I had no idea how true it is for our collection agency! 

Collections ...]]> “Help me, to help you” – I love that line by Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire. In fact, I feel like I say that to my staff a lot. Here’s the clip in case you don’t remember this movie:

I had no idea how true it is for our collection agency! 

Collections agency results

Just last week I talked with our collection agency about their performance on our accounts over the past few years and requested a more thorough review to see if there was anything we could do to improve. They shared an ‘Integrity Analysis’ report with me that I had never seen and it revealed some very interesting statistics:

• They collected only 12% on accounts with a bad phone number, but a good address.
• They collected 40% on accounts with both a good phone number and address.
• They collected 75% on accounts with a good home number, good work number and a good address.

Our internal collection system

We start with our Dentrix Collections Manager report to make sure no one has slipped through the cracks of our regular ‘collect at the front desk’ guidelines. We follow a quick process for accounts that need to be paid:

1. Send a statement
2. Send a courtesy ‘you might have missed this’ letter and make a phone call
3. Send a second more forceful letter and make a second phone call
4. Decide – either ‘write off’ this account if it’s less than $100 or send it to collections

We created our own collection letters and simply mail merge them using the Quick letters function in Dentrix. This works very well. We have created several custom letters that we save in the Quick letters and can use as the situation requires. We have a ‘partial payment letter’ or a ‘stopped making payments’ letter. I really like how Dentrix keeps track of letters sent in their Office Journal so if a patient wants to talk about the letters/calls they’ve received (or they say they’ve magically never received) – I can see the dates and the letters sent, along with the statements we’ve sent as well!

For patients that continue to ignore us (and their account balance is over $100), we do submit these to a collections agency. I’ve worked with several different companies over the years and we’ve settled on one that makes phone calls rather than just sends letters (since we’re handling that on our own). The statistics above are from the agency we’ve worked with since 2005.

Ideas to help our collections agency to help us

After discussing our Integrity analysis report with the agency, I shared the results with our secretary team. We were all surprised at how drastic the difference was based on getting good contact information. So, we discussed our process for getting the information submitted to the agency. It sounded pretty good, but thanks to this review I expect our team will make sure that we’re sending every possible phone number and address we have available to the agency. I also encouraged our collections manager to gather this information early on – we have many patients making payments that sometimes stop and end up at the collections agency. If we can make sure we have good phone numbers and addresses as part of the payments process, perhaps we can continue to collect past due balances even when the patient becomes non-responsive.

Handling dental collections is just one way you can run a successful dental practice. If you’re interested in new ideas on running a dental practice, please subscribe to my weekly blog. One of the biggest challenges to managing a dental practice is managing dental insurance. With dental insurance handled, then dental marketing for new patients becomes a primary focus. In today’s day of online reviews, handling patient complaints well is essential. As your practice grows, hiring dental staff becomes more important. With 16+ years of dental practice management experience, I’m open to your questions to help you run a successful dental office.

Feel free to email me.

One of the principles of the national Baldrige award (http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/) is to develop a ...]]> Who are your top suppliers? Who are you writing a significant check to each month? Take a look at your credit card statement and business checking account and make a list of your top 10 dental vendors.

One of the principles of the national Baldrige award (http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/) is to develop a long term win-win relationship with your “key suppliers/partners and collaborators”. They ask questions such as:

• What role do these suppliers play in delivering your services to patients?
• How do you communicate with these suppliers?
• What role do they play in implementing innovations in your office?
• What are your key requirements for these suppliers?

Once you know who your top 10 suppliers are – you can ask the above questions. Starting with the last question, do each of your top suppliers know what you expect from them? How would they know?

One of the major expenses in a dental practice is dental supplies. Benchmarks show this expense usually runs 6% – 8% of your total collections. For a practice with $500,000 in  collections, you’re spending $30 – $50,000 on supplies each year! At this level of investment, it makes sense to sit down and meet with your dental supply representative to discuss your account. From your accounting reports, you can show them how much you’ve spent with their company in the last year and you can talk with them about the performance you have observed. Are there products that you are unhappy with – either the quality or the price? Ask about alternatives and request samples. Look at the top 10 dental supplies you’re spending the most money on – find out if there are less expensive yet comparable products. Talk about delivery – are the products arriving on time? Are you happy with the ordering system in your office – perhaps the rep can provide some training to your staff? You can ask about the representative’s perspective of the practice – this person visits dental offices all day long and has a real grasp of the dental field in your area. How do you stack up? Dental supply companies also sell technology – the representative would be happy to set up a demo on the latest intraoral camera or diagnostic tool right in your office.

