The Hidden Costs of Dental Billing: What Practices Aren’t Seeing
About 72% of the revenue of 65,000 dental practices in the U.S. goes to expenses, including staffing, marketing, and equipment. However, unknowingly, the biggest financial leak comes from inefficient billing. In fact, practices lose 5-10% of their revenue due to billing errors. It’s time that dental practitioners become aware of the hidden losses and save their bottom line before it’s too late.
In this blog, understand the hidden costs of dental billing that are plagued by inefficiency and learn how to turn losses into profits.
What is dental billing?
Dental billing refers to any activity that collects payment for dental services performed in your dental practice. The process ensures financial steadiness from insurance and/or patient payments. Correct reimbursement for services rendered affects every facet of your dental business and enhances patient satisfaction.
While it may be simple, your revenue cycle health relies on how efficiently and accurately your dental team completes the dental billing process.
Overview of the Dental Billing Process
Patient Registration
The billing staff should accurately verify insurance benefits, eligibility, and any pre-authorizations required for planned procedures.
Patient Appointment Scheduling
Insurance Verification
Coding
Claim Submission
Once approved, the insurance company disburses the agreed-upon portion of the treatment costs.
Payment Posting
This involves updating the patient’s account balance, reflecting the remaining amount owed or any credits that may apply.
Patient billing
Follow-Up and Denial Management
Then, you need to review denial reasons, take corrective actions to appeal denials and resubmit claims with necessary corrections.
The Silent Revenue Drain: What Practices Aren’t Seeing
A successful dental practice involves both crucial components: delivering excellent patient care and maintaining a healthy revenue cycle. And yet, dental offices fail to recognize the hidden price tag of inefficiencies in billing, unknowingly losing millions of dollars.
Around 80% of dental practices have financial concerns with the following billing challenges:
- Incorrect patient information
- Coding mistakes
- Failure to verify insurance coverage
- Missing or insufficient documentation
- Complicated insurance policies
- Lack of follow-up on denied claims
These issues can lead to revenue loss due to unpaid claims, potential compliance risks and legal penalties, and an overwhelmed staff consumed by managing collections and paperwork.
It highlights that the time spent remedying the financial impacts of inefficient billing could have been used to improve the patient experience, thus enhancing patient care. Read below how Synapse experts proved that accuracy in coding and billing is crucial to practice success.
Look Here: Synapse Boosted Client’s Revenues and Billing Compliance
During the initial review, Synapse found out that the Pain Management practice needed to strengthen the accuracy of their coding and billing. With Synapse’s help, the practice had access to highly trained and experienced staff that ensured every claim was accurately coded and billed.
As a result, they gained an 85.38% improvement rate from previous collections and an increase of $54,281.06 in average monthly collections or $651,372.72 in one year.
Connect with a Synapse expert so you can get a free consultation for your dental practice.
3 Things Practices Should Prioritize in Dental Billing
Your best allies in accurate and efficient dental billing are the following big three:
- Knowledge – Know your common errors. Be detail-oriented regarding dental billing, as small mistakes can lead to big losses. Remember to check for incorrect patient names and dates of birth, wrong address or contact information, incorrect payor IDs and policy numbers, or illegible handwritten documentation.
- Automation – Many digital tools are designed to simplify tedious and repetitive tasks in dental billing. Automation can help with real-time verification and automatic coding assistance. Meanwhile, electronic claims submissions can expedite insurance payments. Increase collections with automated payment reminders and online payment options.
- Training – A well-trained staff understands the intricate details of patient insurance policies and validates them with expertise. They calculate copays correctly and send claims to insurers with accurate codes. They are also up to date on the latest coding and billing procedures.
Ready to take control of your dental billing? Don’t let inefficiencies be the cause of your revenue drain. Outsource a trusted dental billing company like Synapse that can deliver these big three and more!
Synapse Dental Billing has a more than 25-year track record of success, specializing in managing industry-specific regulations, coding guidelines, and a robust technology infrastructure. Our Synapse billing staff is committed to increasing your revenue through accurate and efficient processes and billing technology.
Book a free consultation to see how our highly competent teams can transform your dental office’s billing operations.
Sources
Daly, R. (2019, January 21). Missing, Lagging Charges Lead Provider Revenue Concerns. HFMA.
https://www.hfma.org/revenue-cycle/charge-capture/62829/
Financial and workforce impacts on dentistry will continue to be felt for some time. (n.d.). Www.gdc-Uk.org.
https://www.gdc-uk.org/news-blogs/blog/detail/blogs/2021/03/11/financial-and-workforce-impacts-on-dentistry-will-continue-to-be-felt-for-some-time
Vastag, K. (2024, November 13). Dental Industry Statistics: Key Insights and Trends | Weave. Getweave.com.
https://www.getweave.com/dental-practice-statistics/
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