Is it true that you can collect 100% of your money as a dental provider?
Well, yes, it is. And even getting a long way toward that goal is going to improve your revenue cycle by leaps and bounds. The question is: how do you do that?
Too many busy dental offices are struggling with poor collection rates. It has to do with a complicated insurance landscape, and other kinds of problems that get in the way of good collections – things that busy managers understand all too well.
Here are four of these big obstacles that we help with as we help dental practices recover more money for services rendered.
Co-Pays
First of all, the co-pay still applies to many dental insurance accounts. If you don’t get this at the time of service, it gets really confusing for the patient later on.
It’s important to stress to the patient that even though they’re paying the copay at the door, they will likely still have additional amounts that they will still need to pay later. This communication takes work, though – additional points of contact that too many offices skip.
Insufficient Billing Practices
The best billing systems take into account that the patient receives the bill with a significant delay from when they got services.
Patients don’t tend to be thinking about paying these bills at the time that they get them in the mail.
So even the best billing practices are facing an uphill battle, but if you think about it from the customer’s perspective and bill accordingly, you’re better able to manage your revenue cycle.
Allowed Amounts
This is a big one in the dental world. You might have a patient who is covered by insurance, but the insurance company only pays out a certain amount. Your charges may be double or even triple that amount. That’s confusing for the provider, and for the patient, in some cases.
There is a need to get on the ball before services are provided and look at contractual agreements through a very fine lens. Then you can figure out how to collect money above the allowed amounts in a patient’s insurance plan.
Services Changes
Experienced dentists know that they often don’t know what’s going to happen until they get inside someone’s mouth. There may be additional problems around an individual cavity, or a tooth slated for a root canal or extraction.
That, in turn, creates its own cascade of problems for revenue cycles and billing. If the dentist will need more time to address unanticipated issues, that’s going to cost the patient more money. That’s not to mention the work of scheduling and providing scheduling flexibility to address these issues.
Here’s the good news: all of these things are manageable with Dynamic Dental Solutions. We help busy dentist offices to collect more of what they bill! Talk to us about a better revenue cycle for the future.
