Empowering Dental EFT & ERA Technology in the Digital Age
Dental WebSmart
By Chris Haines – Dental WebSmart Solutions.
It may not be surprising to learn that the National Automated Clearinghouse Association stated that only 86% of Dental practices today are submitting claims electronically and only 13% are receiving EFT payments electronically.
Starting in November of 2019 is when insurance carriers started enforcing this EFT payment system more so than in the past and with many more carriers to roll EFT payment out in 2020 and beyond. This will almost certainly be a driver that will require practices to modernize their systems and business processes regarding EFT payments.
The ADA agrees that there are advantages to electronic reimbursement as long as a dental practice is technologically ready for that.
If practices didn’t keep up with current notification of this new roll out, then they started receiving payments with a virtual credit card. Many practices didn’t understand this, since they had not requested payment that way.
The problem with virtual credit cards you get charged a fee for running that payment through your credit card machine. This has forced practices to call and request their method of payment.
Don’t be fooled by these companies out there that offer to enroll your practice for receiving EFT’s and then find out after that you get charged a 1.99% fee for every EFT deposit you receive from any insurance carrier they work with. It does not cost a practice anything to register for EFT’s unless they hire a consulting service to do so.
To help Dental industry providers recognize and realize the benefits of automation using EFT standard and ERA, this technology has proved that practices of all sizes can achieve cost savings and benefits from converting their claims reimbursements payments from paper checks to EFT standard transaction and automating the reconciliation and posting process using the ERA.
Practices no longer need to wait for your Explanation of Benefits (EOB) to arrive in the mail.
Once you enroll in ERA, you can access the information you need to reconcile your patient accounts as soon as it is available to you. Each ERA will have a trace number (TRN) attached and name of insurance company to give you the ability to automatically re-associate the claim remittance information you receive from the clearinghouse. The TRN is designed to help providers confidently match EFT deposit with corresponding ERA’s that are deposited in the bank account. The benefit of this is huge, being it is available electronically and gives you access to the information it contains sooner than with a mailed paper EOB. Administrative savings are realized as a result of the paperwork reduction and the ERA can be scanned into the patient file.
Benefits achieved across practices include:
- Faster patient billing, as EFT payments are received faster allowing for quicker secondary billing and billing of patient responsibility
- Reduced posting errors through automation of EFT and ERA
- Reduced processing costs.
- Improved payment cycle within 2-7 days
- Threat of lost and stolen checks is eliminated
- Drastically cut down on the possibility of embezzlement in the practice
A new era in Dentistry has begun, if dentists want to increase the cash flow coming out of their practice he/she needs to learn how to manage their businesses, or hire the right experienced professional with the help of their management team to help them do so.
The EFT Experts at Dental WebSmart can tailor a solution just for you.
