For any dental practice, revenue is key for a sustainable operation. The dental care industry is challenging and complex; multiple factors can help maintain and boost revenues.
While delivering quality care and service to patients, a practice must pay heed to dental insurance verification. This is vital for the operational viability and financial success of the practice.
Insurance verification is a key driver for revenue cycle management and the reasons why it is critical are as below:
A fundamental driver for a seamless and continuous revenue pipeline is a streamlined process that ensures precise insurance verification. The dental team needs to verify all policy details of the patient upfront as this helps to prevent billing delays and subsequent claim denials.
A timely and proactive approach to verification helps to alleviate a possible risk of revenue loss due to denied claims as well as enabling timely reimbursement from insurance companies for services rendered.
Insurance verification is not only about building trust and improving patient interaction. An enhanced patient experience can also help boost the practice's revenue pipeline.
When the dental team verifies policy details before treatment commences, the patient can receive a cost estimate for services rendered in advance. This enables a patient to understand the final liability upfront and any out-of-pocket expenses that need to be borne by the patient. This helps to avoid any unpleasant surprises or potential disputes when a patient receives the bill.
A precise insurance verification process helps to drive productivity and operational efficiency. A dental practice can leverage automation software and other technological advancements to speed up the verification process. This aids in minimizing errors and improving team productivity.
The team can also focus on care and delivering a better experience to the patient instead of being tied down with administrative hassles of manual processes.
Insurance policy details need to be verified in advance as this helps to ensure patient eligibility before treatment commences. Successful verification also aids in boosting the claims submissions rate and lowering denied claims. Thus, a practice can ensure quicker reimbursements from the insurance companies as well as payments from patients. This helps to boost the revenue and sustainability of the dental practice.
A dental practice can seek the services of seasoned professional companies to undertake the responsibility of insurance verification and billing services. These specialists are abreast of the latest developments in the billing and verification process and thus a practice can benefit from negligible claim denials thereby boosting timely reimbursements from insurance companies.
A practice can deploy revenue cycle management software that can considerably enhance the insurance verification rate. Automating the verification process aids in reducing human errors by accurately verifying patient insurance coverage details instantly.
The software can also check for a variation in insurance coverage automatically and hence the practice can stay updated with the latest information. The software can recognize potential problems with the insurance plan before the patient's appointment. These issues can then be addressed by the practice and thus reduce the possibility of claim denials thereby improving the revenue cycle management process.
Verifying the insurance coverage of a patient in advance enables the dental practice to determine if the patient is covered for services and procedures recommended. It also helps to estimate the total patient obligation for payment. A patient when informed of the estimated amount of out-of-pocket expenses is more likely to plan for payments on time. The practice also receives speedy reimbursement from the insurance company when verification is accurate. All these factors contribute to a healthy revenue cycle management.
