eClaims Help You Get Paid Quicker and Easier!

Every dental practice needs to get paid quickly and without headache. By using electronic claims, or eClaims, you can help your practice staff stop chasing that never-ending paper trail. Technology has brought us so many ways to work smarter instead of harder. Why not take advantage of them?

With paper claims, you have to wait three to six long weeks for insurance companies to process the claims. You may have even more delays if any of the information needs clarification or correction. In contrast, eClaims generally process in less than 10 days, which means you get a quicker payday.

eClaims are not only faster, they’re also safer. You can attach electronic versions of X-rays, charts and photos instead of the actual hard copies. No documents get lost in the mail, and you are able to track the electronic claims at each step in the process. Compare that to paper claims, which are basically untrackable unless you pay for certified mail and require a return receipt, which can get expensive. Going paperless with eClaims saves you money on postage as well as on paper and envelopes. 

Along with saving you money, eClaims give you back precious time. They eliminate all of the time spent sorting, stuffing and addressing the envelopes. You can batch and send your electronic claims with just a few quick mouse clicks and take back the time your office is losing with mailing paper claims.

Since every moment counts in a busy dental practice, if you are using third-party software for your electronic claims, you’re wasting time jumping between programs. eClaims are integrated directly with Easy Dental, so it’s fast and easy to take care of everything in one place. Staff time is freed up from clerical work so they can take care of what’s most important: your patients. 

So next time you are creating a claim in Easy Dental, instead of spending all that time and money printing, sorting, stuffing, stamping and mailing claims out into nowhere land, send your claims electronically for faster payment and a more efficient way of tracking them.


Did you know that Easy Dental also offers unlimited eClaims on Plus and Complete customer support plans? In addition to the many other benefits of these customer support plans, now you no longer have to worry about how much each claim is going to cost your practice. For more information about how to get on an Easy Dental customer service plan, call 800.768.6464 and discover how you can save a significant amount of time and money with unlimited eClaims.

To learn more on how you can improve the processes and become a super hero in your dental office join Easy Dental on an upcoming webinar. "Become the Office Hero with Easy Dental" – December 15, 2015, 11:00 AM MDT. Register now >>

Author: Cindy Day Hauk

Global Teams Solution Practice Management Consultant

Productive Scheduling

It is a great misconception that scheduling is the easiest admin job. That’s why when a new person is hired, especially one with no dental experience, this is where they are placed. Then the clinical team complains because the schedule is crazy.

The truth is that this is a difficult job—especially when the phone rings and the patient is demanding that the scheduler find something that fits within her schedule. For example, Mrs. Smith wants to have her crown seated at 8 a.m. on Wednesday; however, Mary, the new office admin, was told that only high-production appointments should be scheduled during that time, so Mrs. Smith goes away unhappy.

Here are some suggestions to make this a bit more acceptable for the entire office.

1.    Declare a daily goal for each provider and/or for the office.
There is a cost for opening your doors. Determine what that is, and set your goal accordingly. If you don't aim for a specific target, you will never hit it.

2.    Have the doctor(s) list out the ideal day.
This is a fantastic team meeting agenda item. Some prefer to do major work first thing in the morning while others don't really wake up until around 10:00. Your dentist may not be fully energized until the afternoon, so perhaps the best time to schedule appointments is later in the day.

Decide what can and cannot be scheduled together. Typically, it doesn't work well to schedule 2 crown preps at 8 a.m. Yet you could put a crown prep and a limited exam together. This would allow the doctor to numb the crown prep while the assistant takes an exam on the emergency.

3.    Put guiding blocks on the schedule.
Once the ideal schedule is determined, put blocks on the schedule as a guide for whoever is answering the phone, and you take the guesswork out of where to schedule that crown seat.

4.    Save time for emergency appointments.
Whatever time these appointments are scheduled, it seems the clinical team is never pleased. We have found that a reasonable solution is to ask the assistants at each morning huddle to identify two emergency times—one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This allows the scheduler to tell Mr. Lee that he can come in at 10:30 or 3:15 with that toothache. 

Of course, there will always be adjustments to the rules, but those should be the exceptions rather than the norm. Understanding the “rules” allows the entire team to work with the scheduler to create that ideal day.

To learn more on how you can improve the processes in your dental office to help you manage your practice with confidence and achieve new levels of productivity join me on my upcoming webinar. The Secrets of a Productive Practice – September 22, 2015, 11:00 AM MDT. Register now >>

Author: Denise Ciardello
Co-founder Global Team Solutions

What Profitable Practices Need to Know: Set Up a Fee Schedule

If you want to be a profitable dental practice, there are a few secrets you need to know. The first secret is setting up a fee schedule for your common dental procedures.

Your fee schedule should include your usual fees as well as the usual insurance coverage for your offered procedures. Setting up a fee schedule and including these prices allows you to do two major things for your patients:

• Quickly estimate what their portion of the bill will be.
• Set accurate expectations regarding the insurance portion of their bill.

This will not only allow you to provide more accurate treatment and insurance estimates for your patients but it will also benefit you by giving you a more precise accounting of your daily practice production. This also gives your front office employees the chance to collect fees closer to their exact amount each day.

