Discover the tools you need to encourage patients to pay their balance and maintain healthy accounts receivables in your office.
Having steady cash flow is critical for a healthy dental practice. Without cash flow, the doctor will have difficulty paying bills and employees, and still have enough for other expenses. To maintain a steady cash flow, patients must pay their balances in a timely manner, and insurance claims must be paid as quickly as possible. There are several ways you can encourage patients to pay their balance and maintain healthy accounts receivables in your office. And you can use the Dentrix Automatic eClaims Attachments feature to avoid claim delays and denials, and to receive insurance payments faster.
Provide Patients with Accurate Treatment Estimates
Enter detailed patient insurance benefit information into Dentrix including deductibles met and benefit maximums used, coverage and co-insurance amounts, and downgrade and non-covered services into the Payment Table. This will allow you to provide patients with more accurate treatment estimates. When you provide patients with more accurate estimates, you can collect from them at the time of service, reducing the need to send them statements after their insurance has paid.
Save Credit Card Information on File
You may have teenage patients come in for their visits, unprepared to pay for their treatment because their parent will be paying for it. Instead of sending a billing statement to the parent and waiting for the account to be paid, you can save credit card information securely on file using Dentrix Pay and use that credit card information to post the payment on the date of service. This allows your office to get paid more quickly in these types of situations.
Provide Patients More Convenient Payment Options
In Dentrix G7.4 and newer versions, you can use QuickBill to email statements to patients, which they can then pay online. This significantly reduces the amount of time spent waiting to receive payment from your patients compared to mailing a paper statement in the postal mail and then waiting for the patient to receive it, pay it, and mail it back. It’s also a much more convenient option for the patient since they can pay online from anywhere at any time of the day—and they’ll probably be more likely to do so.
Reduce Claim Delays Using Automatic Attachments
You can also get paid by insurance carriers faster using Automatic eClaims Attachments, a feature introduced in Dentrix G7.3. Dentrix can automatically attach perio charts and X-rays to your claims. And if it’s unable to automatically attach them, Dentrix will provide you with a warning (based on the procedure code on the insurance claim) that an attachment is required. This feature can eliminate claim filing errors and payment delays. When a claim is filed without the necessary attachments, your office must wait weeks for the explanation of benefits from the insurance carrier; then, once you know what is needed, you must attach the necessary documentation and refile the claim. Then you must wait even longer for the claim to be processed and paid. By using Automatic eClaims Attachments and heeding any attachment warnings, you can eliminate claim-filing errors so your office gets paid for claims faster.
Maintaining a healthy cash flow is critical in your dental practice. You may have high production numbers, but if you’re not collecting on what you produce, your doctor may have difficulty paying employees and other expenses. You can use the features in Dentrix to help you get patients and insurance companies to pay more quickly so that your office has a healthy cash flow.
Learn More
For additional information, see the following :
- Improve Insurance Payment Estimates with Coverage Tables and Payment Tables
- Introducing Integrated Payments with Dentrix Pay
- 4 Best Practices for Electronic Billing to Improve Collections
- Reduce Claim Denials and Delays with Automatic eClaims Attachments
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.
