Unclaimed Payments and New Protections: What Virginia Dental Practices Need to Know

The Virginia Treasury's Unclaimed Property Division works to reunite rightful owners with lost or misplaced bank accounts, wages, stocks, dividends, utility deposits, insurance benefits, safe deposit box contents, and more. 

In the case of dental practices, that can include thousands of dollars in unclaimed payments. At its most recent abandoned property filing, just one Virginia dental carrier remitted 5,700 checks totaling more than $855,000. 

Considering Virginia ranks among the three worst-performing states in the nation in USPS performance and fewer than 40 percent of dental practices in Virginia have opted in to EFT payments, if you haven’t checked recently, there are very good chances that there are unclaimed payments for your practice being held by the treasury.  

Regardless of the cause, finding and claiming money held by the Virginia Treasury for your practice or yourself is easy and free, following the directions at https://www.vamoneysearch.gov/

ADDITIONAL RESOURCE:

Instructions to Find Your Unclaimed Property

New Protections for Dental Practices 

This session, with support from the VDA and other medical groups, the Virginia General Assembly passed insurance and better business  legislation that does two important things: 

• The bill indicates that, if a health insurance carrier or their third-party is going to charge a processing for administrative fee to a healthcare provider, the carrier needs to disclose that fee in the contract.
• If they do charge such a fee, health insurance carriers must offer a reimbursement option that does not carry a processing or administrative fee.

The legislation is currently awaiting Governor Youngkin’s signature. 

 The American Dental Association has also recently provided a resource on the benefits to practices of EFT payments.