A dental practice needs to spend time and effort money on patient statements. Depending on the size of the practice, the billing team may have a specialist to print, e-mail, and manage the logistics of bills and patient statements.
Some practices outsource billing, claims, and recoveries to dental patient statement services specialists. More than just sending patient statements, a practice might also invest resources in the design and presentation of the statements to ensure that they are easy to comprehend and trigger the patient to act accordingly.
Outsourcing dental patient statement services makes imminent business sense as accurate patient statements can impact revenue in multiple ways as follows:
The primary task of the patient statement is to make sure that the practice gets paid for services rendered. The practice incurs expenses for keeping it running. Once the patient has completed treatment, the practice needs to bill the patient and inform the insurance provider about the procedures and services completed.
The insurance company conveys the services and costs covered by the patient’s policy. Thereafter, the outstanding balance needs to be recovered by the practice and herein the patient statement acts as a key element in the recovery process.
Most importantly, an accurate statement needs to be sent promptly after receiving treatment. Reminders need to be sent through emails or text messages to speed up collections and reduce the owed amount completely.
For all the treatments and procedures that a patient receives, the amount due to the practice by the patient needs to be made known. The statements must clearly outline what the patient owes to the practice and needs to minimize any doubt or confusion. The dental patient statement thus plays an important role.
They need to be simple, accurate, and easy to understand. All relevant details such as services received, the date of receipt, balance dues, and options for making payment need to be well-designed and displayed. These statements can help increase the patient experience through personalized print or electronic statements.
The team must avoid using complex jargon in the statements. The team also needs to safeguard financial transparency as this augments the trust between the patient and the practice. The practice can thus get faster payments which in turn improves the financial health of the practice.
Every patient desires an insurance provider based on needs and offers the best possible benefits at the best price. Since dental care is costly, a patient is likely to keep costs to a minimum.
A patient statement from the practice can help to evaluate the effectiveness and coverage of the insurance company as it helps to track the breakdown of expenses of what insurance has covered and the balance due by the patient.
The statement can thus act as a confidence measure by building trust between the patient and the practice.
Once a patient receives a statement for the procedures and services received, the patient knows how much amount is pending after the insurance component has been accounted for.
How to pay for the treatment is the next step. Patient statements are vital in briefing the customers on how to complete the payments. Each practice may offer different methods of payment. While there may be practices that only accept payment in cheques, many also accept credit cards as well as other payment methods. Offering online payment options is also important as there is a growing segment of customers who are comfortable with online financial transactions.
Payments by patients form a sizable chunk of revenue for a dental practice and a critical source of revenue. There needs to be careful consideration as to what information must be put into a dental patient statement and how it needs to be formatted. A patient needs to know what services were rendered and the financial outlay for the same. The patient statement must mention all amounts due and all possible options available for making payment at the convenience of the patient.
