The Art of Dental Billing: Best Practices To Focus On

A dentist doing a procedure to his patient with her assistant on a dental clinic

Complex and challenging are the words commonly used to describe dental billing. From verifying insurance coverage to submitting claims and following up on denials, many steps are involved to support a dental office’s profitability. However, you can master the art of dental billing with the right strategies and best practices shown in this article. At Synapse, we implement effective revenue cycle management strategies and help you confidently navigate the world of dental billing to rise above its complexities.

Top 5 Best Practices in Dental Billing

Below are our top 5 dental billing tips and best practices you can implement in your office to keep your revenue cycle healthy and consistent.

  • Focus on pre-authorization: This helps to cover the prescribed procedures before the services are rendered. As a result, the written advance approval for the planned service keeps patients updated on their expected co-pay amount and contributes to effectively planning the treatment.
  • Implement a streamlined dental billing process: The dental billing process requires a systematic approach that can be technical and detailed. However, if you have the right dental billing strategy in place, your practice will run smoothly, enhancing collections while keeping overhead costs low.

You can accomplish this by assigning roles and responsibilities to each person on the dental team and ensuring you have efficient billing experts. Taking support from an outsourced dental billing company can free up your time to connect with patients, increase treatment plan acceptance, set objectives, and more. Most importantly, you need to clearly understand each step in the dental billing process.

  • Follow-up on Accounts Receivable: Avoid cash flow issues with timely follow-up of claims. You must initiate a follow-up process if an insurance company hasn’t paid a claim within 30 days.

This includes checking out the reason for claim denials, identifying missing information, assigning the right codes to the claims, and resubmitting the claim. With Synapse, we implement effective A/R follow-up strategies to prevent further late payments or claim denials. Through our highly trained and experienced accounting experts, your A/R follow-up process may look like this – initial evaluation of the policies, analysis and prioritizing which carrier has not paid, and finally following up with the patients for payments.

  • Update your dental software: Remove obstacles to payment collection or the need for manual billing tasks with your dental billing software. A few taps on their smartphone will get them to pay their dental bills. In return, you’re set up for steady growth and patient satisfaction. By updating your software, your patients can easily navigate the payment process while feeling secure through HIPAA-compliant messages or texts.
  • Invest in training: Given the ever-changing dental insurance regulations, your staff’s dental education must remain relevant and up to date through online courses or attending conferences. Your dental team needs to perform at optimal levels, which means they need to constantly enhance their efficiency and streamline the billing process. Training is a great avenue to keep the team abreast of the latest developments in dental insurance education.

Synapse: Your Innovative Dental Billing Solutions

We go beyond just getting the job done. Creating sustainable progress that will land you into success is our top priority. Our dental team delivers the full suite of revenue cycle management that is HIPAA-compliant. If you wish to discuss how we can help you implement these best practices, let’s talk via email at dentalsales@synhs.com  or call us at (844) 384-753.