When you can, group your patients by employer. By grouping them together it lets you update insurance information on a group basis rather than individually, which saves your staff hours of time. This will also allow you to make fee updates and apply them to the whole group instead of the time-consuming process of updating each individual patient record.

Assess your fee schedule every six months to make sure your fees are comparable with your dental peers. This will allow you to make effective practice decisions as you regularly examine your fees.

It is important that you revise your fee schedule just as often as insurance companies update their coverage tables to make sure you are reimbursed correctly. When you adjusting your fees more than once a year it lets you gradually raise your fees. This will make it easier for your patients to accept the price change. You may not want to adjust your fees, especially when that means raising them, but this allows you to compensate for the rising operating costs you face, such as lab fees, equipment costs and office utilities.

To learn more on how you can improve the processes in your dental office to help you manage your practice with confidence and achieve new levels of productivity join Easy Dental on an upcoming webinar. The Secrets of a Productive Practice – September 22, 2015, 11:00 AM MDT. Register now >>

Author: Cindy Day Hauk

Founder at CKD Practice Management

7 Ways You Get More from Easy Dental

When you purchased Easy Dental, you got the easiest-to-use dental practice management software on the market. Now make sure that you are getting the most out of your investment with a Basic, Plus or Complete customer service plan. Each plan is tailored to expand the usefulness of your software to make you and your staff even more effective. You don’t want to miss out on features like:

1. Free Upgrades 
   Technology is always changing, and it’s critical to keep up. Easy Dental is continually improving with new tools and features that help your practice be more efficient, productive and profitable. With a customer service plan, you will automatically receive the latest version of the software as soon as it becomes available.
2. Unlimited Technical Assistance
   Easy Dental is the simplest-to-use dental software available, but there are still times when it’s nice to have a friendly voice on the phone to answer your questions. Easy Dental customer service plans include unlimited technical assistance, so you can call when you get stuck.
3. Click to Chat and Email Support 
   Not interested in getting on the phone? No problem. With a customer service plan, you can access one of our support members on the Easy Dental website through click to chat. Our team members will help you through the problem quickly so you can attend to your practice. If it’s not an urgent issue you can send an email, and we will get back as quickly as possible.
4. Access to the Knowledge Base, Including On-Demand Training Videos
   The more knowledgeable your staff is with Easy Dental software, the more efficient they will be. With this in mind, we’ve built an impressive collection of support and learning tools, including on-demand training videos. You and your staff can learn from this wealth of information anytime.
5. Integrated Credit Card Processing With PowerPay LE 
   Easy Dental simplifies and organizes your finances by processing credit card payments directly with PowerPay LE. It posts payments automatically to your Easy Dental ledger to eliminate double entry and processes payments without tying up a phone line.
6. Standard Website and Hosting
   More and more, patients are searching for dental care providers on the Internet. With Easy Dental Website Manager, they can find you! And it’s included in your customer service plan at no additional cost.
7. Online Data Backup With eBackup
   Are you concerned about possibly losing all of your patient data? What if there is a fire or natural disaster? Included in all customer service plans, Easy Dental eBackUp ensures your patient information is safe.

To find out which customer service plan is right for you visit http://www.easydental.com/eservicesor contact your account executive at 800-768-6464.

Save Money and Simplify the Claims Process

Maximizing productivity is key to the success of any dental practice. Easy Dental eServices boost your front office productivity with powerful tools that allow your team to get more done in less time.

eServices, which are seamlessly integrated with Easy Dental, simplify and even automate time-consuming tasks. One of the most popular eServices is eClaims. It streamlines the claim submission process so you get paid in days instead of weeks, while your front office team spends less time creating claims and waiting for reimbursements. With just a few clicks of the mouse you can create, validate, add attachments and electronically submit patients’ insurance claims directly from Easy Dental. Plus, eClaims reduces rejected claims while maximizing the benefits of your digital photo and X-ray hardware. Claims are encrypted and transmitted accurately in a secure, HIPAA-compliant format.

eClaims is also connected to the largest list of payers in the industry for electronic claims and attachments. Because of this you can send more claims and attachments using eClaims than with any other service. eClaims will even print and mail your claims that can’t be processed electronically--at no additional charge. Some of the time- and money-saving features in eClaims include:

Integrated Submission Process
eClaims allows you to send your claims directly from Easy Dental, without the use of bridges or print drivers, for the fastest submission.

Attachments
With eClaims, you can attach X-rays, photos, perio charts and more to your claim, saving you hundreds of dollars in duplication costs and speeding up the reimbursement process by weeks.

Claim Validation 
The validation process checks your claim for necessary components and informs you of any omissions. The result is fewer rejections and greater peace of mind.

Claim Tracking
eClaims provides you with detailed submission reports to keep you better informed of the status of your electronic claims.

Automatic Updates
Automatic updates to the eClaims software ensure that your claims are transmitted safely and reliably with the latest technology.

Broad Connectivity
eClaims is connected to the largest list of payers in the dental industry. This allows you to send more claims electronically with eClaims than with any other electronic claims provider.

Visit Easy Dental online, or contact your sales or support representative for more information on eClaims. Services can be purchased separately or as part of an Easy Dental service plan. You can reach us at http://www.easydental.com/eservices or 800-768-6464.