Jennifer Schultz Blog

What You Need to Know About Credentialing

12/3/2015

The credentialing process to be a provider for a PPO plan with an insurance company can be a lengthy and cumbersome process. The best advice is to go in prepared and with your eyes open.

Allow Time for the Process
Getting a provider credentialed can take anywhere from two to six months. It is important for doctors to understand this, especially when purchasing a practice, so they have enough time to complete the credentialing process and are giving accurate estimates to patients. Unfortunately, I have spoken with many doctors who have learned this the hard way.

Read the Contract!
Remember, this is a legal document so make sure all of your bases are covered and that you understand all aspects. Typically a contract is going to favor whoever draws it up, so the practice should take the time to review the document and make sure their needs are being met. There are some questions that need to be answered before the contract is signed.

What is the fee schedule that you are agreeing to accept?
Are you able to charge your office fee to a patient when the insurance company doesn’t cover that procedure?
How much notice do you need to give when opting out of the contract?
What happens when the patient is covered by another insurance plan (coordination of benefits)?

The credentialing process can be overwhelming. There is a lot of follow-up that needs to be done on behalf of the practice. Someone from the practice should contact the insurance company every 30 days, and it is important to keep a record of who they spoke with and the next step to make sure the process is moving forward. Fortunately, you don’t have to take it on yourself; there are several reputable companies out there that will complete the process for you.

Whether you complete this yourself or hire an outside company to help, make sure your practice’s needs are being addressed and you are comfortable with the final contract before you sign on the dotted line.

Costly Errors Every Practice Should Be Aware Of

11/18/2015

Over the years working with multiple practices we have uncovered numerous processes regarding insurance payments that lead to confusion, inefficiencies and bookkeeping nightmares. Knowledge is key to making working with insurance companies easier. Listed below are common mistakes that my team at Virtual Dental Office have found when working with practices, that every practice should be aware of.

Insurance checks that have been cashed by the practice, but not posted to the appropriate patient’s ledger. This makes it appear to be an outstanding claim and the team ends up wasting time following up on claims that have actually already been paid.

Insurance company payments via credit card remit. This can create a bookkeeping mess because most software isn't equipped to enter these payments, which increases the amount of time the team needs to spend putting the payment in the system. In addition, the practice pays merchant fees and loses approximately 3% on all insurance payments, which can add up quickly.

Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) payments that are deposited directly into the doctor’s account and not posted to the ledger. This form of payment can be convenient, but there needs to be communication between the doctor and the team so they know the date and amount of payment. In addition, it is best practice for team members to login to insurance company’s website weekly to check for these payments (if they do not receive an email from the insurance company).

Inaccurate insurance information that is entered into the practice management software. This leads to delayed claims and time wasted when following up on unpaid claims. It also doesn’t allow the practice to leverage the information among other patients.

Working at the front desk is a very challenging position. The constant interruptions are a part of the job but from a productivity standpoint, a nightmare. The multi-tasking that is needed is inefficient and causes more mistakes. That is why it is always good to have another set of eyes on your insurance processes.

It also illustrates the importance of training and education in regards to working with insurance. Our work through Virtual Dental Office has lead to the development of DentalInsuranceNavigator.com, because we have seen the need for more team knowledge on dental insurance.

Is Your Practice Losing With Insurance?

10/21/2015

In my over 20 years in the dental industry, I have seen practices lose money time and time again because of lack of knowledge and/or training in working with insurance. Many don’t even realize to what extent they are losing. Here are some of the most common ways practices lose money every day.

Writing off money when it is not necessary
Missing the timely filing deadline for insurance claims
Submitting PPO plan fee on the insurance claim form
Not charging the full practice fee when procedures are not covered by insurance (when applicable)
Not following up on unpaid insurance claims
Credentialing errors
Not leveraging benefit information in the practice management software
Not reading/understanding the PPO contract
Not asking for a fee schedule of the PPO plan before they sign
Not knowing which companies the practice is in network for

This is why I started Virtual Dental Office. I wanted to help dental practices better manage the insurance side of their business. Over the past few years I have had the pleasure of seeing how staying on top of insurance can make a huge impact on the bottom line.

As much I as I love being able to take these insurance tasks off the hands of dental practices, I know they need more. I believe that with the proper training and education dental professionals can stay educated in the ever-changing world of dental insurance, and make a significant impact on their dental practice’s bottom line.

This is why I have been working feverishly over the past few months to figure out how I can provide practices the tools to avoid costly insurance mistakes. Next week I will be launching an exciting new platform that has the power to change all of that.

Is your practice losing money on insurance? Stay tuned…

Three Keys to Happier Patients

8/13/2015

I had the opportunity to attend the Global Leadership Summit recently and one of the speakers was the CEO of Capella Hotel Group and former COO of the Ritz-Carlton Group, Horst Schulze. He has spent his career focusing on customer service and many of the things he discussed really resonated with me for the dental industry.

