Ethos Dental Group Sees a 40% Decrease in Insurance Verification Time with Eligibility Pro
Let the Numbers Speak
33%
Decrease in time answering coverage questions
40%
Decrease in time to complete eligibility checks
150%
Increase in checks done in a 90-minute timeframe
Challenge
Ethos Dental Group sees 80 to 90 patients a day, translating to a lot of time spent verifying insurance - due in large part to patients who are notorious for always having a new insurance provider. The platform they were originally using, though, wasn't necessarily as thorough or accurate as the practice needed it to be. With some of the insurance companies, they would just get that the patient was eligible.
Besides that, when sharing insurance information, the front-office team would include the fax back or the printout from the insurance company - all of which were formatted differently based on the provider - leaving staff to struggle through reading them and finding frequencies and limitations.
Solution
Ethos turned to Eligibility Pro for Dentrix Ascend to streamline their insurance verification workflows. As Office Manager Debra Bafia put it, "Ideally, I should be walking around, listening to staff, and going between the offices. I can't do that because I'm answering insurance questions and working on financial stuff. The easier I can make it for the rest of the team to understand eligibilities and talk with patients about their insurance benefits, the more time I have to focus on my actual job."
Results
Eligibility Pro has transformed insurance verification for the entire staff at Ethos Dental Group. The practice's insurance coordinator, who only works evenings, previously had to visit individual websites to verify eligibilities for each patient. Now she can just click on the patient information, verify it matches with what's in the system, and move onto the next patient. Eligibility Pro provides more information in real time and is easier to read because everything is formatted the same way, regardless of insurance company.
With her previous workflow, it would take the insurance coordinator about an hour-and-a-half to do one day's worth of schedules. Now, she's able to do two-and-a-half full days of schedules in that same amount of time.
Staff can now view coverage in a uniform fashion and easily identify where frequencies are. It's no longer different companies' faxes that they're trying to decipher. It's all the same, and that's been an enormous benefit across the board.
When asked what she'd tell someone who thought they didn't need Eligibility Pro, Bafia was emphatic in her answer:
"That's like saying, 'I don't need to log in and make accounts across the board for the insurance companies, I'll just make a phone call.' I would tell them, 'Then you need to hire somebody else to do the rest of your job because that's what you'll be doing all day long.' Why wouldn't you use what makes your job easier?"