If you are a dentist, then you would always try to include the trendiest technologies and the latest procedures and equipment into your practice. But did you ever think about what is putting a strain on your finance system? It may be your improper financial management. Then, you would need professional dental billing services. These services would simplify the procedure, thus allowing your dental practice to improve the incoming revenue system.
As a dentist, you can get yourself a certified medical coder who would include all the services like patient relationships, finances, marketing and other operational costs of your practice. You can attend to patients without worrying about the revenue system, as efficient software simplifies all the management tasks. First, let’s look at what happens if you have an outdated or inefficient practice. Then you can look for different modules of the software.
Problems with Outdated Dental Billing Software
A few dental practices prefer using an old version of dental billing software to boost revenue cycle management. The fact is that improperly developed software or outdated software could do no good to your business. It could pose serious troubles. A few problems that you can relate to less-equipped software are:
- Inefficient use of time: If you or your staff is spending unending hours with insurance claims or making continuous calls to the insurance companies, then you should understand that this software is not designed for you.
- Unpredictable cash flow: If the patient’s bills are taking time, it puts a strain on your cash flow. If the bills are not being paid; then you would need to think of ways to make ends meet.
- Unreliable billing: Billing codes are complex and can confuse staff. In a few cases, the present software cannot understand or decipher the medical codes; it is a signal for you to change the software handling dental billing services at the earliest.
- Diminished care: Complicated software would make the process complex and consume most working hours, leaving them with no time for patient care.
- Stress and frustrated workforce: An ineffective medical billing coding would put stress on your staff. It would leave the clinic employees frustrated, affecting their confidence.
Dental Practices Software Modules
An experienced certified medical coder would provide the right technology, providing the staff and patient with a positive overall experience. The most popular modules of the software are:
- Appointment scheduling software: For the smooth functioning of a dental office, you would need to manage the patient appointments perfectly. Booking and tracking appointments with the billing software will make it easy and reduce the processing time.
- Patient records software: The software keeps patient records handy; every time the patients visit the dental office. It would make it easy and efficient for the software.
- Patient billing/insurance claim: Your staff would be able to use this software for submitting insurance claims and generate bills. The staff members can track the status of the claims online.
- Patient reminders: If you feel the patients could miss their appointments, you could use the dedicated dental billing software to send automatic reminders.
Crucial Modules Generally Missed By Software Companies
One crucial step for medical billing is timely submission. In most cases, the staff may not submit the claims immediately to the insurance company. Delayed submission would hamper the payment. By chance, if any information is missing, then it would go into the category of the pending case.
The administrative staff needs to pull together all the missing information and start the submission process again. The software developed by dental billing company could be a great help, and most dental clinics fail to understand this aspect.
If you need additional modules for handling the clinic’s financial aspects, you could ask a medical billing company. You could choose for accounting, payroll, merchant processing, bill payment and cloud storage system. Proper staff training would help the ineffective use of the software for improving the revenue system effectively.
