Verifying patients’ dental insurance benefits could be hard for many dental offices. It is often considered the least favorite part of the entire dental practice. Dentists and staff are likely to get bored by the process because of its repetitive nature.
Despite all the repetition and boredom it comes along with, patient’s insurance verification is an important part of the process which cannot be neglected at any point in time. It is the foundational step of your dental billing process and has the capability to determine how efficiently you’d be able to get your payments reimbursed.
The better you’d be able to establish a patient’s dental verification process; the easier would become your dental billing and payment reimbursement.
At DentalRevu, we have seen hundreds of dental offices growing bigger so quickly by just streamlining their patients’ dental verification process. It is one of the very first things to be fixed at your dental clinic, and the next up is your practice, all blooming with growth.
Take a look at these amazing dental insurance patient verification practices and get inspired!
Get Started Before The Appointment
The most crucial aspect for a successful dental verification process is time. The more time you’ll have to the process, the better would be the outcomes. In an ideal situation, you can get started with the process as soon as a patient has scheduled their appointment.
The truth is – you’ll always get engaged with other things – possibly another patient’s call – leaving behind no time for the verification process. If that’s the case and you haven’t got the time to immediately begin with the process – at least get started two days before the appointment.
This would let you go through the patient’s information in detail, connect with the respective insurance company, and cross-check with the patient if required. Starting up early could give you time to fight the possible challenges such as the inability to contact the insurance company or patients, etc.
It is very important that you know everything that a patients’ insurance plan covers in detail before they enter the clinic. Having the information at hand, you can easily suggest a treatment to the patients and explain their coverage and copayments (if any) in detail.
What’s The Consequence Of Starting Dental Insurance Verification
Starting the verification process at the very last moment can cause great consequences. You never know if the insurance company would immediately respond to your calls and answer your questions.
And even if they do so – you never know if all the information provided by the patients is correct and wouldn’t need cross-checking. Managing all of that could be difficult in a hurry, and that too with the patient appearing on your doorstep.
Without the required information, you won’t be able to offer the perfect treatment, nor will you guide them properly about the co-pays and coverage – leaving behind highly unsatisfied patients. You can easily avoid the situation by simply starting the verification process earlier.
Create An Adequate Verification Form
The information you need to collect from patients to verify their insurance benefits is complex. It is mostly number-based and would require a lot of focus to write them down without errors. With so many patients scheduling at a time, you might not be able to note down all this information effectively.
However, the information is integral and should be properly noted to attain perfection. The best way to do that is by creating a dental insurance verification form and integrating that into your system. There are a few important things falling under the dental insurance verification checklist, and they include –
- Name of the Insurance Provider
- Member ID Number
- Member DOB
- Patient’s ID Number (if the patient’s different than the member)
- Employer’s Name
- Group ID Number
- Telephone Number of The Insurance Company
You can easily create a form listing all these requirements, send it to each patient calling in for an appointment, and get the filled version in your records. It would help you get the information in a streamlined manner and make it much easier to maintain records at the same time.
What’s The Consequence Of Not Creating A Dental Insurance Verification Form?
Jotting down the information manually is a lot of a hectic process and maximizes the chances of errors. However, collecting information using forms could minimize errors to an almost negligible figure, speed up the process and improve your dental verification process.
Get Your Patients’ Benefits Broken Down
Having a complete breakdown of the patients’ insurance benefits means you can access the entire summary of your patient’s insurance coverage and plan. It helps determine which treatments are covered under the insurance plan and even the percentage that’s covered and that has to be reimbursed through copayments.
In addition to that, a complete breakdown of insurance benefits also explains if the patient has already used a particular benefit at any point in time, how much time they have to utilize a particular benefit, and if any of the benefits couldn’t be used anymore and have expired, etc.All of this information can help you determine the perfect treatment plan for your patient.
You can explain the amount their plan covers and the amount they’ll have to reimburse as copayments (if any). The more informed you’re about the patients’ dental insurance benefits, the better you can explain them and win their trust. It helps provide your patients with fully satisfied services and earns their loyalty for the long run.
However, you don’t really have to get into the complete breakdown every time the same patient comes in. The smarter approach is to ask them if there’s any change in the policy or not and get away with the process. It is important to verify your patients’ insurance information but keeping up with the changing policies is also an integral part of the process.
What’s The Consequence Of Not Getting Into The Complete Breakdown?
If you don’t get into the complete breakdown of your patient’s dental insurance benefits, you’ll miss on important information. You won’t be able to offer adequate treatment plans in alignment with the coverage and eventually lose patient satisfaction.
Reverify For Your Returning Patients
With a streamlined verification process at hand, you’ll definitely have returning patients – a lot of them. If you think that having their information already verified when thus visited first is enough, you are definitely on the verge of losing them.
Reverification is important. Dental insurance companies are known for their rapidly changing policies. Every year or even twice a year, they’ll come up with something new, and boom – your patients’ coverage would change. If you want to maintain the great verification standards you’ve set, it’s important to be updated about these changes in policies and coverage plans.
Some insurance companies also offer coverage plans for a limited time, for example, a year. As a quality dental practitioner, you must inform your patients about such limited offers and advise them on their effective usage. It can also help you inform the patients if they are soon to max out on coverage or if there’s something they shall use before the time’s gone.
What’s The Consequence Of No Reverifying Returning Patients?
Since dental insurance policies keep on changing, neglecting the necessity of re-verification can leave you behind with incomplete information at hand. You won’t be able to offer the right treatment plan to your patients nor inform them about the possible copayments – eventually dissatisfying your patients and negatively impacting the practice’s growth.
Collect More With A Seamless Dental Insurance Verification Process
The above-listed ways to conduct your patients dental insurance verification are great. They can truly help you streamline the process, satisfy most patients, and attain the desired growth in your practice. However, you can feel the need for professional assistance at any point in time. And to help you with that, DentalRevu offers the best dental insurance services – ensuring each client gets the right attention and quality.
Your entire billing process could be much negatively impacted if there’s no proper verification process in place. The professionals from our team can set up the most seamless dental verification process for your clinic, conduct the entire process with efficiency and ensure your patients are satisfied with the quality care you deliver each time.
