.jpeg)
Providing excellent patient experiences means streamlining your dental practice’s operation from a business standpoint. Patients don’t want to deal with annoying insurance complications, confusing payment letters, or misinterpreted services. Continuing education with dental billing and coding training at your practice can increase dental production, improve patient satisfaction, and bring in more revenue.
At Dental Intelligence, we provide insights and tools that help your team complete their goals so you can offer the ideal patient experience and grow your practice. Our comprehensive platform makes everything from scheduling appointments to collecting payments a breeze. Below, we discuss how incorporating more billing and coding training within your business can boost productivity.
What Is Dental Billing?
Dental billing is the process of collecting payments from patients or insurance organizations for the services you provide. Unlike a standard business, dental billing involves many complex procedure codes and dental terminology. You must correctly adhere to such requirements to receive timely payments from insurance providers.
Why Train Your Team on Dental Billing?
Dental billing involves more than just swiping a credit card or collecting cash. Minor mistakes can cause major delays that impact your ability to receive the funds you need for your services. Such issues can impact the patient experience and reflect poorly on your practice.
Training each staff member on patient billing ensures the process runs smoothly and efficiently each time. When your employees fulfill steps on time, you can receive prompt payments.
How Should the Dental Billing Process Work?
The dental billing process should include the following steps:
- Collect patient information: Your staff should collect the patient’s name, phone number, email, insurance info, date of birth, etc.
- Verify coverage: Ensure that the subscriber ID and other insurance numbers align with an active and valid plan. You can check this by calling the carrier or using the organization’s online portal.
- Record treatments: The dentist, assistant, or coding companion should accurately chart all provided services according to American Dental Association (ADA) codes, which we’ll cover in the next section.
- Submit claims: Submit claims to the provider with the patient’s service codes, insurance information, clinical notes, and personal details. Be sure to follow up on any denied claims.
- Bill patients: Collect patient payment information for any outstanding dues. You may collect the funds up front or bill them later via mail.
- Post payments: After receiving funds from the insurance provider, post the payment to your management software.
What Is Dental Coding?
Dental coding is how your team can report any procedures, treatments, or services they provide. Dental coding uses official CDT and ICD-10-CM procedure codes and must comply with HIPAA. Inaccurate or improper coding can result in unintentional fraud, delayed payments, and denied claims, so it’s critical to support your team with the resources they need to perfect their coding skills.
Supporting Your Team with Coding Resources
The two main types of dental coding are the following:
- Current Dental Terminology (CDT): CDT codes describe any procedure your team conducts on a patient. You can find the most up-to-date CDT codes in the ADA catalog1. The ADA updates these each year, so be sure to provide your team with the latest changes.
- Internal Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM): ICD-10-CM codes work like CDT codes, though the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) update them each year, so your team must use them for medical insurance claims. You can find the latest codes on the CMS website2.
Increasing Productivity with Dental Billing Software
Increasing productivity with dental billing and coding training can only go so far when you have an outdated system. Modern dental billing software can increase your practice’s revenue by offering patients an easier way to pay, centralizing finances, automating payment reminders, integrating platforms, improving payment turnarounds, and more. Practices that make the switch to dental billing software can enjoy the following features:
- Advanced claim tracking
- Automatic billing cycling statements
- Patient engagement tools
- Digital forms
- Mobile apps
- Voicemail Drops
- Virtual check-ins
- Patient financing options
- And much more
The above enhancements can transform your practice into a well-oiled machine. You can take advantage of all these features and more with our products at Dental Intelligence.
Boost Productivity with Dental Intelligence
At Dental Intelligence, we want to help you learn all the different ways to make your dental practice flourish, whether it be dental billing and coding training or the best marketing practices for modern office settings. If you’re interested in shaping the future of your practice, request a demo from our Dental Intelligence team today.
