Key Challenges in Dental Billing & Common Dental Billing Issues and How to Overcome Them?

1. Unexpected challenges: Covid-19
Eddie Crouch, chair of the British Dental Association, says there is “no question” that Covid-19 is the biggest challenge the global dental profession has ever faced. He also points out that the effects of the pandemic on dentistry won’t end with Covid-19 itself. Repercussions are likely to continue for many, many years to come.
Covid-19 has exposed some serious problems with the industry. Elements that were shaky before (dental inequality, for example) have been broken by the pandemic. Rebuilding and reforming the industry will be a big challenge for current and future dentists.

2. More Patients Owing
Without an effective follow-up solution, you will end up with more patients who make away with unpaid bills. Most dental patients are under one insurance policy or another. As these pile-up errors are inevitable which makes claims impossible to collect.
As the realization that losses are increasing, the common reaction is to increase the number of patients you attend. The dentist now works overtime in a bid to increase revenue. This is usually not an ideal approach, as collections will still remain low, with more patients filing unverified insurance or delaying in payments.

3. Denied Insurance Claims:
Unpaid treatments are not the only problem. As insurance claims are denied, appeals need to be made to ensure that reversals or claims are successful and you collect what you are owed.

4. Not enough time:
Billing becomes a heavy burden on practices when only one person has to;

• Patient attention in the office
• Treatment plans
• Calls
• Insurance claims
• Post credits
• Appeals to denied claims
• Manage account receivables

This deprives you and your staff of time to focus on income-generating aspects of the practice. Your main focus will be limited to fixing the many things that are not going right, oftentimes neglecting to pay attention to detail when processing billings.

5. An affected patient ledger:
As the toll weighs on you the office manager, patients are bound to turn away from your practice. How often have you heard, “…their service is good but their billing is terrible…?”. A loss in patients also means a loss in revenue which could, in turn, lead to a loss of your whole business.