April 21, 2022
I myself have worked in a dental office. I know the pain of staffing shortages with a small team. It is exceedingly difficult when a team member is out of the office since there really is not an abundant number of team members in the dental office to help out when things get busy.
A typical private dental practice is going to have 2-3 front office team members. Between those team members, there is a never-ending list of tasks to be completed on a daily basis. The three main positions would be Appointment Coordinator, Treatment Coordinator, and Insurance Coordinator. One of these roles typically fills an Office Manager role as well. If one of those individuals is out of the office, whether it isbe due to sickness, vacation, extended leave or you are simply unable to find a qualified candidate to fill that role, it can cause chaos within the office. Your Appointment and Treatment Coordinator roles are your patient-facing roles, requiring those positions to constantly be filled immediately.
The Insurance Coordinator role typically does not become a top priority, since it is not necessarily a patient-facing role. However, that does not take away its importance as it is the way for the practice to get paid for services rendered. It is also the way for the practice to provide estimates to patients so they can have their treatment completed without such a high expense. So even though it is the easiest role to put on the back burner, it is still a particularly key role that needs to be filled.
Insurance verification and insurance billing can get out of hand very easily and quickly. The person handling it must have great attention to detail, as well as a clear understanding of the tasks needing to be completed.
Once the insurance plans, claims, and account ledgers get out of control, it is hard to get them back in order and can take months to fix. Instead of having that constant worry and struggle within your practice, outsourcing is the one way that you know you will always have someone keeping an eye on the details. Which include: verifying your patients, accurately building in insurance plans to your Practice Management Software, filing claims with proper narrative and attachments, posting payments to account ledgers to ensure proper accounting, working the outstanding claims so there is no delay in payment, and providing the additional information to insurance companies so the patients can get the benefits they are entitled to.
Do what you do best, and outsource the rest. - Peter F. Drucker
Not only is it the best solution for your team members, but it is also the best solution for your patients. You do not have to worry about the insurance falling through the cracks, or worrying whether or not you should write off the account due to an internal error or run the risk of losing a patient by making them upset with an unexpected expense.
Insurance is the one position in the office that it is simple to outsource. Not only will you get reimbursed in a timely manner, but you will also have standard processes that are being used across multiple practices. It creates a consistency with insurance that should be established within the dental practice. At Dentalogic, we provide our employees with an extensive amount of training. We are centralized in one location in Texas and focus on constant, open communication to ease the confusion that comes along with insurance.
If you decide that you would rather outsource your dental insurance verification, we can help with that too! Just fill out our Get Started form and we will be in touch!
