clean claims on behalf of dental practices to increase their revenue.