Your patients rely on your dental office’s ability to verify their insurance to ensure the services they receive are covered. Unfortunately, if this essential task ” falls through the cracks,” it may mean your patients are forced to pay for their services rather than having their insurance foot the bill.
While this may not seem like a big deal to your dental practice (after all, you get paid no matter what), it can have adverse consequences. For example, having to pay for services that should be paid by insurance can result in a poor patient experience and, over time, if this happens often, it may harm your practice’s reputation.
Since insurance verification is so important to your dental practice, you need to make sure it is done properly and effectively. Keep reading to learn more.
The Importance of Dental Insurance Verification
The purpose of insurance verification in a dental practice is to determine if your patient is eligible to receive coverage for a needed service. While this is something that should be checked daily, it often falls through the cracks, leaving patients without the coverage needed for required dental practices.
You must be confident a patient is covered for a service before it is rendered. If you don’t do this, your practice may get in trouble and must explain what happened to the patient. This is when patient experience is impacted, leading to hits to your dental practice reputation.
Usually, there is a reason behind these types of verification mistakes. For example, the person processing the insurance may think the patient had a different insurance provider, or the patient may be confused. Unfortunately, these types of mistakes can lead to significant, long-term costs for the patient and practice.
Should You Outsource Insurance Verification for Your Dental Practice?
Are you working hard to build and grow your dental practice? If so, it may be time to consider outsourcing your insurance verification. Doing this will help you save your office and team a lot of time.
If you aren’t tasked with insurance verification, it means your office staff can focus on other administrative duties. It will also ensure you and your patient have the insurance provider’s verification to move forward with the planned procedure.
When you outsource this task, you can feel confident that experienced professionals will take over. Along with providing insurance verification services, the company you hire will also help with proper coding for bills, which will reduce denied claims that cost your office time and money.
Outsourcing insurance verification in your dental office means insurance claims will be processed and finalized in a timely manner, mistakes will be reduced, and you and your patience will have confidence that the service being rendered is covered.
Improving the Insurance Verification Process at Your Dental Practice
There’s no question that insurance verification is an important part of any dental practice. While this is true, it can also pose several issues. For many offices, outsourcing these services is a smart solution that will pay off in the long run.