When it comes to business decisions, often choosing to focus on one area, like dental practice efficiency, means choosing to sacrifice elsewhere. It might mean dedicating more of your team members to administrative tasks or even hiring additional staff. On the other hand, choosing to focus on patient care may mean sacrificing the speed of administrative tasks and slower growth and revenue generation. Strategic business decisions allow you to take a look and see which solution works best and limits the sacrifices you’ll have to make.
Not having to make that choice is what makes automated dental insurance verification a smart investment. You don’t have to sacrifice service or efficiency. In fact, it’s a solution that improves both.
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No dental practice is successful without revenue. And, for most practices, 50% or more of their revenue comes from insurance payments. That means that verifying your patients are eligible for the treatments you’re planning is essential to helping ensure procedures will be covered and reimbursed by insurance.
However, dental insurance verification is about more than revenue. It’s also about patient care, scheduling, and office efficiency.
First, when you verify dental insurance, particularly well in advance, you can plan and schedule your patient’s next appointment or treatment, ensuring they get the care they need. For patients, this decreases stress because they know what they need and what is covered. There are no surprises when they come in for an appointment or get a bill later.
Of course, this also means you can schedule the necessary staff to provide the kind of service and care you want to offer to your patients.
Given the general benefits of dental insurance validation, improving the process, especially as it relates to efficiency and accuracy, is a goal for many dental practices. Automated dental insurance verification makes both improvements possible.
First, you don’t lose a staff member to the phone for hours of call backs and error resolution. Often, one of the most time-consuming factors in insurance validation is the time your team must spend on the phone to correct errors or get updated information. Automated insurance verification prevents costly errors and, with connections to thousands of insurers, can provide the most up-to-date benefits information.
In other words, automation maximizes your staff, freeing up time for the tasks that help complete treatment plans and deliver quality service.
Of course, efficiency is just one of the ways that automated insurance benefits your practice. While that’s highly desirable, the additional benefits are just as impressive.
The same automated tasks that save your team from spending hours on the phone also helps you realize administrative cost savings and revenue opportunities. Again, your staff is free to work on other tasks and, with the right software, can help identify opportunities for treatment within your clients’ existing coverage. You can even, as suggested, schedule those appointments and procedures before your patient even leaves the office.
You’ve got reduced denials and better communication with your patients regarding what procedures are covered.
One of the biggest points of friction between patients and their dental practice (and one reason they leave) is unexpected costs post-procedure. However, automated dental insurance verification can prevent sticker shock. And, because patients are receiving the care they need, as well as what they’re entitled to with their insurance, they’ll be more likely to return and refer.
In addition to knowing costs up front, you can also help patients maximize their coverage. Often, patients don’t use all their benefits because they don’t know what’s covered. In fact, many will skip cleanings and other procedures even though waiting or delaying those treatments can be more devastating to oral health. Instead, with automated dental insurance verification software, you’ll have the information in advance of the appointment, giving your team the ability to talk in real time about what’s covered, any outstanding balances and what treatments still need to be scheduled.
Providing better care and ensuring your patients take advantage of their coverage goes pretty far when it comes to building long-lasting dentist-patient relationships and trust for your practice. You’ll end up with healthier and happier patients. And, you’ll be increasing revenue with more accurate claims.
With significant benefits for both your dental practice and your patients, isn’t it time you investigated how automated dental insurance verification can transform your practice? Imagine freeing up your staff, improving patient care, and boosting revenue and cash flow with one solution.
We’d love to show you just what iCoreVerify can do for you and why iCoreConnect’s products have over 90 dental association endorsements. Book a demo today.