One of his main points was that if you want loyalty from a customer there are three things to focus on:

Provide a product/service that is defect free
In a dental practice, this refers to delivering great dentistry. Making sure the patient has a pleasant experience that is, ideally, pain and stress free.

Be timely
Time and time again, one of the reasons people say they don’t like going to the dentist is because they hate waiting. It is critical for dental practices to be respectful of their patient’s time and say on schedule, ideally within a 10-minute window.

Make them feel cared for
Treat every patient with respect and make him or her feel cared for. Greet them when they walk in the door. Ask them about their family, hobbies or work. Take a genuine interest in them.

If you are not receiving the number of referrals that you want, take a step back and look at your practice against the three points above. Better customer service can translate into better customer loyalty, which can translate into more referrals.

Don’t Leave Your Practice Open For Disaster

7/14/2015

In this day and age most people are inundated with passwords. Email, banking, shopping, social media…everything we do online requires a password to keep our information private and safe. While many times it is a pain to keep track of all of them (especially when they insist it be a complex password with caps, numbers and symbols), without them we leave ourselves vulnerable to criminals.

A few years ago I had my cell phone stolen. I learned afterward that if I had a password on the phone, I would have been able to erase all of the information on it remotely and make it useless for the person who stole it. Unfortunately, I had to go into every account that I had an app for and change the password to protect my private information. After that incident I put a password on my new phone. So now every time I use it I have to put in a four-digit code. While it was very inconvenient at first, now it is just second nature and I don’t even think about it.

I think of this story every time I hear of a dental practice that doesn’t have a password on their practice management software. The difference is that if their practice gets broken into, there are much heavier consequences. Their dental patients’ personal information is at risk, including social security numbers in many instances. Not only is this a violation of the HIPAA security rule, but it’s also not a phone call that you want to make to ALL of your patients.

The moral of the story is make sure your dental practice software is password protected. It might be a difficult transition at first, but it won’t take long before it is second nature for the team. As a dental practice owner there really isn’t any other choice, protecting your patient’s private information should be top priority.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

6/29/2015

Dental front office

Your dental practice software has many capabilities that can make your practice run smoother and more efficiently, but only if you play by their rules. “Garbage in, garbage out” is a common phrase that means that even with a state-of-the-art computer/software system, if you aren’t mindful of what information you put in and where you put it, you’re not going to get the best information out of it.

I believe that one of the most helpful features of dental practice management software systems is the ability to manage insurance information. Insurance can be very complicated, but your practice software can make it less complicated by helping you organize the insurance plans of your patients.

Unfortunately, in many practices the insurance aspect of the software ends up being in complete disarray. Often every time a patient is entered into the software a new insurance plan is created. This creates a few issues.

More Time Consuming. There are a lot of details that need to be entered for each dental insurance policy, so retyping it every time can be time consuming and inefficient.

Information Overload. It creates a very large, unorganized database within your practice software, which makes it hard to find the information you are looking for.

Potential for Error. It increases the potential for data entry error. This can lead to unhappy patients, if they are provided the wrong information on what services their dental insurance covers.

When insurance information is entered correctly, you only need to input the details of a dental insurance plan once, then that plan will be applied to all of your patients under that group. When entering a new patient insurance plan, first start by searching the group number to see if it already exists in the system. If it is already there you can connect that patient with the existing plan. This will not only save time, but it will also help streamline the information.

Your practice software can be one of the best tools you have available to keep your office running in a smooth and efficient manner. Make sure your team is taking the time upfront to understand how to best utilize the software to get the best end result.

Adjusting for Better Profitability

6/11/2015

Dental practice software solutions

A common complaint that I receive from doctors is that they are writing off too much money! Unfortunately, many of these practices group their adjustments together in general categories, such as miscellaneous write-off. While this will track total adjustments, it does not allow the practice to identify where the write-offs are coming from, which makes it difficult to determine how to reduce the write-offs.

This is why it is critical for the dental practice to have a consistent naming system to help track the adjustments. This may seem like a small detail, but it is the one of the best ways to start understanding your write-offs, so you can make the necessary changes to increase profitability.

When you review your adjustments report you should be able to see what the adjustment was for just by looking at the name of the adjustment. If all of your insurance adjustments use the “insurance write-off” adjustment, it doesn’t give you enough information to understand the specific amount per insurance company.

Here are some naming suggestions for different types of adjustments.

Insurance Adjustments – These need to include the name of the insurance company, for example Delta MN Adjustment. This will help show you where the bulk of your insurance write-offs are coming from, and understand which insurance companies are the most profitable.

Marketing Promotion Adjustments – Each short-term marketing promotion should have it’s own unique name, for example Winter 2014 Whitening Promo. This will allow you to do analyze the effectiveness of your marketing promotions, and help you determine what is working and what isn’t.

Discount Adjustments – Many practices provide special discounts based on a specific circumstance, each of these should have their own specific name. For example, Friends and Family Discount.

