Filing claims on either prep date or seat date is legitimate. Which one to choose depends on selecting the set of pros and cons that works best for your office. The main concern arises when treatment spans two policy years, and offices should take steps to prevent these issues.

The prior article discussed how to gather great information—through verifications and breakdowns—to use when creating treatment estimates for patients. The next step is learning how to process that information correctly. Insurance can be extremely complex, but thankfully, it’s also highly predictable. It only seems unpredictable when it’s not well understood, which is quite common.

Getting information from an insurance company can be tedious, difficult, time-consuming, and just an overall pain in the rear. Because of this, most offices tend to try to bypass or skip this step, which leads to many other issues: poor collections, inaccurate estimates, unhappy patients, negative atmosphere, and more.