Holding an annual meeting with your top suppliers to review expenses, new products, communication and performance reviews plus general feedback is a great way to develop a long-term, professional relationship. When you invest not just money, but also time to learn what products/services are available from your suppliers, they know you are interested – and that you want to know when new opportunities arise. They appreciate that you see them as valuable partners in your practice and they will work to meet your needs (especially in a pinch).

For example, I have a lovely relationship with MidMark Corporation. In fact, I was quoted in an article in the June 2011 Dental Products Report regarding their Dry PowerVacG system (this is a dry vacuum system that also varies energy usage – saving both water & energy!). Here’s a link to the page with my quote (the article starts 2 pages earlier):  http://digital.dentalproductsreport.com/nxtbooks/advanstar/dpr_201106/index.php?startid=108#/138

This is a great example of a win-win relationship between a dental practice and a vendor. Offering to give a positive testimonial for a high quality vendor can be extremely valuable in today’s age of social media. Plus, you want your good vendors to do well so they will stay in business and continue to support you!

Working with dental suppliers is just one way you can run a successful dental practice. If you’re interested in new ideas on running a dental practice, please subscribe to my weekly blog. One of the biggest challenges to managing a dental practice is managing dental insurance. With dental insurance handled, then dental marketing for new patients becomes a primary focus. In today’s day of online reviews, handling patient complaints well is essential. As your practice grows, hiring dental staff becomes more important. With 16+ years of dental practice management experience, I’m open to your questions to help you run a successful dental office.

Feel free to email me.

The authors, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, are journalists who realized that ...]]> Although I normally write about dentistry and business management, I just finished a great book that shares unique insights into children – and for every dentist, hygienist, assistant and office manager raising children – I hope this is helpful.

The authors, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, are journalists who realized that over the last 10 years there had been some revolutionary scientific research on children that might affect the way people parent. However, this great research was shared in 5 minute soundbytes on ‘Good Morning America’ and was getting lost between political news and the latest storm update. So, they gathered this research and shared it in this book. Here is some of the most interesting research:

Praise – The more you tell a child she’s smart, the less she chooses advanced work for fear you’ll realize she’s not! Instead if you praise a child’s effort, she will strive for more challenging work – and succeed.

Sleep – The more children and teens sleep at night, the better their school performance. In one study, the kids earning A’s averaged 15 minutes more sleep than kids earning B’s, who averaged 15 minutes more sleep than the kids earning C’s. One high school studied moves its start time from 7:25am to 8:30am – and SAT scores drastically increased. (I know our high school begins at 7:40am – wonder if I should share these studies with them?)

Lying – Almost all kids lie. Even the “good” kids. The primary reason for lying is to protect their relationship with their parents – they don’t want their parents to be angry or disappointed, but they’re doing the things they want with their friends, so lying is how they manage.

Sibling fighting – The key to reducing it is twofold. First, increase the positive, fun interactions between siblings (more playing together) and secondly, teach kids how to work through conflict, that inevitably arises when kids play together. Teaching kids how to deal with conflict among their friends helps them use these same skills when dealing with a sibling.

Teenage rebellion – One study showed that of 36 topics, teens lied to their parents on an average of 12 topics (again with the lying) – 96% of teens lied to their parents. The more permissive or strict a parent’s style, didn’t matter. The key is that teens need to develop their own approach – and having to answer to parents is actually an emasculating experience. One of the most interesting discoveries in the research was the age when this desire for autonomy was the strongest. Traditionally we think of teenage rebellion starting around age 12/13, growing at age 15 and being the strongest at age 18. The research shows instead that it’s strongest at age 14/15 and higher at age 11 than age 18. (Since I have an 11 year old son, this was very interesting to me.)

 So, if you’re dealing with any of these parenting issues from lying and teenage rebellion to sibling fighting and dealing with grades, I hope these ideas are helpful. These are just a handful of the topics reviewed in the book – and they do a great job of presenting the research in a way that makes sense so you can incorporate these ideas into your parenting style now. Here’s to more successful children and happier families!

Next week, we’ll get back to ideas to run a successful dental practice. If you’re interested in new ideas on running a dental practice, please subscribe to my weekly blog. One of the biggest challenges to managing a dental practice is managing dental insurance. With dental insurance handled, then dental marketing for new patients becomes a primary focus. In today’s day of online reviews, handling patient complaints well is essential. As your practice grows, hiring dental staff becomes more important. With 16+ years of dental practice management experience, I’m open to your questions to help you run a successful dental office.

