Remember these four things when generating billing statements to help reduce patients calling in with questions.
When your office sends billing statements, do you find that you receive lots of phone calls from patients because they don’t understand their balance? These phone calls can be very time consuming because you have to research the patient’s account to determine why they owe an unexpected balance.
You can avoid some of these types of phone calls by providing more details on statements when you generate them. Doing so can save your team members time spent having to research and answer these billing questions.
Changing the Balance Forward Date
When generating statements from the Dentrix Office Manager, the Balance Forward Date defaults to thirty days prior to the current date. Any procedures or payments completed prior to the balance forward date, will not appear on the billing statement. It may be confusing for patients to receive a statement that only shows Balance Forward and an amount due. You can include older procedures and payments on the billing statement by simply changing the Balance Forward Date when generating the statement. I recommend using a Balance Forward Date of three months prior to the current date to ensure the patient can view the details of their account and therefore have a better understanding of why they owe a balance.
Including Procedures with a Claim Pending
By including procedures with an insurance claim pending, patients will see all charges billed to their account, even those your office is expecting to be paid by insurance. This allows them to see all the procedures contributing to their account balance and also helps to hold patients accountable for those charges, if for some reason their insurance doesn’t pay. If your office has a policy that the patient is ultimately responsible for all charges whether their insurance pays or not, it’s important they see those charges and also where those procedure charges are in the aging process.
Adding Billing Statement Notes
When viewing a patient’s Ledger, click the Guarantor Notes button. You have an option to write a Billing Statement Note, which will print on the guarantor’s billing statement. This can be an invaluable communication tool to let patients know why they owe a remaining balance. For example, you could add a note explaining they exceeded the frequency limitation for an exam, or that they met their annual maximum. Including this information right on the billing statement could save you the time of providing that information to the patient over the phone.
Including a Copy of the Explanation of Benefits
Although the insurance carrier provides the patient with a copy of their explanation of benefits, it can sometimes be useful to send a copy of it with the billing statement as well, especially if the patient has lots of questions about their insurance coverage. I like to highlight the line on the explanation of benefits that says what the patient is responsible to pay to the office, so the patient is able to see how it matches what was posted in their Ledger. If your office uses ERAs, you’ll find the explanation of benefits automatically stored in the patient’s Document Center, and you can print a copy to include with the billing statement. If your office still receives paper EOBs and scans them into the Document Center, you could also print a copy to include with the billing statement.
Sending billing statements and receiving patient payments is very important to your office cash flow. But when patients don’t understand their billing statements, it can be time consuming for your team members to research patient’s account balances and answer their billing questions. Reduce some of the phone calls you’ll receive with those questions by making billing statements easier for patients to understand.
Learn More
For additional information, read the following :
- Understanding the Balance Forward Date on Billing Statements
- Creating Customized Billing Statement Notes
- eEOBs Automatically Saved and Attached? Yes, Please!
By Charlotte Skaggs
Certified Dentrix Trainer and The Dentrix Office Manager columnist
Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for over 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at [email protected].
