New Year, New Fees: Audit Your Dental Fee Schedule the Easy Way

When is the last time your practice took a good long look at its fee schedule? Updating dental fee schedules regularly (every 1 or 2 years) can improve your returns from dental billing by ensuring that your dental fees always:

• Keep up with inflation.
  
• Stay competitive with other dental practices in your area.
  
• And get the most out of dental claim reimbursements.
  

Unfortunately, busy dental offices often put off updating their fees. Considering the large number of procedure codes and insurance companies to deal with, reassessing the practice’s fee schedule on top of running normal day-to-day operations often feels like an impossible task. On the other hand, operating with an outdated dental fee schedule is like flushing potential revenue down the toilet. Thankfully, we at SB Dental Solutions Dental Billing Company can help simplify the process of an annual fee schedule audit.

Let Dental Billing Experts Do the Hard Part for You!

SB Dental Solutions takes many of the most laborious parts of an annual fee schedule review off of our clients’ plates. We handle negotiations with dental insurance companies, which frees dental practices from spending hours on the phone tracking down a current fee schedule from each contracted insurance provider. Once we have successfully renegotiated the fee schedule, we enter all changes electronically. Next, we update patient portion estimates according to current insurance fees. And finally, we offer patient consultation, which can help patients understand changing fees and avoid frustration over dental billing questions.

So What’s Your Part as the Dental Provider?

• Straightforward Patient Communication
  

Clear and honest communication promotes consumer trust, especially for dental patients. Dentists can prevent a lot of patient frustration by informing patients of fee schedule changes and what (if any) differences they may see in their upcoming costs. Openly communicate fee schedule changes to help patients feel confident in the accuracy of their dental bills during the annual fee schedule review process -- and always!

• Reexamine How You Code Procedures
  

Dental treatments often involve multiple overlapping tasks, and that complexity leads to equally complicated billing questions. That is why reevaluating your dental coding practices is a vital part of the annual fee schedule review. Dentists must periodically:

• Examine each procedure for accurate, error-free claims submission.
  
• Stay informed of any changes to ICD-10 procedure codes.
  
• And retrain staff on current billing practices, as needed.
  

Give Your Office a Great Start to the New Year
By regularly adjusting their fee schedules, our clients stay ahead of the pack with stress-free revenue cycles, optimal insurance claim reimbursement, and current competitive procedure costs. Call our 24-hour help team today to find out how we can help get your new year off to a great start.

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