Running a dental practice, you face many decisions left and right. Is this piece of technology worth the investment? Will hiring an associate help my business? Should I renovate the office or expand to another location? One important choice is whether to hire an in-house insurance coordinator or outsource dental billing to a service company. Honestly, when you examine the costs associated with both options, the decision isn’t very difficult after all! Here are some things to consider and guide you to the right answer for your practice.
Insurance Coordinator’s Salary
When considering cost, you look at the cold, hard numbers. Hiring someone to work full-time for your practice as an insurance coordinator costs about $50,000 per year, including benefits. At this rate, you’re basically paying a little over $18 per hour. For an outsourced billing company to handle this task, you should pay significantly less. Even $3,000 per month for this service equals a notably lower rate than a salary and benefits, which you can then pocket or reinvest in your practice!
On-the-Job Training
Perhaps you’ve figured hiring an inexperienced newbie will cost less, but this approach comes with a ton of issues that could damage your practice financially. Bringing a new employee onboard will take substantial time to get them up to speed. Remember, dental billing is rather complex and technical. You can’t grab anyone off the street and set them free to work on your business’s insurance claims and billing concerns. While you dedicate weeks to training, your team works less efficiently and collects payment more slowly.
In contrast, outsourcing dental billing involves working with a group of already experienced, knowledgeable experts. In other words, you don’t have to spend one minute to train them!
Vacations, Illness, PTO
Even with a small office team, you can’t expect your employees to come to work every single day your practice is open. People get sick, go on trips or vacation, use their paid time off for family events, and more. With an in-house insurance coordinator, you’ll need someone else on your team to step up and take over these responsibilities during their absence or risk allowing your accounts receivable to build up.
On the other hand, a group of billing experts can cover each other because they have the numbers and built-in organization to manage their accounts without disruption to you and your practice.
Mistakes in Billing
Although all humans make honest mistakes, when you have just one person or only a couple of people working in your company’s finances and billing, you have a wide-open opportunity for embezzlement or insurance fraud. Not only are financial errors embarrassing and damaging to your practice’s reputation, but these can merit felony charges. When you outsource your dental billing, you have a group of people who are involved in the financial goings-on, which limits the chances of misconduct. Or, in the case of an honest, small mistake, other billing experts can quickly correct the issue behind the scenes without slowing down your in-office team.
By now, you hopefully see clearly the option that is most financially sound. The hidden costs of an in-house insurance coordinator far outweigh what you’d pay to outsource your dental billing. As they say, money talks, and it’s telling you to save some with this choice!
About Dental Support Specialties
Dental Support Specialties started serving dental practices remotely in 2008. In addition to outsourcing dental billing responsibilities, we also can answer incoming phone calls, perform chart auditing, reduce your accounts receivable, and schedule appointments. Our team of dental professionals have years of experience and expertise with nearly every software available. If you would like to learn more about what we can do for you, contact us for a consultation!