DSO Benefits of Automated Dental Insurance Verification

DSOs saved the day for many practices after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. They also came in with the advantages of having watched errors made as firms began a similar structure with Physician Practice Management companies (PPMs). DSOs have the opportunity to more effectively and more efficiently realize the goals of larger healthcare organizations. One of the primary tools at their disposal, that PPMs didn’t have in the 1990s, is the proliferation of automated tools and software platforms that can improve operations, collaboration, and streamlined services.

Quick Links

• Common Challenges for Dental Service Organizations
• DSO Priorities
• Benefits of Automation in Dental Service Organizations
• Benefits of Automated Dental Insurance Verification for DSOs

Common Challenges for Dental Service Organizations

DSOs, like other businesses with geographically distanced locations, have a unique set of challenges. It’s not just the distance between practices, but it’s also likely that there are differences in operations and management. 

Established dentists who join DSOs are typically looking to improve revenue for their own practice while limiting their investment of time and capital. In contrast, newer dentists join DSOs as a way to mitigate additional costs while paying off student loans and other expenses accrued while studying.

As a result, practice managers and DSOs are often coming in to provide business oversight and create standardized policies, procedures, and operations across all locations. However, calibrating services between disparate locations and practice organizations isn’t the only challenge DSOs face.

Additional challenges for dental service organizations include:

• Achieving alignment on daily operations
• Managing staff and resources
• Struggling to maintain and build patient bases
• Potential increases in overhead and revenue flow reduction
• Integration of software and services

DSO Priorities

Some of these challenges are more easily handled than others. For DSOs, increasing cash flow and revenue is a top priority and, yet, each of these challenges has the potential to impede those goals. While revenue is the end goal, there are other priorities including:

• Increasing market share
• Growing client/patient base
• Improving efficiency
• Realizing cost savings
• Acquiring and maintaining successful practices and talent

Fortunately, for DSOs and practice managers, many dentists and dental practices share these goals; therefore, achieving buy-in on solutions and the tools and technology needed to transform operations and grow is, hopefully, easier. 

One of the best and easiest ways to achieve most of these goals is via automation and software platforms that connect all of your practices, streamlining and creating workflow efficiencies while improving collaboration across locations as well. 

Benefits of Automation in Dental Service Organizations

There was a time when automation was relegated to the manufacturing sector, but with the introduction of AI and software tools, automation has shifted the way nearly every industry does business. For DSOs there’s significant potential for automation to change the way individual locations and the larger organization do business.

More specifically, automating and simplifying repetitive tasks and implementing software platforms that speed up and simplify time consuming tasks is imperative to achieving those DSO goals. There are a wide variety of software tools that can speed up data entry, prescription processing, and insurance verification. 

Automating these services and implementing software designed for healthcare means each location can realize:

• More efficient use of staff time
• Increased speed of common tasks
• Improved patient care experience
• Improved revenue and cash flow
• Easier management of multiple locations
• Enhanced security and improved compliance 
• Improved patient safety and practice accuracy
• Better and more efficient collaboration

In short, there are few aspects of your DSO locations that aren’t positively impacted by implementing automated software solutions.

Benefits of Automated Dental Insurance Verification for DSOs

Perhaps one of the most significant required tasks that ties up your team is insurance verification. Not only does it prevent staff from providing services or completing other tasks, but it can also tie up revenue, impacting your cash flow and limiting the benefits your patients can leverage and the care they receive. Multiply these losses across multiple locations and you can measurably see that revenue and time loss, as well as decreased patient retention, are impacting business growth.

Thanks to automated dental insurance verification, the process can be a lot easier. In the past, your team was tied up on the phone for 20-30 hours a week, relaying information back and forth with insurance companies, working patient-by-patient through a daily schedule.

Due to insurance benefits or policy changes, information was often outdated or incorrect, meaning patients were also confused about their coverage and copays. Additionally, claim denials due to incomplete or inaccurate patient information slowed down revenue impacting the bottom line. 

Not only does automated dental insurance verification resolve those issues, but it’s also a great way to increase revenue by helping your team identify unutilized benefits. Reporting dashboards can help practice managers pinpoint those opportunities, positively impacting patient care and DSO revenue. Errors are identified when the verification software completes every patient check, providing an easy correction opportunity and quick claim acceptance. And, all of this is done in seconds for every patient on the schedule that week, with little to no effort by your staff.

In fact, iCoreConnect’s iCoreVerify automatically verifies insurance for every patient based on a weekly schedule rather than by individual patient or even by day. This saves your team 20-30 hours a week which means you can allot those hours to other tasks and patient care, saving you overhead.

If you’re ready to discuss how automated dental insurance verification can improve your DSO’s operations and revenue, book a demo with the iCoreConnect team today. Start improving services and ensuring growth with the software platform designed for healthcare and dental practice needs.