It's important to know how to get the most out of your dental practice management software. This will save your staff from wasting time on researching the multitude of insurance benefit programs that are available. Here are some helpful ideas.
Dental practices continue to spend more and more time dealing with insurance benefits. Between fee schedules, downgrading, and alternate benefits, it’s hard to find the right balance between what information is really needed, and how long a team member must spend on the phone dealing with insurance companies.
In speaking with hundreds of dental practice team members through the years about patient benefits, I’ve found that many offices are spending too much time collecting data that’s not used at all or is not used as frequently as required. Often, with just a few changes to a practice’s insurance benefit protocol, a lot of time and money can be saved.
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Reevaluate your benefit sheet
Many of the practices that I’ve worked with have lengthy benefit sheets. They have a list of individual codes and coverage percentages, in addition to maximum, deductible, history, frequencies, missing tooth clause, remaining benefits, and waiting periods. To gather all of this information and enter it into your software can take as long as 30 minutes per patient. This time adds up!
How can a dental practice find the middle ground between getting enough information but not too much information? As with any task, it’s important to start with the objective. When gathering patient benefits, the objective is to give patients the information they need about their coverage so they’re comfortable scheduling treatment before they leave the office.
Keeping this objective in mind, take time to review your benefit sheet and make sure it only covers the pertinent information. Are there procedures on your benefit sheet that are not charged out multiple times each month? If so, remove them. Getting code information for procedures that are completed only a few times year is a waste of time. You can give estimates for those procedures (based on coverage percentages), schedule the patient, and send a preauthorization. Or you can call about that single procedure without taking the time to get the information every time.
Use your software
Many practices do not use their practice management software the way it was meant to be used—they’re entering the policy information for every new patient. This actually takes more time than searching to see if the plan was already entered.
Software is created so that multiple patients can be connected directly to the plan. This means that you should first search for the plan by group name or number before adding new plan information into the software. This will help save your team a significant amount of time and keep your software neat and orderly.
Verify plans only as needed
When your patients are properly attached to insurance plans, it’s necessary to verify benefits only once per plan per year. This means your team will likely be busier with benefits the first few months of the year, when most policies renew. Then as new patients come in with a plan that has been checked, you need only verify eligibility, history, and remaining benefits for that specific patient. For patients of record you do not need to contact the insurance company, because you already have history and remaining benefits if insurance payments are entered correctly into your software.
It’s all about the patient experience
Patients pay for dental insurance and they want to be able to use it. They expect the dental team to know what their insurance covers so there are no surprises in their out-of-pocket expenses. However, getting benefits should not be done for every patient or every procedure. If you find that your front office staff is giving patients the finger (the wait-one-minute pointer finger) because they’re on the phone with an insurance company, then it’s time to look at your benefit processes or time to consider outsourcing benefits to a third party company. This ensures that the focus remains on patients, not on their insurance.
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Jennifer Schultz has spent over 20 years in dentistry working with dental practices as an employee, software trainer, and practice management consultant. She is passionate about helping dental teams save time on administrative tasks. Jennifer is the founder of Virtual Dental Office and Dental Insurance Navigator. She can be reached at [email protected] or (563) 582-4762.