Misc. Adjustments – It is best to use the generic “Misc. Adjustment” label in your dental practice software as little as possible. If you do need to use it, make sure to include a note as to why the adjustment was given. The note needs to be detailed enough so that anyone that reads it can understand the situation.

This is another one of those assumingly simple processes that goes a long way. Unfortunately, in a busy dental practice it is easy to skip this step. That is why it is critical that the team is not only trained in your specific process of naming adjustments, but that they also understand why it is important.

Don’t be afraid to have multiple adjustment types in your dental practice software. The more detail you have, the more information you will have to base decisions on to help the profitability of the practice.

Turning Intentions Into Actions

5/26/2015

Dental Office Task

Managing a dental team can get complicated. There are many moving parts and a lot that needs to get done. Often the best way to manage everything is going back to the basics. For example, having a to-do list can go a long way towards keeping things moving forward.

With a team, it is important to put protocols in place to make sure items are being checked off the to-do list. There are four things to keep in mind when implementing a system for better productivity and implementation.

Accessibility. The to-do list needs to be accessible to everyone. This could be accomplished by hanging a paper version in a central location, or keeping it in a network folder on the computer that everyone has access to. Alternatively using an online project management application, such as Redbooth or Asana, works great as well.
Manageable Tasks. All tasks should be listed by individual steps. It is easier to accomplish a larger project if it is broken down into bite size pieces.
Who and When. Each individual step needs to have a person assigned to it, and a due date. This will help avoid confusion and misunderstandings among the team and keep the project moving forward.
Check-Ins. It is critical to have daily, or at least weekly, check-ins by the dentist or office manager to ensure everyone is staying on track. This will allow them to address any challenges and identify solutions early on in the process.

It is important that the team understands not only how the systems work, but also why they are important. Often it is easy to discontinue a new protocol if the reason why it’s important is not clearly communicated.

Any dental practice can implement this type of productivity system. The return on investment can be tremendous when ideas are implemented and turned into actions.

Continuing Education for Continuing Improvement

4/2/2015

Continuing education provides information, systems and tactics to help your practice stay on top of the industry, run more efficiently, and give your team the opportunity to grow professionally. While these courses provide dental professionals with the knowledge, it is up to each practice to ensure that knowledge is applied to receive the full benefit.

Team members often walk away from continuing education classes inspired and excited about what they learned. Unfortunately, once they get back to work and their busy schedule takes over, typically most of what they learned is not implemented into the practice.

If you want your practice receive the maximum benefit from continuing education courses it is important to invest time beyond just attending the class. The information should be shared among the team, and there needs to be a concerted effort to determine what can be applied to your practice and how you are going to make it happen.

There are four key steps to help ensure your practice is taking full advantage of continuing education opportunities.

Share the Knowledge: Set-up a team meeting within one week of the continuing education course. This ensures that the person who attended the class can present their take-a-ways to the rest of the team while it is still fresh in their mind.
Team Collaboration: Based on what was presented, discuss as a group what should be implemented within the practice.
Make a Plan: Create an action plan with specific due dates for each step of the process.
Review: Once implemented, set a date in the near future to review the new protocols and collaborate as needed to ensure success.

There are many great continuing education courses available to dental professionals. By applying the knowledge gained from these courses to your practice, you will ensure continued growth into the future.

Transforming Your Practice into A Well-Oiled Machine

10/28/2014

Dental practice’s, like all other businesses, need systems in place to run efficiently and keep the team on track. Implementing a project management tool is one of those systems that can mean the difference between a practice that fosters team communication and efficiency…and not.

While it might initially seem like a daunting undertaking, there are fortunately many easily accessible project management tools available online. Just a few examples are Redbooth, Teamwork and Basecamp. They range from tools that will just help you manage your to-do lists, to tools that will enable collaboration between employees. So with all of these options how do you even get started?

1. ESTABLISH YOUR DENTAL PRACTICE’S NEEDS
First, determine what your top priorities are in a project management system. What are the chronic issues in your practice that a project management tool could help solve?

Lack of communication between team members that is leading to things falling through the cracks
Losing files/disorganization of files
Lack of ownership among team members

2. DO YOUR HOMEWORK
It is important to research all of the options out there and start weeding out the ones that don’t fit your needs. Create a list of the top two or three that look like they might work for you. Many of these tools will let you do a free trial period so you can test it out without any upfront costs.

3. ASSIGN A POWER USER
Once you determine which system to use appoint a “power user”, someone in the office or an outside consultant that can set it up and work with management on how it will be used. This will be the person who knows the system inside and out, and the go-to in the practice when questions arise.

4. TRAIN & IMPLEMENT
Lastly, utilize the power user to train the entire dental team on the system and explicitly explain how everyone should use it. It is essential to have total buy-in and consistency for this type of tool to be successful.

The right project management system can transform your dental practice into a more productive and enjoyable work environment. There is some upfront work that has to happen, but once established it has the power to transform your practice into a well-oiled machine.