Top Challenges of Dental Insurance Verification and How to Solve Them

Most people don’t go into dentistry thinking about efficiency. However, when dentists open their own practice or practice managers are hired to identify pain points and challenges that impact everything from patient care to revenue generation, efficiency suddenly becomes incredibly important. 

Similarly, much of your team doesn’t go into dental administration thinking they’ll spend endless hours on the phone wrangling insurance companies and seeking benefit information. Thankfully, efforts to improve dental practice efficiency can alleviate both of these concerns through automated insurance verifications.

Quick Links

• What Is Dental Insurance Verification?
• Why is Dental Insurance Verification Necessary?
• Top 5 Challenges to Insurance Verification
• How iCoreVerify Can Help Your Dental Practice

What Is Dental Insurance Verification?

Dental insurance verification is the process of validating that a patient has insurance and clarification regarding which services are covered and at what level. 

Why Is Dental Insurance Verification Necessary?

Whether in advance of an appointment or in the office, patients typically complete an insurance form providing all of the information necessary for administrative staff to contact the insurance company and confirm that treatment will be covered and determine if there are copays or deductibles. This enables dental practice staff to help explain to patients what portion of the bill they may be responsible for.

Dental insurance verification is, therefore, necessary to ensure that patients get the care they need and your dental practice receives payment.

Top 5 Challenges to Insurance Verification

As you may know, from your own office or as noted above, much of the dental insurance verification process is currently handled manually, which creates quite a few challenges. 

These potential friction points in the process, ultimately, impact patient care, office efficiency, and even your bottom line.

1. Staffing challenges

In 2021, nearly 30% of all dental practices were seeking staff, ranging from hygienists to administrative support. Those staff shortages are very real and continue even today. One big challenge for dental insurance verification is that it ties up all too valuable staff in a process that can be quite time consuming. 

Instead of completing other administrative tasks or providing service to patients, your team is on the phone tracking down information, verifying benefits, and attempting to collect insurance funds.

2. Manual and data entry errors

Humans make mistakes. Whether we like it or not, it’s a fundamental part of who we are. We get tired, we’re busy, we’re overwhelmed, people write illegibly, and any one of those can result in human or data entry errors. 

For a dental insurance claim to be denied, it doesn’t have to be a complex issue; in fact, it can be as simple as a missed number or misspelled name. 

3. Claim rejections and denials

There are a variety of reasons for insurance rejections and denials including everything from a procedure not being covered to an error in data entry. Regardless of the cause, resolving denials and rejections is, much like all other insurance processes, time consuming. 

Again, with limited staff, limited time, and a need to provide services and care for patients, avoiding dental claim denials and rejections is a vital goal for most dental practices.

4. Costs and delays in payment

Many practices rely on dental insurance to bring in revenue. Unfortunately, most dental practices also have to hire several staff members to handle the verification process. That means overhead and human resources costs are eating into revenue and profit. 

Further, claim denials and rejections result in delayed payments, delayed services, and dissatisfied clients — all of which cost your business money. 

5. Patient confusion

Most of us don’t think about our medical or dental insurance until we need it. That means your patients are relying on your team to provide information about copays, deductibles, and coverage. They want to know, at the office, how much of the visit they’ll be financially responsible for.

Often, your team is providing more education and information about insurance benefits than the business or organization providing it. That means your team needs to be on the ball and have all the information easily accessible. In short, relying on calls to the insurance company isn’t efficient.

How iCoreVerify Can Help Your Dental Practice

One of the primary goals of any practice manager or dentist owner is to find ways to increase efficiency without it coming at the expense of patient experience or at the expense of staff or revenue. It’s easy to see how improving the dental insurance verification process can benefit your practice across the board. 

Thankfully, there is a solution to these challenges and that’s automation. Across nearly every industry, automation has revolutionized processes that help businesses streamline repetitive and time consuming tasks that require accuracy saving them time, effort, and money. The dental insurance verification process is one that can be automated providing needed verifications, but doing much more than that.

iCoreVerify was designed with your practice in mind. At iCoreConnect, we understand that insurance verification is one process of many, but if we can simplify and speed this process, while helping you identify additional revenue opportunities, then you can focus on your practice and your patients, all of which helps your business grow. 

That’s why iCoreVerify provides the following:

• Verify your full weekly schedule all at once rather than one at a time. Get detailed verifications for each patient on your schedule. The automated insurance verification happens in seconds and is updated daily, which saves your team 20 to 30 hours per week. That’s like hiring an extra team member, without the overhead.
• Real-time benefit information. iCoreVerify connects with more than 2,100 different insurance carriers, ensuring your team has the most up-to-date benefits information to provide your patients with the information they need.
• Revenue identification opportunities. With up-to-date information regarding remaining (and unused) coverage as well as unscheduled treatments, you can more easily recommend and schedule treatment and services, improving your patient’s dental health and boosting your revenue.
• Error identification and resolution. Improved accuracy and error identification means that when there are problems, you can clearly see what the error is and quickly correct it.  Error-free claims mean fewer claim denials, rejections, and adjustments, which saves your team considerable time and can help with your practice bottom line.
• An easy way to book treatments before patients even walk out the door. With no need to wait on phone calls or patient responsibility numbers, you are in the best position possible to book future treatment while patients are still in your office. This eliminates the need to track them down later and substantially increases the closure rate of treatment plans.

In addition to the benefits, iCoreVerify integrates seamlessly with existing practice management software, like Dentrix, which means you lose no time switching between applications.  You’ll immediately begin seeing the increased speed and efficiency in daily operations.

If you’re ready to talk about how you can improve efficiency, save money, and free up resources and staff all while improving your patient experience, reach out to the iCoreConnect team today by booking a demo!