Dental accounts receivable recovery: aging that actually goes down.
Your aging report worked bucket by bucket, oldest and largest first, with the balance over ninety days reported to you weekly instead of discovered at year end.
- 0-30CurrentFollowed up on scheduleWatching
- 31-60AgingStatus checked with the payerWorking
- 61-90AgingCause found, fix in the queueWorking
- 90+Oldest firstLargest first, reason codedPriority
- ClosedResolvedPosted, cause noted for the weekPosted
- Five locations, two regions
- Live on Dentrix Ascend for My Hometown Dentist and Kona Coast Dental Care. Count the locations on their own sites.
- A BAA before any access
- Signed before anyone touches patient data, every time, without being asked for it.
- Bilingual, on your clock
- Working live through your business day, inside the practice management system you already run.
Built to shrink the number, not report it
Every practice can produce an aging report. Far fewer can show one that shrank last month. A/R does not age because nobody noticed it; it ages because working it always loses to the patient standing at the desk right now.
- 01
Worked oldest and largest first
Balances triaged by age and value, not worked alphabetically. The claims closest to timely-filing limits get attention before they become unrecoverable.
- 02
Cause, not just status
Each stalled balance gets a reason: missing attachment, coordination of benefits, wrong payer, never received. You cannot fix a pattern you have not named.
- 03
Reported weekly
The over-ninety balance reported every week, with movement shown. A number that does not move week over week is a signal, and you should be the first to see it.
What happens in each aging bucket
Old balances and today's claims compete for the same hours. We give the backlog its own track so it shrinks instead of being reported back to you.
0-30 days
Submitted clean the day of service and tracked daily.
31-60 days
Followed up on a fixed cycle; missing information supplied before it stalls.
61-90 days
Denials reworked by reason code and appeals filed while the window is wide.
Over 90 days
Its own track: timely filing checked first, then oldest and largest.
The over-90 number, every week
Recovery work is unglamorous and repetitive, which is exactly why it gets displaced in-house. Handing it to a dedicated desk is less about skill than about protected hours.
- Aging buckets with weekly movement, so progress is visible rather than asserted.
- Timely-filing deadlines flagged before they expire, not after.
- Denial reasons grouped, so recurring causes get fixed upstream in submission.
Backlog worked as its own track
Aged balances worked alongside current claims as a separate track, so the backlog shrinks instead of competing with today's work.
Common questions
Anything else, ask on the call. We would rather answer it there than guess here.
What is A/R in dental billing?
A/R, or accounts receivable, is the money a practice has earned and not yet collected: insurance claims that are still open, and balances patients still owe. The aging report sorts it by how long each item has been outstanding, and the over-90-day bucket is the one to watch, because the longer a balance sits there the less likely it is to be collected.
How old is too old to recover?
It depends on the payer's timely-filing limit, which commonly runs 90 days to a year from date of service. Past that, appeals need documented proof of timely submission. The honest answer is that some aged balances are genuinely gone, and a vendor promising to recover all of it is not being straight with you.
Do you chase patient balances too?
Insurance A/R is the core of this service. Patient balance follow-up is a different motion with different rules. We scope it separately rather than bundling it in and doing it badly.
How do you report progress?
Weekly, with movement per aging bucket. A report that only shows a snapshot lets a stalled backlog look identical to a shrinking one.
What accounts receivable means in a dental office
Dental accounts receivable is everything the practice has earned and not yet been paid: insurance claims still open, and patient balances still owed. The aging report sorts it by how long it has been outstanding, usually into 0–30, 31–60, 61–90 and over-90-day buckets. The over-90 bucket is the one that matters, because every week a balance spends there makes it less likely to be collected, and because insurance claims there are close to, or past, the payer's timely filing limit.
Why aged A/R keeps growing in practices that know it is a problem
Working old balances and processing today's claims compete for the same hours. Today's claims always win, because today's patients are in the building. The backlog grows quietly until someone writes off a block of it to make the report look better. Recovering it means giving it its own track and its own people, rather than asking the same team to do it in the gaps.
The order we work an aging report
- Sort by recoverability, not just age: claims still inside timely filing first, because they have a deadline.
- Within that, largest balances first, so effort goes where the money is.
- Find the cause of each stalled claim before acting on it: never received, pending information, denied, paid but not posted, or underpaid.
- Fix the cause, then resubmit, appeal or correct the posting. Record the payer's reference for every call.
- Patient balances come after the insurance portion is settled, so nobody is billed for an amount the payer still owes. They are a different motion with different rules, so we scope them separately rather than bundling them in.
- Anything genuinely past recovery is identified and reported to you as such, with the reason, rather than being worked forever or written off silently.
The A/R over 90 days playbook goes through each of those categories, and the A/R calculator gives a rough range for what a backlog of your size could be worth.
Insurance A/R and patient A/R are different jobs
| Compared on | Insurance A/R | Patient A/R |
|---|---|---|
| Why it ages | Claims not followed up, denials not reworked, payments not posted | Estimates that were wrong, statements not sent, no payment plan offered |
| Hard deadline | The payer's timely filing and appeal windows | None, but recovery falls steeply with time |
| Fix | Payer calls, corrected claims, appeals | Accurate statements, a reminder cadence, payment options |
| Prevention | Daily submission and follow-up | Verification before the visit, so the estimate holds |
Can a dental office send a patient to collections?
Yes, and some balances do end up there. It is the last step rather than the plan: it costs the practice a share of the balance and usually the patient relationship. Most patient balances that age are the result of an estimate the patient did not expect, which is a verification problem upstream. Where patient balances are in scope, we work them with statements and reminders under your policies, and a collections referral is always your decision, made case by case.