How Do Dental Billing Services Work?

Dental billing service entities are essentially the middleman between the dental providers and the insurance payers. The dental billing process is complex and messy, requiring hands-on attention. Unfortunately, many dental practices are on the smaller side. Typically, the administration and billing services are combined, leaving little to no time to handle each function appropriately which causes the billing process to become even more stressful and elongated. These types of dental administrative work are not only complex but becoming increasingly more of a time-suck, with practices finding themselves spending over 6 hours a week on billing, while feeling more unsatisfied with what they are doing. This ultimately leaves the practice with less time for what’s most important: the patient. This is where dental billing services help.

What are the Benefits of Dental Billing Services?

The purpose of dental billing services is to remove the administrative work of processing bills and accompanying claims for dental practices. While outsourcing administrative work may seem daunting to in-house teams, the intent is not to replace individuals.

Dental billing services aim to give your in-house teams the ability to focus on other critical functions and ultimately the patients. Dental billing requires time and focus to complete effectively, creating a challenge for admin teams who are responsible for many tasks. Billing services remove work like insurance phone calls and filing time for the admin staff, eliminating stress and allowing them to work on patient-related tasks. 

These services will also ensure that your practice remains up-to-date on coding and insurance administration changes. This is a vital advantage to practices, as the dental field changes frequently due to the American Dental Association (ADA) updating and changing codes on an annual basis. Without using dental billing services, it can be costly and inconvenient having your staff handle these changes.

Researching claims, managing patient ledgers, and addressing denied claims are all removed from a practice’s to-do list. Third-party dental billing services ultimately streamline this process, providing complete attention and expertise to patients’ billing and claim needs. 

How SDS Makes the Administrative Workflow More Efficient

Smart Data Solutions excels at providing efficient dental workflow solutions through the use of electronic claims processing. As an electronic claims clearinghouse, SDS provides stress-free, streamlined claims processing by thoroughly analyzing claims after digitalization. Once proofread and cleaned, these claims (and any other associated dental or medical records and attachments, including x-rays) are sent along to the insurance payers. 

Electronic claims processing is a rapidly increasing trend in the dental industry, with 2020 being the first year that electronic transactions surpassed manual transactions in the dental industry. Dental plan adoptions of electronic claim submissions increased to a total of 82% the same year. The adaptation to this trend is unsurprising, considering the savings it offers.

Securely digitizing claim submissions cuts the claims processing time down considerably, on top of dental claims processing services like SDS removing the additional workload. The 2020 CAQH Index estimates that this cut time provides dental providers a chance to save upwards of $6.48 per transaction by converting all transactions to fully electronic, and the industry as a whole saving an estimated $3 billion by increasing electronic processing. 

Smart Data Solutions aims to apply this technology for its dental practice and insurance payer clients. SDS recognizes the potential savings through streamlining operations and offers dental practices the opportunity to take advantage of them. If you have questions on how to choose a dental billing company or any other dental billing questions Reach out to SDS today to cut time and stress while saving money.