The dental billing dilemma! To keep dental billing in-house or hire the services of a dental billing company, which is specialized to handle such chores. Understand beforehand that handling insurance claims are not child’s play. It requires experience hand/hands. By the way, both options will do the job — in-house and outsourced. The question then boils down to “does outsourcing have any extra benefits to flaunt?” It is up to you, thereafter, to make an informed decision, one which will help your dental practice by all means.

First-Hand experience

Those dental billing professionals who have worked both boats will be able to make the informed decision you are seeking—the in-house versus outsourcing debate strikes every dental practice. There are not many exceptions to this rule. Firsthand experience with both situations helps make a quick decision. That being said, the scales invariably tip in favor of the outsourced dental billing company. The concept of ‘working remotely’ brings with it benefits that do not usually accrue to in-house handling of the billing process.    

What is outsourced dental billing?

Of course, there are always exceptions. Maybe, outsourcing could not be the problem-solver for your dental practice. So, let’s get some definitions right. What is outsourced dental billing? The answer is outsourcing dental billing is paying a third-party dental billing company to do the dental insurance for a dental practice. For a fee, of course! Your dental practice does not have to hire an insurance coordinator. That will save you from paying salary, social security, and Medicare. But then, to be satisfied, the cost of outsourcing should be lower than what it costs to do the chores in-house.

Walk the talk

The argument is outsourcing frees dental practices from paying the cost for hiring one or more insurance coordinators—staff who liaise with insurance companies for payments to be made to healthcare providers for services rendered to patients with health insurance. The dental practice does not have to train employees to do the job. The journey from insurance verification to insurance payments posting isn’t for rookies. It takes an experienced hand to walk the talk. Outsourced dental billing companies use VPN and specific dental software to do the job. That makes them viable options.

From insurance to payment  

There are benefits to outsourcing dental billing. There is actually a process to dental billing—steps! The patient takes appointments and provides insurance and what is called “protected health information” to the dental practice office, which in turn enters the patient’s PHI into the dental software. The next step is insurance verification. Then the patient is “seen”. An insurance claim is created and the claim is batched. The dental software sends the batched claim to the insurance company, which does its own processing before making a payment to the dental office. Next and last, payment is posted in the patient records.

Summing Up                

As can be seen, it is a protracted process and requires a certain level of understanding and working of the insurance process, which also translates into costs involved. The outsourced dental billing company has responsibilities to fulfill. Doing the functions in-house will cost and it has been seen that in-house handling costs more than when billing is outsourced to dental billing companies.