Dental All-Stars: Prioritize proactive patient calls over mailed statements for faster payments, reducing AR & enhancing patient experience.
Resources:
About Shelly VanEpps
Shelly is the VP of Business Development & a Mastery Coach with All-Star Dental Academy. By aiding in the growth and expansion of All-Star, Shelly’s passion for dentistry allows the company to focus on guiding dentists and their teams towards achieving their vision of a successful dental practice. Because each office has their own definition of “success” Shelly focuses her attention on customized coaching by applying her 21 years in the dental field to each department within the office. In addition, as a John Maxwell Certified Leadership Coach, Shelly enjoys working with doctors and office managers on shifting their approach from a managerial approach to a more effective leadership style.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:02
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management and training.
00:10
Have you ever wondered what’s happening when you look at your accounts receivable report and you see that what is due to your practice is significantly higher than the month before’s production? What I would suggest is that you deeply dive into your administrative process with regards to looking at outstanding claims, as well as what is happening with regards to statements.
00:37
So one thing that I have recommended to many of my clients in my offices is rather than focusing on statements, as soon as that insurance claim comes in and we get that explanation of benefits and the payment from the insurance company, we are not adding that to our practice management software and waiting to submit a statement. We’re actually not even printing a statement right away. That’s what a lot of responses are. Well, I don’t wait, I print it and I put it in the mail.
01:08
The suggestion here is that you pick up the phone and you pick up that phone and you call your patient and you let them know, great news, I received payment from your insurance company. They have covered majority of what we had estimated. It did leave X dollars due. Can we go ahead and take care of that over the phone so that it’s clear and next time you come in, you won’t have a balance and or you don’t have to worry about mailing something in. Who out there looks at their mail and says,
01:38
Oh my goodness, yay, I got a bill from my dentist. I’m gonna go ahead and send that in before I send my payment in for my house, my utilities, whatever it might be. Nobody does that. It gets stacked down in the bottom and eventually they’ll pay it. And sometimes they think, oh, I’ll just take care of it in six months when I go to my next visit. Or they look at it and they assume we’re still waiting for their insurance payment.
02:05
So this phone call, it’s a courtesy phone call. It’s one way to avoid having statements being stacked at the bottom of somebody’s desk or their counter, going directly into the recycling bin. And it’s going to clear your account significantly quicker. The amount of time that it takes to make that phone call compared to printing statements, stuffing envelopes, mailing them out, going through account after account and waiting on these payments.
02:35
far outweighs. So I know you’re gonna get a little bit of pushback from your team members. I don’t have time to make that phone call, doctor, but I’m here to tell you it’s saving them time. And once they get into this routine, they’ll start to see that it is in fact saving time. And their accounts receivable is going down. You don’t have to wait for these payments from your patients to watch the account go 60, 90, 120 days past due.
03:04
There is a process and by communicating with your patients, that is going to be where you’re gonna get the biggest result. So until next time, go out there and be an All-Star. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com.
