Best Dental Billing Practices

Hi, this is Amber Darst, Solutions Manager here at MOS, and today I’ll be discussing some of the best practices and strategies to ensure that your billing operations are efficient, accurate and also ultimately contribute to the success and profitability of your dental practice.

Dental insurance billing is one of the most crucial operations for any dental office. It’s not just about getting paid. It’s about getting paid on-time and ensuring that you’re accurately compensated for the services you provide.

00:33 Best Dental Billing Practices

To help us navigate the complexities of dental insurance billing, we’ve gathered some insights and best practices that you can implement in your practice today.

• Let’s start out with our first best practice: make it easy for patients to pay. Providing diverse payment methods can make a significant difference in collecting payments promptly.Your patients have varying preferences, so ensure that you offer both online and traditional payment options. Whether its credit and debit cards, an online payment portal, cash or auto pay options, offering a variety of options will make it convenient for the patients to settle their bills and can significantly reduce the payment delays.
• Next, we have focus on pre-authorizations: This is a process where the payer authorizes coverage for specific dental procedures before they are performed. Certain dental plans require dentists to obtain preauthorization for specific treatments like major procedures or scaling and root planning. This step helps both you and your patients by providing clarity on how much the insurance will cover and the expected co-pay amount, contributing to effective treatment planning.
• Next is implementing a streamlined dental billing process: Efficiency is key when it comes to dental billing. Assign clear roles and responsibilities within your dental team and consider seeking support from a dental billing service.This allows an expert to handle the intricate aspects of billing, from claim submission to follow up and appeals. Having a clear understanding of each step in the dental billing process and staying updated with technology and coding changes can further streamline youroperations.
• Next up we have managing accounts receivable: Timely follow up on claims is crucial to avoid cash flow issues. If a claim hasn’t been paid within 30 days, initiate a follow up process, investigate the reason for the claim denial, identify any missing information, correct coding errors, and resubmit the claim promptly. Reliable dental billing outsourcing companies can implement effective accounts receivable followup strategies, preventing late payments and claim denials.
• Last, we have staying up to date with coding changes: Assigning incorrect codes can lead to claim delays and denials. There are typically CDT code changes that occur annually. It’s essential for your billing and coding staff or your dental billing partner to stay updated with these changes and guidelines to ensure accurate billing.

I hope this has helped you gain insight into the best dental insurance billing practices. Remember, an efficient billing system not only ensures that you get paid on time, but also contributes to the growth and profitability of your dental practice.

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Thanks for listening in.