When Should I Send Out Dental Billing Statements?
Posted by Administrator at 11:56 PM on Feb 19, 2016
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Sending billing statements out can be a delicate process. If you send them too soon, it may cause confusion for your patients, but if you send them too late, it can disrupt your cash flow projections. The best question to ask yourself – and your reception staff – is why you’re needing to send billing statements out at all. In an ideal practice, payment is collected at the time of service.
However, this ideal practice doesn’t exist for most dentists. In busy practices, teams aren’t always able to be as consistent about colleting payment from patients and in other situations your patients may not always be prepared to pay at the time of service. Obviously these situations will require that you send out billing statements. Some dentists may choose to send out a batch of statements during the same week as the service rendered because this can help improve the cash flow of your practice.
However, this isn’t always the best idea, especially if an insurance claim is pending. If you send your patient a statement before the insurance company has had a chance to respond, it may cause them to call your office confused as to why you’re sending them a bill without having billed their insurance company first.
In the case of waiting for an insurance claim, it’s a good idea to keep your patients updated. This is especially important if the dual insurance is involved or when the claim is taking longer than expected to process. In these situations, you may want to send your patient a statement if the claim is older than 30 days. You can include a note on the statement about why the claim hasn’t yet been processed and the patient can assist by contacting their insurance company.
Keeping communication lines open with your patients is still important, even after their visit is over. Billing statements can not only keep these lines open and keep patients up to date about their accounts, but they can also improve the cash flow to your practice.
For help with billing statements or any of your other dental bookkeeping needs, please contact Dental Bookkeeping!