If you’ve received a patient refund request, you’re probably wondering why it happened and what you can do to prevent more refund requests in the future. Dental Intelligence Payments can help you manage refunds and outstanding balances, but if you don’t yet have such a system, here’s what to do.

The Dangers of Patient Refund Requests

Issuing timely refund requests is important to patient satisfaction, but your practice needs to tread carefully. Your professional liability insurance has provisions that prevent you from taking actions that could hurt your defense if someone were to sue you, including giving refunds without taking proper precautions.

If you offer a refund without taking steps to protect yourself, it could look like an admission of liability that you’ve done something wrong. This may prevent your practice from drawing on your policy if a patient tries to take you to court.

Thankfully, you can avoid these problems by asking all patients to sign general release refund request forms before your practice issues a refund. Your form should:

• Identify the patient by name and address
• State that the refund isn’t an admission of liability

Reasons for Dental Practice Patient Refund Requests

Despite your best efforts, your practice will probably receive refund requests from patients occasionally. But why do refund requests happen, and what can your practice do about them? Two main factors behind refund requests include patient dissatisfaction and problems with the patient’s insurance.

The Patient Wasn’t Happy with Your Services

Your patients may seem pleased after a cleaning, teeth whitening, or other dental procedure. But later on, patients might realize that they weren’t so satisfied after all.

Why might a patient request a refund? Possible reasons include:

• The patient developed pain or discomfort following a procedure
• Your practice didn’t clearly communicate post-procedure care instructions
• Your practice failed to explain potential complications
• The patient believes you should have used a different or cheaper treatment

Refunds eat into your practice’s profits, so you probably want to avoid issuing one whenever possible. Before you agree to a patient refund request, consider:

• Are you confident that your practice performed high-quality work?
• How long has the person been a patient of your practice?
• Is the patient reasonable and easy to work with?
• Would the patient be satisfied with a sincere apology or a discount on future dental work instead?

If you see the patient regularly and they don’t make a habit of complaining, you may want to issue a refund to keep them from leaving for another practice. But if the patient has been demanding, aggressive, or non-compliant, you might refuse the refund request.

Insurance Company Refund Requests

Sometimes, refund requests have nothing to do with patient satisfaction at all. Many patients have employer-sponsored dental insurance that pays for the work you do. But if the employee loses or leaves their job, their insurance company might come after your practice for payment instead.

This can happen due to errors in timing with insurance companies and dates of employment. For example, a patient may lose their job and come to your practice for treatment shortly after that. The insurance company thinks they’re still employed, so they approve the claim.

Later, the insurance company processes the change in employment and realizes it paid a claim on a person no longer covered. The insurance company then sends your practice a refund request.¹

How can you avoid this situation from happening to you? The best solution is to collect payment from your patient up front. Your practice can then send the claim to the patient’s insurance company, but make sure to mark “Assignment of Benefits” so the check goes to the patient and not you. If the insurance company wants a refund, it will contact the patient or their employer’s human resources department instead of you.

Stay on Top of Patient Refund Requests With Dental Intelligence Payments

Is your dental practice struggling to keep up with patient payments and refund requests? Improve your collections with Payments from Dental Intelligence! Our system makes it easy to keep track of outstanding balances, issue a patient refund request, and reduce the workload for your front office staff. Schedule a demo today to find out more.

Resources

¹ ADA