While insurance carriers can be a wonderful tool for strengthening and growing your practice, sometimes reimbursement rates are persistently low, carriers are increasingly hard to work with and the effort you’re putting it isn’t showing up in your pocketbook or patient count. Is it ever okay to drop an insurance carrier at your dental practice?
Check Your Numbers
Your decision to stick around or drop an insurance carrier should always start by examining your numbers. What plans are you participating in? How many patients do you have in each plan? What total percentage of your patient base utilizes each plan? Is the plan bringing you new patients every month? If so, how many? You should also examine the collections per month (or per year) for each plan.
Finally, you should take a deep breath and check the write-offs for each PPO plan. If you don’t have time to devote to going in-depth, just take a look at the write-offs for a prophy, scaling and root planning and a crown. Scrutinize your write-off percentage for each insurance carrier. If you only have 50 patients in one plan, 25 of them showed up and you collected $2,500 total with a write-off percentage of 50%, you shouldn’t be wasting your time any longer. However, if one insurance carrier has 600 patients, the write-off is only 20% and the plan leads to 30% of your practice’s income, you should consider keeping it. Between those two extremes, there is a myriad of possibilities to explore.If You Choose to Drop a Plan
If you decide to drop an insurance carrier, you should keep the following tips in mind:
- If you are dropping more than one plan, don’t attempt to drop every plan at the same time. This should be done gradually while preparing patients for the transition.
- You need to abide by the contract that you signed. If you still have 6 months left in your contract, you should complete those 6 months. Depending on where your practice is located, you might need to write a letter to patients. When doing so, make it clear that you are not dropping the patient, but instead the insurance carrier.
- You should formulate a marketing plan and strategy for moving forward without the income brought in by that carrier before making a move to drop them.
Help Deciding What to Do with Your Insurance Carriers
The experts at APEX Reimbursement Specialists can help you to explore the best insurance carrier options for your continued growth and sustained success. Contact our team today by calling (410) 710-6005. We look forward to working with you to make your practice a more profitable place.