Feel free to email me.

We all know that we’re taking a ...]]> Dentists agree – dental insurance is a necessary evil. Necessary to help fill schedules since we’re all trained (thanks to health insurance) that we must follow our insurance plan. Evil because it almost physically hurts to write off 15% – 40% of our fees.

We all know that we’re taking a huge hit thanks to dental insurance, but are we also leaving money on the table that’s our own fault? Depending upon your set up for submitting claims to dental insurance, you could be losing money.

To make sure you’re getting paid the most on every claim, submit your full fee to each dental insurance plan. There are several benefits:

• Your full fee will print on the treatment plan. The dentist can see the full fee, the insurance contracted fee and the patient portion. When a dentist can see the hit she is taking on a specific patient’s treatment plan, the dentist can make sure that the plan includes all appropriate charges.
• The insurance company receives your full fee. Supposedly, this helps create the statistics they use to create future fee schedules. More importantly, different employers have different benefits – even with the same plan. Deductibles may be different, coverage may be different. If you submit your full fee, you’ll make sure that you are receiving every dime you’re entitled to receive.
• You avoid under-charging. If you submit the contracted fee to an insurance plan and this employer has paid for any extra coverage, you’re missing out on receiving any extra payment – because you didn’t bill for it.

I know it takes time to manage the insurance adjustments for a dental practice. Just talk with an insurance/collections manager sometime – she knows. So, my recommendation is to set up your dental practice management software so it does the work for you. As you know, I’m a big fan of Dentrix – and one thing it does especially well is handle insurance submission. Here’s how:

• Go to Family file, then double click the Dental insurance box
• Click on the insurance data button, this brings up a window: Primary Dental insurance plan information
• Look at the Claim format and select: DX2007F

This claim format will submit the full fee to the dental insurance plan and enter the contracted fee into your ledger. This setup saves the most time. You’ll never escape all the manual adjustments, as more and more insurance plans are adding “risk pools” which force you to enter yet another insurance withhold adjustment to the claim. Supposedly they’ll pay you back at the end of year – after they earn their profit, of course.

So – give this article to your dental office manager and have her check the claim setup in Dentrix to make sure you’re not leaving money on the table!

Handling dental collections is just one way you can run a successful dental practice. If you’re interested in new ideas on running a dental practice, please subscribe to my weekly blog. One of the biggest challenges to managing a dental practice is managing dental insurance. With dental insurance handled, then dental marketing for new patients becomes a primary focus. In today’s day of online reviews, handling patient complaints well is essential. As your practice grows, hiring dental staff becomes more important. With 16+ years of dental practice management experience, I’m open to your questions to help you run a successful dental office.

Feel free to email me.

My husband had an appt on 2/7. He’s been away on business since 1/4 and when we realized that he would not be back until after 2/7, I called and rescheduled his appt. I called ...]]> Here is an actual email I received a few weeks ago from a long term patient:

My husband had an appt on 2/7. He’s been away on business since 1/4 and when we realized that he would not be back until after 2/7, I called and rescheduled his appt. I called on Jan 25. I had joined him on his trip the day before. It was rescheduled for March 6 at 8:30 am. I do not know who I talked to. When we returned on 2/9, we had 2 messages from your office saying he had missed his appt. I called this morning (2/11) and explained the situation only to find out the changes had not been made in your appt book.  I rescheduled him again for 3/7 at 8:30. I did however resent the implication that this was my mistake…it was not. I am sure a lot of your customers do not give you appropriate notice, but this was not the case in this instance. The customer is not always wrong.  We’ve been coming to your office for 20+ years and think you have the best professionals in the business, but I wanted to give you the date that I called to make the appt change and you let you know I was a little upset at how this situation was handled.

Before I responded, I looked up the appointment history – and I was blown away by the information I gathered just from this one screen. Here’s my reply email:

Thanks for your email.  I looked into this appointment history – here’s what I found in our computer:

• January 10th – appointment scheduled for 2/5 at 8am by Amber
• January 15th – rescheduled for 2/7 by Marquita
• January 28th – rescheduled for 2/14 by Nan
• Feb 6th – I think this was where the mixup occurred – I see an appointment scheduled for 2/6 – and I see you noted 3/6 below. This was done by Jackie (my new hire secretary team member).
• Feb 11th – rescheduled to 3/7 by Marquita

No wonder you’re frustrated. This is a lot of work on your part to manage appointment dates. Plus, it looks like you’ve talked to half the secretary team.

