Understanding Dental Insurance

Episode #388 with Dr. Travis Campbell

Dentistry is the easy part of being a dentist. Dental insurance, on the other hand, can be a nightmare — especially when you don't understand it. And to help make dental insurance more of an annoyance than a nightmare, Kirk Behrendt brings in Dr. Travis Campbell, “The Dental Insurance Guy,” and author of Understanding Dental Insurance. If your biggest frustration is having your claims denied, read this book today! And to learn how to make insurance work for you, listen to Episode 388 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

Learn the myths about dental insurance.

Don't blame the insurance company if your claims are denied.

Provide more information to increase claims acceptance.

Know which procedures are covered under medical rather than dental.

Coding is how you communicate with insurance companies — learn it!

Quotes:

“Everybody thinks being out-of-network is the best way to make money. And I will say it’s probably easier that way. But what I've noticed is there are a lot of patients in the world that will only go see an in-network dentist. Period. They're brainwashed, or that's their mentality, or it’s financial. Whatever the reason, there are a lot of people that will never set foot in a fee-for-service office or an out-of-network office. It’s just what they are. And I wanted to help them.” (6:08—6:40)

“If we understand how insurance works, the amount of write-offs we have to take are so far less than what we think. When we went back in-network, most of my fee structure now is 15% or 20% discount, when it used to be 35%, 40%, 50%. Well, we also have plans for our cash patients, membership plans, where they get a 10% or 15% discount naturally. So, for me to give 10% or 15% to a cash patient or 15% or 20% to an insurance patient, is not a big difference. And so, I can treat everybody pretty close to the same fees in-network. So, why not? And our collections went up by $700,000 last year.” (6:45—7:35)

“The number-one thing I would say I learned myself was, we’re taught well in clinical. And when I first got out, the CE courses I took were mostly clinical. They're the fun stuff. They're the ones we want to learn more of. But I realized after spending a fortune on some high-end clinical classes on TMJ therapies and CAD/CAM and a lot of other things, it doesn't matter what we know if we can't communicate with the patient well enough to get them to want to purchase what we can do.” (8:34—9:12)

“When I started learning more about communications with patients, that opened up everything else. It doesn't matter if we’re the best clinician in the world to do an implant, or high-end surgeries, or whatever. Because if we can't get the patients to say, ‘Yes, I'm willing to drop X amount of money to have you do this thing that will change my life,’ it doesn't matter.” (9:14—9:36)

“I've been a business coach for quite a few dentists. And one of the biggest challenges I see [in] most offices [that] are struggling financially is treatment acceptance. And dentists have an average of 25% or 30%. And it boggles my mind because we always want new patients, but we have all these patients that aren't getting treated in the first place. And if we can just have higher treatment acceptance, we don't need new people. We could drop insurance plans. We can do a whole lot if we have the ability to take care of the people that are in front of us already.” (9:40—10:14)

“[What most dentists get wrong about PPOs and insurance is] listening to the myths. There are so many myths in the industry. Feeling like you have to file every claim, regardless, is one of them. Insurance companies don't want to see claims that they're not going to pay for. It’s a burden to them as well. And yet, I see it all...