Dental insurance verification can be a time-consuming task, taking up most of your day since you have to manually go through your patients’ files and confirm the accuracy of their information.
Fortunately, you can lessen your workload by letting a third-party expert take care of this task.
Outsourcing your dental insurance verification allows you to focus on your primary tasks, streamline business workflow, lower risk factors, avoid errors, minimize claim rejections, and speed up billing cycles.
Since you want your patients to be comfortable, it’s imperative to ensure they don’t end up with unsuspected fees on their insurance statements.
In this article, you’ll learn the benefits of outsourcing your dental insurance verification and its impact on your business operations.
What is dental insurance verification outsourcing?
Insurance verification outsourcing means letting a third party take over the task of contacting the relevant insurance company to determine if the patient’s insurance plan covers the medical procedures.
It’s a common thing in many businesses, especially those facing a shortage of labor.
Moreover, it allows you to save time and use it elsewhere while reducing the overhead payroll expenditure and meeting deadlines.
With the growth of your dental practice, you’ll need additional resources that you may not have the finances to fund. Thus, you may have to allocate these tasks to your existing workforce.
Every time a patient comes in, your staff must verify their insurance to prevent non-payment losses later on.
Instead, you can outsource this task to an expert third party.
Do you need to outsource your dental insurance verification?
Before outsourcing your insurance verification, you need to determine if the expenditure is worth it.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself when deciding to outsource:
- How many verifications do we deal with daily?
- Is this process lowering the staff’s productivity?
- Could this time and energy be used on something more productive?
- Is the staff making frequent errors in insurance verifications?
Answering these questions will help you determine if you need to outsource insurance verification.
When should you outsource dental insurance verification?
You should consider outsourcing your insurance verification in the following cases:
Increase in workload
As your practice grows, more patients will start coming in, increasing the workload on your staff.
That’s when you should bring in virtual teams – through outsourcing – to ensure your in-house staff can focus on other vital aspects, such as offering a satisfactory customer experience.
Need for more employees
The process of hiring a new employee can be as costly as $4000. That’s beside the benefits and monthly salary.
But if you outsource your billing services, you get the same services at a fraction of the cost of employing more in-house staff.
On average, businesses save around 60% of the cost when outsourcing services rather than employing more people.
Expanding practice
When expanding your service, you’d have a plethora of other things to deal with, leaving you with less time and mental space to handle insurance verifications.
Therefore, outsourcing insurance verification is helpful in such instances as it lets you focus on the expansion process and ensure smooth operations simultaneously.
An abundance of unpaid claims
If you have a ton of unpaid claims waiting to be verified, that’s a sign you need extra hands on deck.
But as we’ve established earlier, a more physical workforce will only increase your overhead cost, reducing profitability.
On the contrary, virtual help in dental insurance verification allows you to increase your earnings while lowering the hassle.
How is outsourcing your dental insurance verification useful?
Spending time on dental billing and insurance verification takes your attention away from patients.
According to a study published in the Journal of Medical Practice Management, 96% of the patients complained about customer service while only 4% had concerns about the quality of medical care.
Therefore, it’s crucial to remove any room for error if you want to satisfy your patients fully.
Instead, if you outsource this task, you’ll have more time on your hands to develop a meaningful relationship with your patients.
Here are some other benefits of outsourcing insurance verification.
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Saves time
First off, outsourcing your insurance verification helps you save time since you’re not stuck dealing with multiple files and insurance eligibility criteria.
Instead, your reception staff can focus on other competencies, such as handling patient requests and queries.
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Streamlines workflow
When outsourcing insurance verification, you leave the task to the experts. Thus, they are in charge of dealing with the requirements and standard procedures.
Essentially, it means more streamlined business operations since you can designate your resources for other purposes.
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Lowers risk
Often, overlooking misinformation and errors on the medical bills can lead to adverse effects. If you don’t catch these errors earlier, you’ll end up losing a lot of money in revenue.
Statistics show that poor billing practices cost businesses around $125 billion every year. You can prevent these losses by outsourcing your insurance verification process to experts.
When a patient comes in with insurance, you have to verify their details at least thrice:
- The first time they apply
- The date of service
- When they arrive for a follow-up
TransUnion research showed that nearly 68% of the patients failed to pay their medical bills in 2016, increasing from 53% in 2015.
Moreover, their study showed that the percentage would go up to 95 by 2020. Denials and late payments from insurance companies affect your revenue negatively, putting financial strain on your practice.
A simple way to prevent this is by outsourcing your insurance verification.
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Fewer insurance claim rejections
While your team may be efficient in verifying dental insurance, they can’t have an eye as keen as a professional.
A third-party pro company will comprise seasoned experts who know the critical aspects to look out for.
For instance, some patients might have coverage, but their plans may not include some medical procedures.
A professional will know about this while your receptionist might not.
That’s because experts have seen thousands of insurance claims, and they know most policies like the back of their hands.
Due to their keen observation, you’ll have lesser claim rejections. Therefore, there will be a consistent cash flow for your dental practice.
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Enhances productivity
With someone else taking care of your insurance verification, your staff will be more productive in their actual responsibilities.
Previously, your team had to deal with insurance verification along with carrying out their daily tasks. But with this additional responsibility gone, they can focus on their work.
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Faster cash flow
By allocating a specific job to the professionals, you can erase inefficiencies from your business operations.
Typically, these problems are a result of inadequate insurance verifications from untrained personnel.
Giving the responsibility of verifying dental insurance to amateurs in your staff will increase the risk of human error. It further leads to late verifications, more denials, and a slower cash flow.
On the contrary, when experts handle the same tasks, their expertise ensures a quicker cash flow since they verify dental insurances aptly and instantly.
Conclusion
Regardless of the current scale of your dental practice, you’ll want to expand it with time. However, that’s not possible if your finances and labor are limited.
Bringing in new employees is costly and causes hassle. Additionally, you may not have the physical space to house a larger workforce.
Outsourcing your dental insurance verification can save space, time, resources, and workforce for other business operations, increasing productivity and preventing financial losses.