Make sure your monthly billing routines include regularly sending billing statements and offering your patients convenient payment options to help maintain current accounts receivable.
Many dental practices struggle with maintaining current accounts receivable. I’ve found one of the best ways to keep up with a healthy cash flow is to have a consistent routine when it comes to your monthly billing tasks.
Send Billing Statements Regularly
Once your office receives a payment from an insurance company, if the guarantor account has a remaining balance, create a billing statement immediately and send it to the patient. That way the patient can pay the balance and the account will be paid in full as quickly as possible. I also suggest creating a batch of billing statements on a monthly basis so if there are still accounts with a remaining balance, they will also be receiving a statement regularly.
Choose a date and send statements consistently on the same date each month. When creating billing statements, use the If Not Billed Since option and select a date thirty days prior to the date you’re creating the statements. That way patients who recently received a statement won’t receive another one too soon.
Using QuickBill Premium, Dentrix offers options to send statements by mail, email, text, or any combination of the three. You can offer your patients the option of the method they would prefer to use to receive statements, making it more convenient for them to receive statements. You can set their preferences in the Family File for future billing statements.
Patients who receive an emailed or texted statement tend to have a faster turnaround than mailed statements, so you can receive payments more quickly. Plus, you have the advantage of checking the Electronic Statement Submission History to confirm that the patient has received and opened the statements you sent.
Offer Patients Convenient Payment Options
By offering patients more convenient payment options, it will make them more likely to pay their balance in a timely manner. When you send statements to patients via email or text, they can simply click a link in the email or text message to pay their balance. This provides your patients with a way to pay their balance at a time that’s convenient for them, which may be after your office is closed in the evening or on the weekend.
Dentrix can then streamline the payment posting process by automatically posting online payments into the patient’s Ledger. Or if you prefer, Dentrix will provide you with a notification of payments that have been made and you can choose to post the payments manually.
By sending statements consistently, and in ways that are more convenient for patients to pay their balance when it works for their schedule, you increase the likelihood that you will receive payments more quickly. This can drastically reduce the number of past due accounts your office has, which can improve the practice’s cash flow. This can also reduce the amount of phone calls your team has to make to follow up with patients about their outstanding balances. This will allow team members more time to dedicate to other tasks that may need to be done in the office.
Learn More
For additional information, read the following:
- Using the If Not Billed Since Option When Generating Billing Statements
- Use QuickBill Premium to Send Billing Statements via Mail, Email, Text—Or Any Combination of the Three!
- Smarter Billing and Faster Payments with QuickBill Premium
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 vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.
