Most dentists aren’t sitting at their office desk all day, going over the numbers, organizing spreadsheets and scheduling patients. Those tasks go to your office manager and staff. Instead, we’re in the hustle and bustle of patient treatments, asking about holidays, recent vacations, and any other small talk tidbits that make every dental visit easier. Yet, knowing the numbers is necessary, especially the big one: your dental insurance AR. Is it high? Low? Where does it come from? How do I process and navigate it effectively?
How do I know what my dental insurance AR is?
Simply put, your dental insurance AR is your total over 30-day uncollected reimbursements. Every time you perform treatment, a dental billing claim is created and sent to the insurance company, which is then (hopefully) reimbursed in full quickly. If not, any denials or appeals should be followed up on quickly in order to achieve consistent cash flow.
How do I lower my dental insurance AR?
Lowering your dental insurance AR doesn’t need to be rocket science. Adhering to a standard operating procedure for dental billing is exceptionally helpful in getting a handle on your finances. Ask yourself and your staff these questions:
- Do we know our total number between dental insurance AR and patient AR?
- What’s an ideal percentage we want outstanding collections to be at?
- How quickly can we get reimbursed for new claims while working on older ones?
How does dental billing help with my AR?
Of course, your current dental insurance AR is a sign of the health of your dental billing procedures:
- Are your staff working on claims daily, or do they wait a few days before sending them all in at once?
- Do you have access to the latest coding resources that make narratives and dental coding submissions simpler?
- Are appeals or denials handled in a timely manner or falling by the wayside?
Simply put, dental billing is your single most important financial tool to lowering and maintaining your dental insurance AR. Without sufficient support, it’s easy to let billing processes fall by the wayside in favor of other daily tasks.
Tips for lowering your dental insurance AR
Here are a few ways you can get a head start on lowering your dental insurance AR today:
- Create a goal-oriented system for any outstanding appeals, and follow up on them if they go days without responses
- Send clean claims as treatments are completed instead of all at once later on
- Be sure to reconcile the reimbursement total with your bank account to ensure proper deposit totals
Getting help with your insurance AR
Of course, not every practice has the time and energy to dedicate to every small financial detail in dental billing and coding. That’s where eAssist comes in. As the nation’s leading platform provider of dental revenue cycle management systems, we know how important the “nitty gritty” is. Daily reporting, along with a transparent communication line means that you’re never left in the dark when it comes to your daily claims processing. Instead of taking valuable office time away from your staff, take the burden off of them and onto your dedicated outsourced billing team. We were created by dentists, for dentists, and the inside-out of billing is our specialty. Schedule a no-obligation consultation below, and tell us where you’d like your insurance AR to be in the next few months.
0 Comments