On my end, I will review your concern with the secretary team, and Jackie in particular, to make sure everyone is as accurate as possible.

One other idea for you – perhaps it would be helpful if you either emailed us the changes – mail@healthparkdentistry.com – we check this every day and you’re welcome to use this as a confirmation for appointment time – might save you some time on the phone. Or, if you go on our website, there is a request an appointment tab – and you can request the time/date for appointments here also?

I’m sorry you felt frustrated by our messages when you had gone to the trouble to reschedule. I appreciate your consideration in managing schedules in advance.

I’m open to other suggestions or ways we can make this easier on you. Thanks for taking the time to let me know.

Now, to be perfectly frank, we did misschedule her husband’s appointment. She asked for 3/6 and we scheduled it on 2/6. However, thanks to the appointment history data, it looked like we scheduled this same appointment 4 other times! This definitely paints a much different picture of our performance – and I was amazed that she was complaining about my practice’s customer service when she had scheduled this appointment no fewer than 5 times!

Once I saw this appointment history, I decided not to call her – but instead to send her the above email for a few reasons:

1. I figured she had no idea she contacted us that many times regarding one appointment.
2. I hoped that the side bonus might be to prevent any future complaints since she knows that I’m tracking.
3. I also thought that I might go completely crazy if I had her job – to manage her husband’s dental appointment over, and over, and over, and over and over again, so she deserved some empathy and maybe some other options?

So – thanks to Dentrix for providing the appointment history data that helped to reframe this patient complaint so I could see not just our error, but also gain a stronger appreciation for my secretary team. This was also great information for the dentists in our group who also had the opportunity not to just be upset at receiving a patient complaint, but to realize how much rescheduling craziness our secretary team handles!

Dealing effectively with upset patients is just one way you can run a successful dental practice. If you’re interested in new ideas on running a dental practice, please subscribe to my weekly blog. One of the biggest challenges to managing a dental practice is managing dental insurance. With dental insurance handled, then dental marketing for new patients becomes a primary focus. In today’s day of online reviews, handling patient complaints well is essential. As your practice grows, hiring dental staff becomes more important. With 16+ years of dental practice management experience, I’m open to your questions to help you run a successful dental office.

Feel free to email me.

Thais, Ginny & Jill at Dental Products Report Video shoot

Products Report! As you may know, I author a monthly blog for DPR “From the Office Manager Desk” and they invited me to spend the ...]]> I had a fun experience the other week – recording dental practice management videos for Dental

Thais, Ginny & Jill at Dental Products Report Video shoot

Products Report! As you may know, I author a monthly blog for DPR “From the Office Manager Desk” and they invited me to spend the day in Chicago to record a series of videos on dental practice management.

I was lucky enough to meet Ginny Hegarty, dental consultant and speaker, who was also invited to record some videos. Thanks to Thais Carter, content manager for Dental Products Report for inviting me to share in this experience! So, thanks to Dental Products Report, I will be adding some video into my blog very soon!

It was also fun to learn more about dental publishing and the challenges of dental manufacturers during this trip. A few highlights:

• There are a handful of dental magazines that target dental products – but did you know that DPR prides itself on offering independent reviews, not influenced by the amount spent on advertising?
• Dental trade shows continue to struggle to deliver dentist buyers – but companies that try to avoid this expensive method of advertising are punished with poor booth locations.
• Dentists (and I think consumers in general) are becoming numb to traditional advertising, so the most successful dental product advertising approaches incorporate dental practice management coaching. This is more than just telling about the product itself – and manufacturers are new to this type of story-telling.
• DPR is using these dental practice management videos to help their advertisers find new ways to reach their audience.

As a dental office manager, I love a good dental supplier. They make my job easier and they help me to run a successful dental practice.

Managing dental suppliers is just one way to run a successful dental practice. If you’re interested in new ideas on running a dental practice, please subscribe to my weekly blog. One of the biggest challenges to managing a dental practice is managing dental insurance. With dental insurance handled, then dental marketing for new patients becomes a primary focus. In today’s day of online reviews, handling patient complaints well is essential. As your practice grows, hiring dental staff becomes more important. With 16+ years of dental practice management experience, I’m open to your questions to help you run a successful dental office.

Feel free to email me.