What Are the Signs That My Dental Practice Should Outsource Its Billing?

Chief Strategy Officer

Rob is the Chief Strategy Officer of eAssist, where he leads business development, strategic partnerships, and service delivery across the company’s nationwide customer base. He previously served as Co-Founder and CEO of Espire Dental, a 50-location dental group recognized nationally for its exceptional patient experience and culture. Before Espire, Rob was VP of Dental Services at ClearChoice Dental Implants, the leading U.S. provider of full arch dental prosthetics with 100 ambulatory surgical centers. His earlier leadership roles include SVP of SmileAmerica, delivering dental care to underserved children across 22 states, and Co-Founder of Dental Growth Partners, supporting 17 specialty practices in New England. Rob began his career as a Business Consulting Manager at Arthur Andersen in San Francisco, where he managed audits for major healthcare and technology clients, including Catholic Healthcare West, Stanford University Health Center, Cisco Systems, Symantec, and Fujitsu. He holds an MBA from Boston University and a BS from Brigham Young University.

What Are the Signs That My Dental Practice Should Outsource Its Billing?

June 2, 2022

Updated 7/21/26

Dental billing outsourcing gives your practice the opportunity to step back from the increasingly complex, specialized work of dental insurance billing, and hand it to dedicated billing specialists instead. But how do you know it’s actually time to make that move? Below are the clearest signs, along with what each one usually means for a practice.

Your accounts receivable keeps climbing. If your A/R totals rise every month instead of leveling off, it’s usually a sign that claims and patient balances aren’t being worked consistently enough to keep pace with new production.
Accounts are piling up past 90 days. Once a claim crosses the three-month mark, it becomes much harder to collect. Patients are more likely to fall through the cracks, and insurance follow-up takes more effort the longer it sits.
Your phone line and front desk are tied up with billing calls. When staff is fielding billing questions and spending time on hold with insurance companies, that’s time taken away from assisting patients in the office.
Your collections lag behind your production. If your collections percentage is consistently below your production, it’s a sign that claims aren’t being worked as thoroughly as they should be. That gap — tracked over several months — often points to a billing process that needs more consistent attention than an already-stretched team can give it.
Your team is stretched between patient care and billing complexity. Dental insurance billing has a lot of moving parts — claims, patient statements, appeals, follow-up. If staff is trying to manage all of it on top of day-to-day patient care, something usually slips.

If more than one of these sounds familiar, it’s worth looking at outsourcing as a way to bring dedicated attention to billing while your team focuses on patients.

Why practices choose eAssist for outsourced billing

Not all outsourced billing is the same. eAssist’s billing specialists are trained across dental specialties — general, pediatric, endodontic, periodontic, orthodontic, and oral surgery — and work directly inside the practice management software you already use, so there’s no disruptive software switch. More than 3,000 dental practices have used eAssist to collect over $19.5 billion in insurance payments, and the company holds 100+ five-star Google reviews. That track record is what “peace of mind” looks like in practice: a dedicated team working your claims so your staff can stay focused on patients.

Ready to see what outsourcing could do for your A/R? Schedule a consultation with eAssist and get a clear picture of where your practice stands.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Billing specialists can be matched to a practice’s individual needs, whether that’s full-scope billing support or help with specific tasks like insurance verification or patient billing. Smaller practices often feel the strain of billing tasks most acutely, since there’s no dedicated billing staff to absorb the workload.

Yes. Billing support isn’t limited to general dentistry. At eAssist, our billing specialists are trained across pediatric, endodontic, periodontic, orthodontic, and oral surgery billing, so specialty practices get the same dedicated attention to claims and patient accounts.

DSOs can outsource billing as well. Support for general dentistry billing extends from solo offices to DSOs, with billers who work across multiple locations and adapt to a group’s existing systems and workflows.

Outsourcing doesn’t mean replacing your team — it means freeing them up. When billing specialists take on claims and patient account follow-up, your in-house staff can spend more of their time on what matters most: helping the patients right in front of them, instead of being pulled into billing tasks.

It depends on your outsourcing partner — some may ask you to adapt to their preferred system. At eAssist, billing specialists work directly inside the practice management software you already use, so there’s no disruptive software switch required.