Dental practices are increasingly required to find new efficiencies, new ways of doing old things more quickly and cheaply. Of course, this extends to billing operations. As your number of patients expands, it becomes increasingly important to find alternative ways to send invoices and receive payments.
The best way to do this is to automate your accounts receivable (A/R) operation. By using a software solution designed to handle dental invoicing, you remove a major burden from your staff, reduce the potential for human error, and better serve your patients.
This is especially important for dental practices, which can be overwhelmed by increases in patients. They need to figure how to continue to best serve patients without significantly increasing operational spending. The easiest and most effective way to do this is by leveraging an A/R software solution to automate manual tasks. This uses software to do what has been done by hand, without hours of work by the administrative office.
Here, I’ll discuss why your practice should use an A/R software solution, how to maximize value from a solution, and how using one will benefit your bottom line.
Easily follow HIPAA standards
Quality A/R software solutions enable practices to enter into a business associate agreement (BAA) to ensure that customer data and protected health information (PHI) are kept confidential and in line with HIPAA regulations. The BAA by itself is a major step toward compliance. The solution should have strict security standards, and should be a PCI (payment card industry) level 1 service provider and meet PCI-data security standards (PCI-DSS). Additional measures such as two-factor authentication and data encryption should also be available.
Streamline workloads
One of the less ideal features of any A/R operation is the repetition of tasks. The nature of A/R means doing the same task over and over and over again. It’s not a good use of your resources or administrative office to spend hours upon hours every week manually checking the status of invoices. This can all be done automatically by a quality software solution. It makes tedious tasks simple by leveraging the software to do all the work for you. It also frees up staff to do more important work, increasing the value of the solution. Some tasks that can be automated include billing, payments, managing payment terms, and chasing.
Reduce human error
Medical billing is complex and trying to do it manually makes errors more likely. With a large number of patients and an even larger number of transactions, it’s almost impossible to get every one right all the time without using a quality software solution.
Making the complex simple will help your office and be better for your practice and patients. Accurate and timely billing means your cash flow problems are few and far between. For patients, accurate billing avoids surprises and helps ensure they’ll turn into regular patients.
Improve customer communication
Features such as payment portals enable customers to access self-service 24/7 without having to pick up a phone. This helps customers get information like payment balances and due dates on-demand and gives practices a new customer communication tool.
Manual and infrequent communication takes more time and resources than automatic and frequent communication. Messages such as payment due dates can be set up and never touched again, freeing administrative staff from another time-consuming burden. Just having a payment portal reduces the number of customer inquiries your staff must handle.
Reduce administrative tasks
Mailing and faxing invoices increases costs in both time and materials. Removing these expenditures by automating them will improve your customer service and bottom line. A quality A/R software solution makes multiple tasks obsolete. Mailing bills or receiving checks reduces the value of both due to increased administrative costs. The solution will ensure that you get the most value from each account.
Improve patient services and cash flow
Good A/R software platforms make your practice run smoother, hands down. Reputable automated A/R solutions, such as Invoiced, empower dental offices to do just that by removing complexity and turning your accounts receivable into an efficient operation that is easily scalable, better serves customers, and gets you paid faster. If you find bills aren’t getting paid on time or invoices are slow to send, maybe it’s time to give your A/R workflow a digital makeover.
Parag Patel is cofounder and COO of Invoiced, a leading accounts receivable automation platform. Patel teamed with cofounder Jared King in 2014 to help the popular platform make the transition from breakthrough product to category-leading company. He leads its customer care organization, including professional services, and customer success and support. Patel has an extensive background in software, including engineering and consulting roles with Verizon, and other startups in health care and telecommunications. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with a BS in computer systems engineering.
