How Dental Outsourcing Benefits Your Practice

Hi, this is Amber Darst, Dental Insurance Coordinator for Managed Outsource Solutions. I am gonna be speaking with you today about outsourcing your dental back office duties and how it can really benefit your practice.

Just as other medical practices, running a dental practice involves much more than just treating the patients. You need to hire and manage front office staff, ensure timely billing, handle accounts receivable and payable, and so on. This is really time- and labor-intensive. Practice revenue is an important consideration and for this, your dental billing and claim submission must be flawless and timely. This is where dental outsourcing becomes a significant consideration. Outsourcing dental verification, billing, claim-related tasks and certain administrative duties such as accounts receivable management and patient collections, is the practical solution that would benefit you as a dentist, your staff as well as your patients. With an experienced company taking care of dental billing-related activities, you can gain greater control over your practice while all the above-mentioned duties are performed more efficiently. Once free from busy work with the support of a dental outsourcing company, dentists and their front office staff can spend more quality time with patients, build stronger relationships and engage in treatment planning.

You may be asking so what all can you outsource?

There are actually several different services you can outsource. Virtual front desk, insurance verifications, appointment scheduling, and dental billing are all duties that can be successfully outsourced. Hiring dental billing and insurance specialists that fulfill all your practice management requirements has become the need of the hour to reduce your workload and focus on core tasks.

So let’s discuss a few of the most popular services in a lot more detail

Dental Billing

So billing processes related to dental insurance are challenging and require great attention to detail, and so many dental practices choose to outsource these tasks to reliable billing companies. Error-free claim submissions require expertise and knowledge in dental insurance policies and regulations.

Dental billing services range from patient enrollment and checking patient eligibility for treatments to submitting dental claims and providing systematic follow-up.

A few key points to consider how dental billing outsourcing helps is:

• Speeds up the payment process
• Reduces billing error resolving and submitting clean claims
• It saves money and time in training your in-house staff with changing billing and coding updates
• You have access to services from experts with managerial skills in place for working accounts receivable
• Benefit from the services of experts professionally trained for collecting payments
• Improve the cash flow of your dental practice
• Collect a better percentage from the outstanding A/R
• And avoid payroll taxes and related problems due to late payments

Also when it comes to specialists such as OR surgeons dental billing professional stay abreast with the constantly evolving dental insurance guidelines. They are experts at establishing the medical necessity of dental procedures and applying the appropriate CDT codes along with necessary ICD codes to bill for the services rendered by dental specialists.

Another service that is commonly outsourced is Insurance Verification.

Often, dental insurance checks make up at least half of the income of most dental practices. Failing to check patient’s eligibility is one of the main reasons for denied dental claims. This could also affect office collections, leading to high accounts receivable.

Verifications of eligibility is crucial for new as well as existing patients, as patient benefits may change unknowingly if their employment changes or if there is a change within their existing insurance policy. Professional dental insurance verification companies assign experts to check and verify the patient’s insurance coverage and benefits before they are treated. Such companies contact the insurance company directly and verify all the benefits including the verification of the type of plan and fee schedule, effective coverage dates, maximums and deductibles, treatment history, implant and orthodontic coverages, missing tooth clause, claim submission details, coverage percentage by category and frequencies, limitations, and exclusions.

Here are a few questions to consider when choosing a dental outsourcing company

• What efficient systems are there in place to submit error-free claims?
• Do you assign a dedicated team and project manager for each client?
• What is your pricing model like?
• What dental software do you use to perform verifications?
• How long have you been serving dental clients?
• And how do you differ from competitors?

Managing all the dental insurance verification workload in-house can affect your practice workflow. Instead, why not outsource to a professional dental outsourcing company such as Outsource Strategies International? You can stay assured of timely and accurate insurance verifications, maximum reimbursement and minimal denials.

And that is it for this episode.

I hope this helps. But always remember that documentation and a thorough knowledge of payer regulations and guidelines is critical to ensure accurate reimbursement for the procedures performed.

Thanks for listening in!