When taking on an intimidating task, you may find it helpful to start working on it sooner than later and break it up into smaller, easier-to-handle steps. Suddenly, what seemed huge and scary becomes manageable. The same idea applies to dental insurance verification. Whether you’re not sure what to do at all or you’ve perhaps missed a few steps in the past, learn about the required stages of verifying your patient’s insurance to have smoother payments!
Step #1: Gathering Patient Information
During the phone call when a patient makes the dental appointment, be sure to collect certain details about them to verify whether their insurance and available benefits. These details include their birth date, address, name and phone number of their insurance company, policy and group numbers, and the social security number and birth date of the policy holder. Obtaining this information in advance gives you plenty of time to confirm their insurance and be prepared for successful claims.
Step #2: Contacting the Insurance Company for Benefits Confirmation
Reaching out to the insurance company can be frustrating even for professionals who know and understand dental insurance, but it’s an essential part of this process because you don’t want to waste time filing inaccurate claims. Not only can this lead to late payments, but it can also bring criminal fraud charges.
Unfortunately, insurance companies can keep your staff on the phone for hours, depending on how complex the situation is or how busy they happen to be that day. Does your team have time to follow this tedious process for every single patient on your schedule?
Step #3: Determine the Patient’s Co-Payments and Communicate
Without verifying their insurance benefits, you may not know how much co-payment to charge the patient during their appointment. If you don’t have an accurate estimate, you may have to follow up and collect more money from them later, which can anger and drive them away from your practice. On the other hand, if you are honest and accurate about the cost upfront, you can further develop trust with your patient and earn loyalty.
Step #4: Check Prior Authorization Requirements
Although many dental insurance companies have similar documentation and authorization requirements, others may have slightly different ones. Staying compliant and meeting their procedure requirements can enable the process to run more seamlessly.
Step #5: Update Your Patient’s Record with Documentation
Be sure to backup your version of the claim on your patient’s file in your practice, along with photos, X-rays, and any other information you might need to preserve for the future.
Step #6: File Claims Correctly to Avoid Denial or Delays
When filling out a dental insurance claim, double check it to confirm that everything is in order. Using the wrong procedure coding can throw off the entire billing process, resulting in payment denial, long wait time for the money to arrive, and even prosecution for insurance fraud—whether intentional or accidental.
If you break the Herculean task down into smaller ones, it can feel less formidable. However, completing dental insurance verification for each patient takes a lot of time and patience. Instead of piling this heavy responsibility on your front desk team’s plate, allow someone else—a dental insurance expert—to take over and get this entire process done as efficiently as possible!
About Dental Support Specialties
As a company, Dental Support Specialties has worked in the remote sector of dentistry since its inception in 2008. We have clients all around the United States and are happy to assist you in dental insurance verification, answering phone calls, and booking appointments directly into your scheduling software, and more. Call our team today or visit our website to see how we can help your business thrive!