How to Improve On Your Practice Collections

How to Improve On Your Practice Collections

Many dental patients do not have dental insurance, so dental practices often offer payment plans. However, this can result in past-due invoices, which can cause issues with cash flow. Dental practices lose an average of 9% of their revenue to uncollected bills, and overdue accounts receivable can impact the valuation of a practice. To reduce overdue accounts receivable, dental practices should perform proper insurance verification, provide out-of-pocket cost estimates, put financial guidelines in writing, create an in-house dental membership plan, make sure patients understand their financial responsibilities before treatment and offer incentives for up-front payment.

This post provides tips for dental practices to increase their collection rate for past-due invoices. Suggestions include engaging in friendly and persistent follow-up communication, training and involving the team in the collection effort, offering flexible payment options, sending billing reminders on patients' preferred channels, offering electronic billing, and setting up shorter billing cycles. The article also discusses the option of using a dental office collection agency as a last resort.

The podcast discusses the pros and cons of using a dental collection agency to collect past-due invoices. While it can provide relief, there are also drawbacks such as high expenses and distressing patients. It suggests considering a collection agency as a last resort. It provides questions to ask when choosing an agency, such as their recovery rate and whether they specialize in the dental field. It also emphasizes the importance of reducing accounts receivable to improve cash flow and offers assistance through Titan Web Agency's services.