Dentists justifiably put a lot of focus on brand development and marketing strategies. After all, it’s important to build a powerful brand and regularly attract new patients to your practice.
Increasing profits isn’t just about branding and marketing, however. In fact, there are many ways you can almost instantaneously improve profitability without attracting a single new patient to your practice.
One of those ways is to improve how you and your team manage claims. Managing claims effectively is a key profit strategy for insurance-based dental practices because you can start doing it right away. Here are four steps to help you get paid easier and faster. I encourage you to share these steps with your team and put them in writing to get everyone working in the same direction.
1. Make sure all claims are complete before sending them out.
As simple as it sounds, incomplete claims are one of the most common reasons claims get denied. Educate your team to make sure all claims include full and accurate information. This includes your practice information, the patient and teeth information, current codes, and dates of service. It also includes making everything sure every claim that gets sent out has pictures, x-rays, narratives, and anything else needed.
2. Print and review outstanding claims every two weeks.
Don’t let outstanding claims sit for months. This is a problem for a number of reasons. Obviously, letting outstanding claims sit delays getting paid, which can cause a cash crunch. Additionally, letting claims sit can cause an operations nightmare if the number of claims gets too high.
3. Work outstanding claims daily.
The more frequently you can work outstanding claims, the better. By printing and reviewing outstanding claims every two weeks, you will have an up-to-date list of which claims need work. This allows you to have your team work and resolve claims on a consistent basis. In fact, when I work with dentists, I encourage them to work outstanding claims daily. By working outstanding claims daily, you resolve issues quickly and get paid faster. You can also get better results because you keep the volume of work to a manageable level and your team doesn’t have to rush.
4. Set a goal for an acceptable percentage of claims over thirty days.
No matter how efficient you are with your claim submission, review, and follow-up, a percentage of claims will age. When I work with dentists, I encourage them to get the percentage of claims over thirty days old to thirty percent or less. The thirty and thirty percent formula is not just a memorable target. It’s also achievable. If you and your team make sure all claims are complete before sending, print and review outstanding claims every two weeks, and work outstanding claims daily, your claims will naturally get paid faster.
Are you empowering and motivating your team to improve claims management?
By creating clear, written guidelines for improved claims management, you empower and motivate your team to help you increase profits. You empower them by giving them clear direction for how to succeed. All they need to do is make sure the claims are complete, print and review outstanding claims every two weeks, and work outstanding claims daily.
By setting a percentage of aged claims as a key performance indicator, you also give them a clear and achievable goal to measure their success.
For more tips to grow your practice, sign up for your 14-day trial to Delivering Wow U. You can also join my free Dental Marketing and Profits Facebook group, where thousands of dentists and I help each other build better practices.
Finally, if you want even more personalized help, sign up for the next business bootcamp session where I work with you and a small group of other dentists to put together a systemized growth plan and get it working fast.
This article originally appeared on DeliveringWow.com.