Stress-Free Claims and Collections

Follow these simple guidelines to deal with the challenge of dealing with claims and collections.

Updated 6/30/20

If you took a poll of all the dental offices across America, their top two frustrations would be the challenge of dealing with insurance claims and effectively collecting monies owed from patients. Dental benefit plans don’t pay well, claims get delayed or lost in the processing, claims reviewers will often lower payment on a dental treatment by paying an alternate benefit, and patients sometimes don’t pay their bills.

With dental plans numbering in the thousands, there are countless confusing rules and regulations in the processing. There are exclusions, alternate benefit guidelines, processing policies, frequency limitations, and complicated addresses, to name a few.

Needless to say, many mistakes are made in filing these claims, causing the need for multiple submissions. This in turn causes delays resulting in an out-of-control accounts receivable. For years dentistry has allowed patients to depend on them 100% for the accuracy of their dental benefits and the outcome of their dental claims. These are some of the main reasons we have frustration in our collection efforts today.

Follow these simple guidelines to help reduce your stress about claims and collections:

  • Remember to always: be confident, be positive, be matter-of-fact
  • Ask for payment on the day of service or before
  • Get the correct information in the right order
  • Involve the patient in each step of the process
  • Be accurate, code the claim correctly, and don’t commit fraud!
  • Track your claims

Learn More

Visit www.dentrix.com/products/eservices/ecentral/insurance-manager to add electronic claim tracking to your Dentrix Service Bundle.

Read Follow Through for Successful Claims to get advice to improve your claims processes.

For more tips to improve collections, read Are Your Collections Processes Proactive?


By Lois Banta, Founder, Banta Consulting, Inc.

Lois Banta is CEO, President and Founder of Banta Consulting, Inc., a company that specializes in all aspects of dental practice management. To contact Lois for a personal consultation or to invite Lois to speak to your organization; Office-816/847-2055, Address: 33010 NE Pink Hill Rd, Grain Valley, MO 64029, Email: lois@bantaconsulting.com or check out her website: www.bantaconsulting.com.  


Published as part of a collection of key takeaways from the 2014 Business of Dentistry Conference, along with:

Originally published in Dentrix Magazine, Winter 2014