Every professional is keen to grow and expand a business and dentists are no different. With growth, however, come challenges that are not always easy to manage. Especially when the responsibilities equally increase across core and non-core areas.
Here is where outsourcing can help a dental practice. Outsourcing enables a practice to focus on key areas while other generic but critical tasks can be managed by outsourcing agencies who are specialists in the respective field.
Some commonly outsourced tasks and functions include:
Billing and Coding
Billing and coding processes that are related to dental insurance can be fairly daunting and they need a keen eye for details. Claim submissions that are perfect in totality need knowledge and expertise in dental insurance. This is because policies, codes, and regulations are dynamic and keep evolving.
These services range from eligibility and enrollment to claims submissions and follow-up. Outsourcing these services enable the practice to
Appointment scheduling
Managing and handling patient appointments is a laborious task and if the staff cannot keep pace with the volume of calls and appointments, the revenue and billing of the practice can take a hit.
Slow or delayed response times can lose potential business or even affect the reputation of the practice. Before a patient walks into the clinic, patients must be satisfied with how calls are handled and the ease of making or rescheduling an appointment.
Appointment scheduling can be outsourced to professionals who can help to streamline the call flows, maintain an effective scheduling & follow-up system; as well as keep patients happy before they come for a service. Outsourcing helps the practice to:
Insurance Verification
Payouts from insurance companies constitute a major chunk of a dental practice. This makes it imperative to check and verify patient eligibility. This is a key reason for the denial of claims thus leading to collection issues and even a loss of patient goodwill.
Eligibility verification is a must for all patients as benefits can change with a change in plan or a change in an existing insurance policy. The processes that are involved in verification include the calculation of patient benefits, co-payments, and more.
Outsourcing dental insurance verification ensures that all aspects of the patient’s insurance coverage and benefits have been validated before treatments. These outsourced partners approach insurance companies directly to verify the benefits with accurate reports.
Outsourced services include verification of plan types, fee schedules coverage dates, treatment history, coverage amounts, and more. By outsourcing such services, a dental practice can
IT Services
A practice might be too small to warrant the need for an in-house IT team or employee. An outsourced IT provider enables the practice to focus on patient care while the IT systems are efficiently configured and systems running smoothly.
Based on the size of the practice, outsourcing can help streamline all the technical operations at a lowered cost without compromising quality.
The dental practice needs to be aware and comply with all the respective regulations that are binding it. Outsourced IT professionals can effectively steer the compliance ask and help the practice to adhere to respective compliance obligations, prevent security breaches, handle sensitive data, etc.
Regular IT requirements such as backup, firewalls, common security vulnerabilities, warranties, etc. can be effectively managed by outsourced IT professionals.
Marketing & Design
Patients generally do not talk about dentists or dental work in social settings. To stabilize and grow the business, the practice needs to market its services.
Some of the requirements can be the creation, design, and promotion of marketing collateral or social media campaigns. A professional agency or even an independent marketing and design professional will be able to effectively manage all the requirements of the practice.
