How Long Does It Take to Verify Dental Insurance? (Plus, Ways to Speed It Up)

For many dental practices, verifying a patient's insurance eligibility and benefits can feel like a significant time sink. The reality is, manually verifying dental insurance can take anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes per patient. This seemingly small chunk of time quickly accumulates, impacting your practice's efficiency, patient experience, and even your bottom line.

Why Does Manual Insurance Verification Take So Long?

The extended times for manual verification are a result of several common hurdles:

• Long Hold Times: A significant portion of the verification process often involves calling insurance companies. Getting through to a representative and waiting on hold can consume valuable minutes, sometimes up to 30 minutes or more per call, especially during peak hours or at the beginning of the year when many plans reset.

• Data Discrepancies: Information isn't always readily available or consistent across different sources. Your team might need to cross-reference patient-provided details with what the insurance company has on file, leading to back-and-forth communication and potential errors.

• Multiple Steps & Manual Data Entry: The process often involves logging into various insurance portals, navigating complex benefit breakdowns, and then manually inputting this information into your practice management system. Each of these steps, while necessary, adds to the overall time spent.

• Constantly Changing Policies: Insurance plans are dynamic. Deductibles, maximums, frequency limitations, and coverage percentages can change, requiring diligent verification for every patient, even established ones.

The Hidden Cost of Slow Verification

Let's do some quick math to illustrate how this time adds up:

• Daily: If your team spends an average of 15 minutes verifying insurance for just 10 patients a day, that's 2.5 hours lost daily to administrative tasks.

• Weekly: Over a five-day work week, that's 8 to 50 hours—nearly two full days of staff time dedicated to verification, costing your practice anywhere from $170 to $1,000 weekly in labor expenses purely for verification tasks.

• Monthly: In a typical month, you could be looking at 50 hours or more—a significant portion of a full-time employee's work.

This time drain has tangible impacts:

• Impact on Patient Experience: Patients can experience delays at check-in or unexpected out-of-pocket costs if their benefits aren't accurately verified beforehand. This leads to frustration, reduces trust, and can even result in patients deferring or abandoning treatment.

• Impact on Collections: Inaccurate or incomplete verification directly contributes to claim denials and delayed payments, harming your practice's cash flow and increasing accounts receivable. Around 15% of dental claims are denied, often due to incorrect information. Your team then spends even more time on appeals and re-submissions.

Transform Your Day with Real-Time Automation through Curve Dental^®

What if you could eliminate those frustrating hold times, reduce manual data entry, and get accurate benefit information in seconds? This is where the Eligibility+ verification software built into Curve Dental’s all-in-one practice management system comes in. By automating the process, teams are freed from tedious administrative burdens, allowing them to focus on patient care and other critical tasks.

While many solutions offer basic eligibility checks, Eligibility+ deeply integrates within Curve’s cloud-based practice management software to truly streamline your workflow, combining intelligent automation with unparalleled control:

• Batching & Automated Pulls: Eligibility+ allows you to batch-process multiple patients at once. The details for your scheduled patients can be pulled easily, often before your day begins, helping you be prepared from the moment your first patient walks in.

• SmartSync Technology for Real-Time Accuracy: Unlike generic tools that offer superficial eligibility checks, Eligibility+ uses SmartSync technology to compare payer data directly with Curve’s records. This AI technology highlights discrepancies and, optionally, allows for auto-updating based on user preference. When you apply an auto-update, the data is real-time synced within Curve, eliminating manual data entry errors and saving even more time.

• Code-Level Accuracy & Comprehensive Data: Eligibility+ provides detailed, procedure-code level benefit breakdowns directly from payer portals.This means you know exactly what's covered for specific procedures, reducing surprises for both your practice and your patients. This precision helps in creating accurate treatment plans and estimates, leading to higher case acceptance and fewer billing disputes.

• User-Controlled Automation: You maintain complete control over the automated processes and update frequencies. Whether you need daily, weekly, or on-demand updates, the system can be configured to match your practice's specific needs, ensuring you always have the most current information without sacrificing oversight.

Time per Verification: Manual vs. Automated

The Benefits of Speeding Up Insurance Verification with Curve

The shift from manual burden to intelligent automation with Curve and Eligibility+ not only frees up valuable staff time—saving your practice hours every week—but also drastically reduces errors, improving your practice's financial health. 

Patients benefit from improved financial clarity and trust, knowing their coverage upfront, which in turn leads to increased treatment acceptance as they confidently understand their financial responsibility. 

Furthermore, a streamlined process contributes to better office productivity and staff morale, resulting in a happier, more efficient team, and ultimately, improved same-day treatment and collections.

See how much time and money your team could save with Curve. Schedule your personalized demo today.

Deborah E. Bush

Dental Writer

Deborah E. Bush is a contributing writer specializing in dentistry and a subject matter expert on the behavioral and technological changes occurring in dentistry. A graduate of the University of Michigan and a student of positive psychology, Deb has more than four decades of technical writing experience for medical and dental outlets and authorities. Before becoming a dental-focused freelance writer and analyst, Deborah served as the Communications Manager for The Pankey Institute for Advanced Dental Education and as Director of Communications for the Preeclampsia Foundation. Her work with leading dental brands includes Patient Prism and Alatus Solutions (which includes DentalPost, Illumitrac, and Amplify360). She has co-authored and ghostwritten books and articles for multiple dental authorities.