Over one million adults across 36 states in the US enrolled for dental plans through the newly-established health insurance marketplace in 2014, according to a published report. The American Dental Association has estimated that more than 8.3 million adults nationwide could gain dental benefits through Medicaid expansion. However, the same report also stated that the dental care utilization has been declining steadily among adults for several years. With this declining market trend, it becomes challenging for dentists to remain profitable and offer top quality patient care.
Dental Reimbursement Vs. Medical Reimbursement
The dental reimbursement rates are generally poorer than the medical reimbursement rates. It becomes crucial for the dentists to strike a balance between offering quality services and handling the daunting task of dental medical billing and coding. Busy schedules of dental practitioners do not allow them to handle both these tasks simultaneously, and this affects the entire process of claim submissions.
Ways to Improve Efficiency of Dental Billing
Dentists need to improve the efficiency of their billing process to make their practice sustainable. Given that, ensuring continual claims settlement and reduced claims rejection requires a dental medical practitioner to focus on finer details of dental billing. Dentists can improve the cash flow and enhance cost savings only when they streamline their dental billing cycle. There are certain areas that need to be handled when streamlining dental billing:
- Patient scheduling
- Preauthorization
- Patient enrolment
- Medical coding audits
- Financial reporting
- Payment posting
- AR management
Financial and Operational Benefits of Outsourcing Billing
Dental facilities, large or small, should opt for outsourcing their billing in order to make it efficient. Outsourced billers can help dentists improve their operational and financial efficiency.
- Help save up to 30 – 40% on operational costs
- Assist in transition to ICD 10 code changes
- Reduce billing errors
- Ensure timely submissions of claims
- Maximize profits
- Follow-ups with the carriers
- Manage claims denials
- Enhance patient collections
- Help save hardware / software support fees
- Save cost on employee benefits
Greater Focus on Patient Care
One of the main benefits outsourced dental billing services offer is relieving the dentists of their administrative tasks. It also allows them to give patients more time and concentrate on providing better dental care services. Billing companies have a skilled team of coders and billers who make use of the latest technology to handle this specialty’s billing processes.
MedicalBillersandCoders.com is the largest consortium of billers and coders in the US with over 15 years of experience. They have been helping dentists with customized billing solutions to sail through complexities of healthcare reforms and payment structures. The coding team at MBC is trained to handle ICD-10 requirements and dental coding issues. Their dedicated AR team ensures quick compliance to insurance requirements and resubmits the claim forms for maximum reimbursement.
