Jennifer Schultz Blog

Why You Should Be Using An Automated Eligibility Service

2/1/2016

Dental Insurance Frustrations

In the dental industry there are many services available to help make the administrative side of running a dental practice easier. One of the services that I recommend all practices use is an automated eligibility service.

This type of service can check the eligibility of patients, and sometimes provide a full breakdown of benefits, with click of a button. While not every insurance company participates, most of the big ones do. This will save your team a lot of time on the phone with insurance companies, and typically for just a low, flat monthly fee.

When evaluating eligibility services, an important differentiating factor to look for is ease-of-use. The benefit of this type of service is efficiency, so make sure you have the ability to check an entire days’ worth of patients with the click of a button. If you have to click on every patient each day it is not as efficient.

My recommendation is that you have the eligibility system check patients a week in advance of their appointment. This provides the dental team time to contact patients if needed before their appointment.
I strongly believe that the best thing that practices can do is put these type of automated systems in place. This allows the team to focus on more important tasks and most important, their patients.

Virtual Dental Office is now providing an eligibility service for a low monthly fee of $29.95. To learn more about it contact Jennifer Schultz at jennifer@virtualdentaloffice.net or 563-582-4762.

What will make 2016 "successful"?

1/13/2016

What are the top three things that need to happen to make 2016 be considered “successful” for your dental practice?

It’s that time of year again when we need to sit down and think about the year ahead. Take some time now to think through your goals. Write them down and put them on your desk, or some other very visible place, to keep them to-of-mind every day.

Once you have defined goals for the year you can breakdown them into monthly or quarterly goals that will get you to where you want to be at the end of the year. This will help make your longer-term goals more achievable and give you milestones to celebrate, or readjust as needed. The monthly and quarterly progress will provide motivation and confidence to keep working toward the bigger goals.

The year will go fast, before we know it February will be here, so don’t procrastinate. Take some time out of your busy schedule this week to think through your goals, write them down, and create a plan for success. Make 2016 your best year yet!

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.

How to get Your Time Back

8/26/2015

Dental Professional Time

When you are serving patients and running a small business it makes for a busy day (and evening many times). While many dental professionals continue to take on more themselves, as a practice grows there will be a tipping point where they need to step away from some of the day-to-day duties and start delegating. Without having a team to delegate to, practice growth will inevitably stall.

Delegating can sometimes seem like too much work. You need to take the time out of your busy schedule to teach someone else how to do it. There will always be some up front time investment and a learning curve, but if you are assigning the right tasks to the right people it will help you, and your dental practice, in the long run.

How do you go about delegating?
Here are some tips on how to start delegating.

Write out a list of your daily/weekly/monthly tasks and ask yourself, am I the only one that can do this for each task? Who on my dental team is capable of taking this on?

Take some time to understand each of your team member’s current workload and strengths, so you are able to delegate it to someone who has the time and will be successful at it. If your team cannot take on another task, then you have two choices, hire and additional team member or delegate to someone outside the practice.

When delegating tasks make sure you explain your vision and the “why”, not just the “how”. Helping them understand why it is important to do it and do it a certain way will give them more of a vested role.

It can be hard to let go of things you have been doing for so long, but delegating is the only way to increase your time to ensure that essential tasks for growing your practice can be accomplished.

Thinking Beyond the Short-Term

7/29/2015

Dental Practice Strategy

There is a common business phrase, “It’s hard to see the forest through the trees.” It refers to getting so caught up in the day-to-day details of running a business you can’t see the bigger picture. This happens in dental practices more often than you would think, especially when it comes to spending money. Decisions are made based on the information in front of them, versus on a longer-term strategy to reach their goals. This is the type of thinking that can hinder growth and profitability.

Should I hire the front desk person that has more dental experience at a higher hourly rate, or the one that just graduated from school for an entry-level wage?

Should I have my front desk team continue to handle administrative dental insurance tasks, or pay to outsource it to someone who can focus on insurance?

In these situations your initial reaction can be to take the less expensive route, but will that really get you farther in the long-term? For example, an experienced front desk person might have more effective scheduling processes, which can increase production. Or outsourcing insurance tasks to someone who has more experience and time to focus on it could increase collections, as well as free up your team to close treatment cases or collect money.

It is normal to miss potential in our own business. What potential might you be overlooking due to the illusion of a short-term gain?

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.

Get Paid Before It's Too Late

5/12/2015

Dental Insurance Paperwork

For a dental practice to remain profitable they must be paid for their services. I know this is stating the obvious, but I see practices on a regular basis that have an aging claims report that is out of control. In a busy practice, it is easier than you think to grow an aging claims list that has many claims approaching, or over, 90 days. This is money just sitting on the table.

Changing Insurance Guidelines
This is becoming more concerning for dental practices, because insurance companies are getting stricter with their timely filing guidelines. We are seeing more and more insurance companies requiring practices to submit dental claims within three months, or 90 days after the date of service. Those 90 days can come and go very quickly. This means that practices are putting themselves at risk for having to write off that hard-earned money.

To be successful, it is critical that a practice stays on top of aging insurance claims. It is essential to run the claims report on a weekly basis and follow-up on each claim every 30 days. Ideally, when you run the monthly aging claims report there should be no claims that are over 90 days.

