Look at Your Insurance Card

Please take out your insurance card. (I hope you have put it where you can easily find it.) It will have these key features: your Policy Number, the name of the Primary Insured, the names of any Dependents who are also covered, the name of the insurance company.

On the back of the card is possibly the most important information: the address where claims are to be sent (usually there is also a phone number for customer service where you will often be on hold longer than the length of the actual conversation).

I cannot tell you how many hundreds of claims are deleted from our in-box because they were sent to our office in error, so we cannot do anything but ship boxes of claims to another office. Most of the dental claims are supposed to be processed in City B or sometimes City C, but we received bushels of claims at City A because it is the main office. You do see, I hope, how this causes a delay in processing, a delay in payment to the providers, and a delay to you, the policyholder, in receiving an Explanation of Benefits (EOB).