When you started your dental practice, of course you needed to have education and qualifications for clinical treatment. However, there is something you may not have learned in the classroom or in the operatory that can greatly impact whether your practice is successful—dental billing.
You don’t have to become an expert yourself, but being familiar with this part of running your practice can help you reach your financial goals and have a lucrative business.
What Is Dental Billing?
Simply put, dental billing is collecting payment from insurance companies and patients for dental work performed at a practice. Without this process, the dentist, assistants, hygienists, and front desk staff wouldn’t get paid, and the practice would quickly fail financially.
Getting the correct amount from both of these sources (insurance and patient) is important. Getting it wrong can lead to dissatisfied patients, loads of paperwork and time on the phone, or even fraud charges. Needless to say, you need to know that your practice is handling dental billing properly.
How Does Dental Insurance Billing Work?
A huge part of bringing in revenue for dental practices is working with insurance companies and collecting payment from them. However, this entails a whole process in itself! Essentially, to receive payment from the insurance company, you need to verify that the patient is a customer and that their information is correct. Then, when you file claims under that information, they should approve the payment and send it to your practice.
As you might imagine, to successfully complete this process, it helps to have someone who knows what insurance companies are looking for in the claims forms and how to deal with them.
What Are the Steps for Dental Billing?
If you want to be paid on time by both the patient and the insurance company, you must follow these crucial steps:
- Gather the patient’s insurance information, such as the group and policy number, contact information for the insurance company, and more, as the appointment is being scheduled.
- Reach out to the dental insurance company prior to the appointment to confirm the validity of the information for the patient.
- Find out the co-payment amount(s) based on the insurance plan the patient has.
- When treatment is decided and performed, collect the co-payment from the patient and file an insurance claim with their provider for services rendered.
- Check with the insurance company to confirm that the claim will be paid on time.
- Get paid!
Even if you don’t personally deal with insurance in your day, you should have at least a basic understanding of how it works. Having someone who navigates the world of insurance and billing with ease can help you have more financial security in your practice.
About Dental Support Specialties
Dental Support Specialties is a remote administrative services company for dental practices throughout the United States. In addition to general practices, we also serve periodontal and oral surgery practices. Our experienced professionals have worked with various dental insurance companies and can make the claims and payment processes as smooth as possible. To learn more about how we can help your practice, contact us.