3 Ways A Dental Billing Service Can Help Your Practice Pass An Audit
Dental practices rely heavily on payments from their patients' insurance companies to generate a profit. Many practices work with third-party billing companies to handle the coding and submission of dental claims.
Making the choice to leave your billing in the hands of a professional can not only free up your time, it can also prevent costly errors that might arise during an audit.
1. Billing Consistency
When insurance companies conduct an audit of the practices they are making payments to, one of the things that they are looking for is billing consistency. They focus heavily on the consistency between insured and uninsured patients.
It's important that you are charging all of your patients the same amount for each service offered, regardless of insurance status. If the insurance company feels that you are overcharging insured patients to help generate more income, you could be asked to refund some of the money paid to you and face stiff penalties.
A professional billing company will ensure that all bills generated are consistent for each patient in your practice.
2. Procedural Evidence
The billing specialist that you work with will be given access to your practice's electronic files. This gives the billing agent the ability to check the files for procedural evidence before billing the insurance company.
Each file will be meticulously reviewed during an audit. The insurance company will verify that there is proof that all images and products charged to their company were actually generated and used for the patient.
Billing specialists are the first to spot discrepancies in procedural evidence, giving your practice time to locate the evidence required or avoid billing the insurance company erroneously.
3. Billing Accuracy
The office staff in a busy dental practice can be overworked. They are tasked with handling patient check-ins, payments, and file generation. If you add billing to their workload, you are bound to experience some errors when it comes to charging insurance companies.
Billing specialists focus solely on the coding and billing of dental products and procedures. Sending your billing to an outside company will improve the accuracy of the statements generated on your behalf, helping to avoid having the insurance company uncover any serious discrepancies during a future audit.
No one looks forward to the auditing process, but it is an important part of dental billing programs. Rely on a billing service to improve accuracy so that you will never have to fear an insurance audit again.
For more information, contact a dental billing company.