It doesn’t make sense. Your practice schedule is reasonably busy, and you have plenty of patients, but you still seem to be struggling financially. If you aren’t already verifying dental insurance, you should be! Mistakes in claims could be holding back payments you’ve earned, and taking care of verification beforehand can eliminate these costly mistakes. Don’t know how to do this process? Here are the basic steps!
Get Necessary Insurance Information
Whether your patient schedules their own appointment online or calls your office, you need to collect their insurance information at that time. You’ll need to know the insurance provider, the phone number for the company, the member ID number and group ID number, the member’s date of birth, and the name of the member’s employer. Accurate records of all this information are essential to verify so that later claims can be paid without delay or trouble.
Contact the Insurance Provider to Confirm the Patient’s Information
Once you have obtained the patient’s insurance information, you then must reach out to the company to make sure that everything is in order. Again, confirming the patient’s plan information will prevent hiccups with claims later in the billing process.
Unfortunately, getting in touch with an insurance company can involve being on the phone for an hour or more during busy times of the day, which is why you need to budget plenty of time for your front desk personnel to take care of this verification step.
Get a Full Breakdown of Benefits
Before disconnecting with the insurance company, be sure you get a full breakdown of the patient’s benefits as well as their maximum still available to them. After all, you never know exactly what procedure a patient may need!
Knowing about the patient’s benefits for all services in advance prepares you in case the patient requires additional treatment—you’ll already know how much their insurance will contribute to the total and how much the patient will pay out of pocket. That way, there are no unpleasant financial surprises like outstanding bills and follow-up collection calls.
Follow This Process Well Before the Appointment
As you can tell from the previous steps, the verification process is not something you should start the day of your patient’s appointment. It should begin at least two days prior to the visit, which should give you enough time to confirm information, call the patient if needed, and resolve any issues before they come in.
With this basic understanding of the insurance verification process, you can start to get your claims paid in a timelier manner, helping you see a more accurate financial picture of how your practice is doing.
About Dental Support Specialties
For more than 15 years, Dental Support Specialties has relieved countless dental practices by taking dental insurance verification off their shoulders. As an administrative service company that is fully HIPAA compliant, we can handle this step as well as answering incoming phone calls, billing issues, and chart auditing. To learn more about our team and company, reach out to us online here.