Insurance Assignment
Explanation:
Insurance Assignment
Insurance assignment allows insured patients to authorize their dental benefits plan carrier to pay your office directly for covered services. It is then your responsibility to collect any remaining amount owed by the patient.
If you choose to take assignment, ABELDent will keep track of amounts owed by the patient, and by the patient’s insurance carrier separately. This way, a patient will only be billed for those amounts not covered under their insurance. Many offices use insurance assignment to make treatment costs more affordable for patients who have insurance coverage.
Levels of Assignment in ABELDent
To provide you with flexibility in managing assignment, ABELDent offers three levels of assignment— System level, Insurance Plan level and Patient level.
• System: Use this level if you plan to take any type of assignment. When you select this option, ABELDent will create and track two Account Receivables—one for insurance and one for patients.
To activate, select the Assignment in System option in System Setup.
• Insurance Plan: Use this level to take assignments for specific insurance plans.
To activate, select the Take Assignment option when adding or editing a patient’s insurance plans.
Important: We recommend that you always choose assignment at the insurance plan level. This doesn’t mean you have to take assignment, but if you decide to take assignments for patients you can do so without having to return and set up the insurance plan assignment.
• Patient: Use this level to take assignments for individual patients.
To activate, select the Take Assignment? option on the patient’s Insurance tab when assigning plans to the patient’s record.
What are the Billing Options?
If your office decides to take insurance assignment, you can bill using either of the following methods:
• Bill the entire cost of a procedure to the patient’s insurance company. Upon receiving the insurance payment portion (either through the mail, or from an EOB received via EDI transmission of the treatment cost (e.g. 80%), you can bill the patient for the remainder, or uninsured portion of the cost.
• Bill the patient portion of the procedure immediately and receive the insurance portion later. Enter the patient’s insurance plan coverage (including maximums, deductibles, and percentage of coverage for Preventive, Basic, Major, and Ortho). ABELDent will automatically separate what the patient owes from what the insurance is covering, allowing the patient to pay what they owe immediately.
Should I Use Insurance Assignment?
Whether or not to accept assignment of benefits is a decision that each practice should make individually. ABELDent simply provides features that make the administration of assignment easier for those offices that decide to use them. Offices may make the decision to accept assignment based on such non-computer factors as:
• Practice’s philosophy on responsibility for payment
• Marketing and competitive pressures
• Ability of the staff to collect from patients
• Economic health of the patients in the practice
Insurance Assignment and CDAnet
Your practice can submit claims electronically using CDAnet whether or not you accept insurance assignment for your patients. The assignment status of each insurance claim is automatically determined from your data when treatment is entered, and sent with the electronic claim electronically to the insurance carrier.
References:
Product (s): ABELDent
Category: Insurance
Classification: Public
Date Created: 04 September 2015
Created by: Brian Neale