Managing dental insurance verification in your practice is time consuming and can be a source of great frustration for everyone—including your staff, patients, and practice’s bank balance. Being prepared with the knowledge and tools to overcome any challenges presented by insurance companies is a necessity for getting claims paid the first time around. The submission, follow-up, and verification of insurance benefits, account reviews, and statements are such tedious tasks, and they are usually the first things that get pushed to the side while teams focus on in-house patient care. Aging reports can spiral very rapidly if solid systems are not in place and worked on consistently. Let Dental Support Specialties assist your practice with proven, streamlined insurance and aging reports systems to keep your cash flowing, patients and team happy, and treatments scheduled.
Dental Insurance Verification
We Make Insurance Billing Problems Disappear
What is Dental Insurance Verification?
Dental insurance verification is the process of communicating with dental insurance companies regarding a patient’s benefits and claims, usually through phone calls. It starts by collecting your patient’s insurance plan information as they schedule their appointment. Using this information, their benefits are confirmed with the company, ensuring that they are indeed customers and the available benefits they have for the calendar year. This step should be done before the patient comes for their visit because if they have questions about pricing and insurance coverage, your team can answer them precisely and correctly. After treatment has been performed, the insurance claim must be filled out clearly and accurately and submitted to the company. A follow-up call is often required to complete timely insurance payment.
The Benefits of Dental Insurance Verification
When you take the necessary steps for dental insurance verification, you avoid problems in the billing claims and payment processes. In other words, if you want to be paid on time and as efficiently as possible, verification is a must!
Commonly, dental offices face many challenges and issues when trying to handle dental insurance verification on their own, including the following:
- Not enough time or staff members to talk to insurance companies for hours
- Potentially poor front desk customer service with divided attention
- Frustrated patients about surprise fees
- Growing insurance aging report and unclear indications of your practice’s financial well-being
- Inaccurate patient insurance plan information
The good news is that you and your in-office team don’t have to take on this process, which will save you time, money, frustration, damage to your practice’s reputation, and patient attrition.
How We Can Help with Dental Insurance Verification
With Dental Support Specialties submitting your insurance claims and completing regular follow-ups, you can rest easy knowing that insurance payments will be as consistent as your cash flow. Your patients will appreciate the efficiency and accuracy with which your practice handles their benefits. This will reflect positively on your practice and aid in word-of-mouth referrals among your patient's co-workers who carry the same PPO plan.
Instead of catching patients off-guard by an unexpected deductible, copay, or fee from your practice, our team can help cut down on this frustration by making sure your patients are fully informed about what they will owe out-of-pocket before treatment begins to avoid any unpleasant surprises. When necessary, we can work with unsatisfied patients and find a solution that is agreeable for both them and the practice.
Making sure that your insurance aging report is stable and insurance collections are up-to-date has a huge impact on your bottom line. We can put systems in place to monitor and ensure that you are collecting insurance payments owed to you in a timely and consistent fashion. Don't let your hard-earned dollars sit on a report; we will put those earnings in your pocket where they belong.
Patients change insurance policies all the time, insurance companies change what their plans cover year by year as well, and this is the kind of information you and your team need to know. Our insurance experts can follow up and double-check your patients’ benefits to make sure everything in your system is accurate and quickly relay any changes in their benefits to your team.
Dental Insurance Verification FAQs
Do You Verify Dental Insurance for Specialty Offices?
Yes, currently, we work mainly with general dental, periodontal, and oral surgery practices and can verify dental insurance benefits as well as submit claims for any of these types of offices. Regardless of whether you have a family practice or a specialty office, if your practice takes on unique cases or regularly provides less common treatment that requires specialty insurance codes, don’t worry. We can handle these situations with expertise and ease.
Which Dental Software Programs Do You Use?
At DSS, our team can work within any software suite your practice uses and are familiar with all kinds of dental insurance codes. Whether your practice uses Dentrix, EagleSoft, OpenDental, or any other brand of software, we can go into your system with little to no effort on your part. We are HIPAA compliant, which means your patients’ information is perfectly safe with our team. As a result, you can trust that claims are verified, filed, and paid correctly without changing how your practice operates on a daily basis.
When Do You Verify Dental Insurance Benefits?
Whenever possible, we like to verify dental insurance well in advance of a patient’s appointment. We usually complete verification about 72 to 48 hours prior to the patient’s visit for two reasons. First, if the patient’s information is invalid or incorrect, we have time to contact the patient and resolve the issue by getting accurate information. Second, we be thorough and get a full breakdown of their benefits and inform your team. With this level of detail, you are prepared to estimate your patient’s out-of-pocket costs with precision, lowering the risk of surprise fees later.
Why Should I Outsource Dental Insurance Verification?
At first glance, your front desk team may seem like the perfect staff members to take on dental insurance verification. However, being on the phone for hours with insurance companies can not only interfere with their ability to interact with patients in the office but also negatively influence their emotional and mental state. To leave a positive impression on your patients, your front desk team must greet, check in, and check out patients with a friendly, professional demeanor, which can be difficult while being distracted with a phone call with insurance. Without these time-consuming, tedious tasks, they can focus on caring for your patients and improving their overall experience.