Dental Support Specialties Blog

If you are a planner by nature, you probably enjoy feeling as in control as possible. Sure, life can change quickly, and surprises can come up, but good planning and preparation can go a long way to give you peace of mind about the future. For example, do you have a good portion of your holiday shopping done already?

When it comes to billing dental insurance companies, doing some prework will not only spare you from experiencing preventable headaches but also save you valuable time and money. This preparatory effort may likely consist of either insurance verification and/or prior authorization. What exactly is the difference between these two concepts, and why are they important? Keep reading to find out!

When your patient comes in for treatment and needs to pay for the procedure, you want to provide more than just an educated guess. You can’t pick out a random dollar amount and hope you’re in the ballpark. Going blind in charging your patients can wreak havoc on your practice’s finances and reputation. That’s where an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) in dental billing can help you keep everything organized and everyone happy. As an office manager or owner of a dental practice, you need to not only be familiar with EOBs but also know how to use them to benefit your business and patients.

Every member of your team serves a purpose in your dental practice. Your dental assistant takes X-rays and helps you during procedures, your hygienist performs routine cleanings, and your front desk team checks patients in and out. They each have their area of expertise, but one expert who should be on your team and is often taken for granted is a dental billing specialist. What exactly does this role offer your practice? What does a dental billing specialist do? Keep reading to find out!

In any agreement or contract, both parties are responsible to do certain things. When you hire a home contractor, for example, they are obligated to complete the project, and you as the customer must pay them. In dentistry, you pledge to deliver outstanding care to your patients, and they pay you either through their insurance company or out-of-pocket. Obviously, in real life, this division of responsibilities can get more complicated.

Even when something is the patient’s responsibility, you and your dental office team may have to take extra steps to avoid delays in payment or complications in insurance claims. Keep reading to learn more about just four examples of patient billing responsibilities and what you may need to do to help make transactions smoother.

During the COVIDi-19 pandemic, the entire dental industry saw a dramatic staffing shortage, and this trend has mostly continued since. As a dental practice owner, you may have found it difficult to hire and retain employees, especially those who work the front desk. In desperation, you might have considered searching for anyone with insurance experience. However, is dental billing like medical billing?

One isn’t necessarily easier than the other, and while they share some similarities, they vary from each so much that you can’t afford to make mistakes or have someone jump from one to the other. In this post, you’ll learn why dental billing is unique and how you can solve this problem.

Everyone makes mistakes; however, some mistakes are more egregious and costly than others. Although putting in the wrong code for a dental insurance claim, for example, may seem like an innocent error, it can be considered unethical and even illegal!

Keep reading to learn more about unethical billing practices, why they matter, and how you can avoid them at your dental practice.

When you chose to become a dentist, you may have thought about the financial gain you could have, but you probably didn’t necessarily realize how much you’d need to understand about business and accounting to be successful. Well, the truth is that there is a way that you can stick mostly to the clinical side of your small business: you can outsource the billing process and accounts receivable recovery.

In this post, you’ll learn more about accounting and billing, why you may need support, and how outsourcing can benefit your practice.

Like it or not, choices have consequences. If your patient makes a poor decision, such as not brushing their teeth, the natural consequence is facing cavities, gum disease, and other oral problems like tooth loss. Although your patient may not initially want to brush their teeth, they ultimately should decide to do it to avoid these bad outcomes.

Verifying dental insurance is a choice that every dental practice should do, but what are the potential consequences of failing? What could happen if you don’t confirm a patient’s dental insurance information before filing claims? Keep reading to find out!

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.

In dental school, you studied and started to master the clinical side of being a dentist: you know the anatomy, treatments, technology, and more. By the time you finish dental school, you can feel ready to open your own practice! But you might not have learned the logistical part of running an office and working with dental insurance. If you aren’t familiar with dental insurance verification, for instance, your practice can struggle! Here are the basics you need to know about verification and the steps involved.