At your dental office, you’re all too familiar with encouraging your patients to have healthy habits. You instruct them to brush and floss their teeth every day and come for an appointment at least every six months. They may question whether having this visit so often is really necessary, but you know it is!
When it comes to dental insurance verification for the patient, you may wonder whether it really needs to be performed before every appointment. If you want your payment from the insurance company to arrive on time, yes, it does! In this post, you’ll learn a little bit about the verification process and why this process should be done for each patient prior to every visit.
What Is Dental Insurance Verification?
The process of dental insurance verification is basically confirming the patient’s insurance policy status, coverage, and available benefits. Prior to the patient’s appointment, their insurance information is collected, and the insurance company is contacted to check that the information is correct. Confirming covered services and the amount of funds left in the patient’s annual maximum is also part of this process.
Overall, dental insurance verification can be tedious, but it is essential for your practice’s financial success. Without it, you would have substantially more instances of inaccurate information, denied claims, and delayed payments from the insurance companies. These costly mistakes could put a bustling dental practice on the brink of ruin.
Why Does Dental Insurance Verification Need to Be Done Before Every Visit?
At first glance, it seems like you could verify dental insurance benefits once a year and be good for any subsequent visits, right? Although benefits reset every January 1, insurance companies can make small changes to their policies on their own time and schedule during the year. Checking each patient’s benefits before every appointment makes sure that you have the correct information to share with the patient.
Unfortunately, any financial complications that come up for the patient will reflect poorly on your practice, even if the issue is with insurance. For example, if the percentage of coverage isn’t correct, you may have to follow up with the patient for additional payment. Needless to say, they won’t be happy with this kind of surprise! The damage to your practice’s reputation could cost you the patient. Plus, addressing this discrepancy takes valuable time that your team could use for other tasks.
In the end, just like when you tell your patients to do those healthy oral habits, the small amount of time it takes to verify insurance is minimal compared to the time it would take to correct the problem after the fact. So, make sure your dental office is verifying insurance before every visit for each patient!
About Dental Support Specialties
Starting in 2008, Dental Support Specialties has expanded to offer remote administrative support for dental practices around the country. Our staff can provide answering service, billing and insurance verification, and chart auditing, helping dental offices run more efficiently. Unlike other outsourcing companies, we can work directly in your software, and we are HIPAA compliant. Contact our team to learn more about what we can do for you.