“Carving out time during the day to call insurance companies is why I became a practitioner!” — says nobody, ever. That’s why our team is excited to share an expanded feature that will save you a lot of time and unnecessary headaches: Insurance Verifications.
The Unified Practice Insurance Verification service was developed to easily take over the burden of checking patient insurance benefits by phone. Verifying insurance is critical to ensuring you are billing accurately and have up-to-date insurance info for your patients, yet the process is often unpredictable and can sometimes take up to an hour to verify a single patient.
The unknowns of how long it will take to reach an operator, collecting the patient and provider information beforehand, and the less-than-enjoyable hold music are details you no longer need to worry about with this integration.
We spoke with Unified Practice’s Insurance Verification Specialist, Claudia, who makes many of the verification calls on behalf of our practitioners. She explains why this feature will transform the way you work and help avoid lots of unneeded stress (which, surprisingly, she is happy to take on herself!).
Verifying Insurance — The Unpredictability
What’s especially tricky about verifying insurance is you never know exactly how long the entire process will take.
“So many things go into verifying insurance,” notes Claudia. “The call duration depends on the insurance company, the operator you speak to, the different departments per state, and a bunch of other pieces of information.’’ Claudia explains that certain insurance companies have different call numbers across the country, so if you have numerous patients with different coverage in varying locations, you’ll be calling multiple numbers that all have various wait times and erratic processes.
“In some instances, I have to wait at least 10 or 15 minutes on the phone to listen to mandatory benefit information before I get transferred to a live operator,” she adds. “I’ve had calls where I have to stay on the line for an hour.”
Calling Hacks — Early Morning Verification
Claudia has discovered a few tricks to faster verification times. One in particular sounds useful, yet tiring: calling super early in the morning.
“For certain companies, I call them at 6:00 AM Eastern Time, and usually get in touch with someone super fast. After 8:00 or 9:00 AM, the lines get busier and busier.”
In some cases, if you call during busy hours you won’t even be able to get in touch with an operator — and will either need to schedule an appointment or just hang up and try again later. And you won’t even know that until you’ve been on hold for a handful of minutes.
The Bottom Line
While it may seem like a stressful job, Claudia actually really enjoys it. “I’m constantly learning and enjoy coming up with tricks to make the process more smooth on my end.”
For example, when Claudia comes into the office she sees all the pending insurance verification tasks and groups them by the insurance company. Depending on the payer, she can lump patients together and verify a number of people in one fell swoop. In other instances, she can identify how to categorize member IDs and call specific numbers to avoid being transferred a handful of times after calling the main phone number. Her system is what makes this process more efficient for our team while saving you a ton of hassle and unknowns.
If Claudia and our team enjoy it, why not give it a try? The first three verifications are free, and thereafter it only costs $3.95 per verification, which could save you up to an hour of time per patient, if not more.
“This add-on saves a lot of your time, which could be used doing something else in your clinic,” she concludes. “Having us do it takes the stress away — once a verification request is triggered, you’ll have the benefits verified in 24-48 business hours.”
For more information on how Insurance Eligibility Verification works, and to answer your frequently asked questions about our practice management system, visit our page HERE.
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