Reducing Administrative Costs with Automated Insurance Verification

While it may be cliche, the adage “ Time is money”  is one of the reasons why so many dental practices are looking at ways to increase efficiency. Often, workflow friction costs dentists and dental organization money as office staff are tied up with administrative tasks that, simply put, eat into their ability to perform other tasks, the kind of tasks that generate revenue. Insurance verification, for example, is one task that, while vital, can be remarkably time consuming.

Further, it’s not as if it’s a task that can consistently be kicked down the road either. Often, dental insurance verification is pressing and urgent as taxed staff looks to prepare a daily appointment schedule. But what if there were an easy way to get that time back? To free up staff, improve patient care, and drive revenue? Automated insurance verification does just that.

Quick Links

• What is Insurance Verification?
• Insurance Verification Challenges
• How Insurance Verification Contributes to Administrative Costs
• How Automated Insurance Verification Reduces Administrative Costs

What is Insurance Verification?

Insurance verification is a vital step in patient and practice administration. Prior to treating a patient, medical and dental offices must first verify with insurance companies that the treatment or procedure is covered by the patient’s policy. Additionally, this process allows office staff to be open and transparent about any costs the patient may be responsible for. Finally, it’s the first step in ensuring your medical or dental office is reimbursed by the insurance company for treatment.

Insurance Verification Challenges

To start, for many dental practices and organizations, much of the insurance verification process is still manual. As a result, it’s incredibly time consuming and can be prone to human error.

For example, many patients fill out insurance forms prior to their first visit, and when those processes aren’t digital, handwriting and legibility issues can result in incorrect information. Additionally, data entry can result in errors as well. Any incorrect information can result in a denial requiring additional time from your office staff to resolve issues and call insurance companies.

Another insurance verification challenge is that insurance policies change all the time. While your patients may keep the same insurance provider, the policy itself can change which impacts coverage. What was covered last year may not be covered this year. Relying on potentially outdated information can be dangerous when it comes to insurance as a patient may be required to pay out of pocket.

Finally, the biggest challenge many dental practices face with insurance verification is how it ties up vital resources. Manual insurance verifications force staff to make multiple phone calls to insurance companies with long hold times. Many dental organizations are still trying to recover from staffing shortages and save costs. Having administrative staff spend hours communicating back and forth with insurance companies or tracking down verification errors is wasted time that could be spent on patient care.

How Insurance Verification Contributes to Administrative Costs

One of the primary jobs of a dental practice administrator is to identify ways to improve efficiency and lower costs. In the U.S., in 2019, approximately $950 billion was spent on administrative costs with a portion of that attributable to insurance verification.

It makes sense then that, in looking for cost saving measures, overhead costs, such as administrative costs are often the first place to look and trim. If we look at the insurance verification process more closely, we can start to see the ways that traditional insurance verification methods consume valuable resources.

First, insurance verification should be done prior to a patient’s visit. That means your administrative team is already putting in effort before a patient even arrives at the office. From patient communication and the gathering of insurance information to entering it into your practice management software, your team has already spent, potentially, hours of back and forth communication.

Next, your team must communicate with the insurance company. If there are no errors in the information provided or in the data entry itself, this is still a time consuming process. The administrative team must work to connect with the insurance provider to verify coverage for the anticipated procedure or treatment. Should additional treatments or procedures be needed, this may require additional calls from your administrative staff to the insurance provider.

In short, the time your administrative team spends communicating with patients and insurance providers to verify insurance eligibility is substantial. Assuming all things go well, 20-30 hours a week can be spent on insurance verification and that’s nearly a full-time job. Imagine what your team could do, when it comes to patient care and practice productivity, with an extra 20-30 hours a week!

How Automated Insurance Verification Reduces Administrative Costs

One of the easiest ways you can get those hours back, free up your administrative team, reduce errors, and reduce costs is by investing in automated insurance verification software. Automated insurance verification software reduces the potential for errors and, with the right software solution, the amount of time your team spends on the process.

iCoreVerify, the automated insurance verification solution from iCoreConnect automates and streamlines the insurance verification process, letting your team focus on patient care. In addition to automating the process, iCoreVerify also:

• Provides benefits information for every patient on your schedule- no more verifying one at at time 
• Connects to over 2,100 insurance providers ensuring policy and benefits information are up-to-date
• Identifies reporting errors so you can correct them and automatically reruns the report saving time in troubleshooting and reporting
• Shows remaining coverage amounts for patients, ensuring they get the treatments they need and deserve
• Generates lists of unscheduled treatments with the added Revenue Tab, allowing you to schedule with patients before they leave the office
• Saves your team time and your practice money, all while helping you keep a steady revenue stream flowing

Nearly every dental practice and dental service organization out there is looking for ways to better utilize human resources, reduce costs, streamline services, and improve efficiency. Much like every other industry, the digital transformation and automation of time consuming and repetitive tasks promises to change the way you run your dental practice or dental service organization.

iCoreConnect’s iCoreVerify is like gaining an extra team member without the overhead. If you’re ready to see how our automated insurance verification software can reduce your administrative costs and provide additional efficiency benefits, book a demo today!