If you’re handling insurance claims manually, you’re unnecessarily sacrificing time and resources — an average of 44 minutes per claim.* That time could be spent building relationships with your patients, finding new ways to promote your practice or honing the skills of your team.
Here are five ways that managing your claims manually slows you down:
1. Managing All the Paper
The first issue you have is dealing with all that paper: claim forms, additional documentation (like copies of X-rays or perio charts), checks, explanations of benefits (EOBs) — the list goes on. It’s difficult to find what you need quickly when you have to dig through that much paper, which also takes up physical office space.
On top of that, you need to constantly monitor inventory to make sure you always have critical supplies like printer ink, paper, envelopes and stamps. And how much havoc would ensue if your printer or copier breaks down?
2. Keeping Track of Everything Yourself
Without automatic notifications to let you know about the updated status of a claim, you have to keep track of all that information yourself. You’ll also need to stay current with dental plan changes from year to year to avoid payment delays or mistakes in patient billing.
3. Spending Unnecessary Hours on the Phone
When you manage claims manually, you have to chase down so much information yourself, including the status of claims. If you’re too busy to make the needed calls to carriers, you’re left in the dark, and you might even lose track of some outstanding claims altogether.
4. Slowing Down Reimbursement
The more time it takes insurance carriers to process your claims, the longer it takes you to get reimbursed. If you send paper claims, the carriers have to convert the information into electronic form to adjudicate the claim in their system. Plus, for claims that get rejected because they’re missing information, it will take even more time to submit them all over again.
5. Wasting Precious Time With Inefficient Processes
Managing claims manually simply takes more time: to make copies, to fill out paperwork, to send and receive snail mail, to call insurance carriers and wait on the phone while they check the status of a claim, to resubmit a rejected claim, and so on.
Fortunately, there’s a better way. A good electronic claim management solution will validate claims to make sure nothing is missing, provide automatic tracking and status updates, expedite reimbursement, and more. Time is money, so spend yours wisely.
Take the free Insurance Management Assessment to receive a detailed analysis of your claims process, including strengths and opportunities for improvement. You can also request a free copy of the white paper Electronic Claim Management With Dentrix.
Visit Dentrix eClaims at dentrix.com/eclaims or call 844.852.3155 to see how electronic claim management can streamline and accelerate your insurance processes.
*Based on the 2019 CAQH Index.