Taking Control of Aging Claims
For dental practices that have a growing list of aging claims, it can seem like an overwhelming task to take on. While at first it is very time consuming, after working the list for a few months, it should be much more manageable on a weekly basis. Once they are caught up, most practices only have to spend a couple hours a week on it. This is guaranteed to be time that is well worth the investment.

If you are one of the many busy practices that already has a growing claims list, now is the time to turn it around. Procrastinating can have a drastic impact on the money in your pocket.

If your team does not have the capacity to tackle your outstanding claims list, there are options available. Outsourcing aging claims can be an easy, turnkey solution, that doesn’t take your internal team away from your patients or involve after hours work.

Don’t put aging claims on the back burner one more day! Develop a plan to make sure claims don’t hit that 90-day mark, to ensure that you are receiving prompt payment for your services.

Creating a Team That Gets Things Done

1/27/2015

In our last blog we talked about goals and the importance of mapping out a plan to reach those goals. In a dental practice there are likely multiple team members who are involved in different aspects within that plan. It is vital that all team members are held accountable for their part. Once one task is missed it can have a domino effect and make it very hard to reach the end goal.

It isn’t enough to just give the team a to-do list and expect everything will get done. While the team typically has the best of intentions to follow the action plan, the realities of a busy practice set in. I have seen this happen with many of my dental clients. The practice puts a very thoughtful plan in place and there is initially a lot of momentum in making positive changes happen, but for one reason or another progress stalls. This leads to the attitude “We can talk all day long but nothing is going to change.” I hear it often from dental team members.

Having a very specific action plan is a critical step in instituting change, but there needs to be checks-and-balances put in place to help keep the team accountable and on track. There are a few things you can do to help your team and your practice be successful.

Keep practice goals and the action plan somewhere that can be seen on a daily basis to keep it top-of-mind.

Utilize weekly team meetings to have team members report on progress and talk through challenges they have having. The team can help brainstorm solutions to these challenges, so things can continue to move forward.

Be very thoughtful of what tasks are being assigned and the due dates. Focus on the important items and make sure due dates are realistic.

Utilize a web-based project management system that the full team can access. Once implemented the project management system will provide automated reminders, and can help organize the tasks each team member is responsible for.

A healthy team is a team where they can hold each other accountable and work together for a common goal. Provide your team the tools and support they need, so they can be the catalyst that makes positive changes happen and help the practice reach their goals.

Are You on Track for Accomplishing Your Goals?

1/6/2015

VirtualDentalOfficeGoals

Goals are critical for every successful dental practice. They are an ever-evolving process that needs to be reevaluated on an ongoing basis. The start of a new year is the perfect time to look at your goals and make necessary adjustments.

We can get caught up in all of our daily tasks and to-dos, and it is very easy to lose sight of the big picture. A new year is a time to break away from our hectic everyday routine to really examine our long-term goals, and look at what we are doing in the short-term to get us there. What is working? What is not working? Where do I want my dental practice to be at end of the year? Where do I want it to be at the end of five years? Taking the time to really understand the answers to these questions can help you achieve bigger things.

As you are working on your goals, there are a few basic guidelines to help you achieve them.

1.     Make your goals realistic. Don’t set yourself up for failure before you even start. Your goals should be realistic, but push you to go farther. They should give you and your dental team something to strive for.

2.    Make your goals quantifiable.   Be specific and put some numbers behind the goals to allow you to evaluate exactly how you did at the end of 2015.

3.    Write your goals down. Studies have shown that people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them. Write them as if you have already accomplished them. For example, I am so proud that the practice added 20 new patients every month in 2015. This will help you visualize actually achieving them.

4.    Map out a plan. To help ensure you have a clear path to reaching your goals create an action plan with the steps needed to get to your end goal. This can make it feel less overwhelming when you break it down into more actionable, achievable steps that you can check off as you go.

Take the time now to make sure that 2015 is a successful year for you, your dental practice and your team. Happy New Year!

You Have to Spend Time to Make Time

12/9/2014

When is the right time to implement a more efficient system or hire a new employee when there is never enough time? You’ve heard the phrase, “you have to spend money to make money”. It is the same with time. You have to spend time to make time.

When you and your dental team are at that tipping point where everyone is so busy and overwhelmed that it is affecting patient care and important administrative tasks are falling through the cracks, it seems almost impossible to slow down to implement change. It is hard to focus on the long-term benefits, when the short-term effort can feel like just adding another to-do on your already exhausting list. But that is exactly when it is most critical to take a time out and fix what isn’t working.

Most prospective clients reach out to me about hiring a dental virtual assistant to help their front office because they are overloaded. They know they need help, but often can’t slow down enough to let me help. If I heard it once, I heard it a hundred times, “I know I need help but I don’t have time to think about it right now.” This becomes a vicious cycle that doesn’t change, until they STOP and make a change.

This is the perfect time of year to slow down and implement the changes that will help make 2015 a more productive and enjoyable year. Make sure that next year at this time you can look back and say, “I am so glad I made those changes”, versus “I wish I would have…” Don’t put off until tomorrow what you know needs to happen today.