To Print Or Not To Print Insurance Claim Forms For Your Patients
Corine Leech
Dental Town
December 2000
"Why do you print the insurance form for your patients? I thought you were trying to get out of the insurance business." Many office have asked me that question over the last few months. We are trying to get out the insurance business, but we are not trying to do that at the expense of making our patient family feel like we are dumping this in their lap and not willing to help them. In my opinion, we want to help our patients realize how easy it is for them to file their own insurance, take advantage of the billing adjustment we offer them, and benefit from our undivided personal attention to their families dental care. Why not take the extra step to help the patients by just filing their insurance for them either by electronic claim or snail mail? I certainly want to do ALL I can to be sure my patients are comfortable with the filing of their insurance, but if you file the claim for your patients they have no way of tracking when it was actually filed, just your word on when you say you filed it for them. We all have heard the story, the patient calls the insurance company to check on their claim and they are told, "We never received your claim, your dentist must have not filed it." By letting them file it themselves they know exactly when it was mailed and that it "WAS" mailed. Some practices have chosen to delete all the insurance from their patient information in the computer, give their patients a blank ADA dental form with practice information filled in and a super bill to attach to the insurance form prior to mailing. It has been my experience that insurance companies have come up with ways to unattach the superbill from the insurance form, similar to the way they never seem to have the x-rays you know you attached to the claim, and then ask you to resubmit since all they received was a claim form. Why frustrate your patients? Try to make it easy for them by giving them everything they need. I do not remove their insurance unless they no longer have it. If their insurance changes I attach an insurance plan I have named "blank", it allows me to print a claim form with all the patient information, practice information, and complete treatment information. I then instruct the patient where to complete the areas on the form with new insurance company information. I want my patients to realize that I am here to help them. I want this transition period to be comfortable for them, not another headache in their busy life. It really is no more work for me. Once I have printed their claim forms for them, I give them two copies , one to send to insurance and one for their records. I simply click back into the claim and attach a $0 payment to trick the computer into thinking the claim is paid. My goal is to do everything I can to help my patients get their reimbursement. After all if we had no patients, we would have no jobs.
©2006 Lane Quick Development LLC. All Rights Reserved.