3 Latest Tips for Managing Your Dental Practice with Laura Hatch and DentistryIQ
Are tech ‘solutions’ overwhelming your dental office? Is your dental practice possibly too reliant on insurance? When is the best time to set monthly schedules for sending out billing statements to your patients? Have you been contemplating any of these questions recently?
Take a moment to read these recent dental management articles filled with tips and advice from Laura Hatch, recently featured on DentistryIQ, we have gathered up the latest for you in the following collection!
Are tech ‘solutions’ overwhelming your dental office?
“Years ago, when I started in dentistry, we did not have the internet, smartphones, or the cloud, let alone the many other services we now have to help us run our practices. Today, there are different services to help us reach patients, monitor office statistics, make our offices paperless, record phone calls, assist with social media—and that’s just the beginning. In some ways, it’s the best possible time to be in dentistry, considering all the help that’s available to start, grow, and run a practice.
But it’s also possible there is too much of a good thing, and sometimes all of these “tech solutions” can become overwhelming. ” Read more.
There are three questions to answer to determine whether a service is useful for your office.
- Is it fixing a problem and helping your practice grow?
- Does your team use the technology regularly and correctly in its entirety?
- Are you using it to improve the practice (and if not, why not)?
Find the answers to these questions and more related dental practice management tips from Laura in the article featured on DentistryIQ, here!
Insurance will not fix the woes in your dental practice
Is your dental practice too reliant on insurance? Or did your practice take on more insurance companies to try to “fix” a slowdown of patients? Insurance is not the answer, and here’s why…
Insurance is part of the foundation of dental office life, day in and day out, just like last-minute cancellations, gum disease, tooth decay, and patients running late to their appointments. Insurance is a regular part of our job, whether we love it or hate it. Read more.
Five ways dental offices can recognize their dependency on insurance, and how to fix it.
- New Patient Call
- Treatment plan creation
- Treatment plan presentation
- Negotiating insurance fees
- Joining more insurance networks to fix the practice
The most effective time to send statements to dental patients
“Many dental offices have a set monthly schedule for sending out their billing statements. Here are some reasons why this is not always the best way to handle the billing in your practice, and what is recommended instead.
Outstanding accounts receivable is not ideal in any business. The intention is to get paid for the service or product at the time it is rendered.
For dental offices, this means having patients pay in full either prior to or on the day of service. But that’s usually not the case unless your office does not take assignment of benefits, because insurance companies need to receive the claims to pay their portions of the completed treatment…” Read more.
Four reasons you should not set a statement schedule in your office
- The sooner patients receive the bill, the better your chances of getting paid.
- Patients have short memories and we don’t want to be the bad guys.
- It’s best to distribute payments and phone calls over the course of the month.
- Sending out daily statements is much easier than it used to be.
Related Links:
- [Video] Dental Assistants and Front Office Staff: How to Work Well Together
- [Article] Thursday Troubleshooter: Dental office manager baffled and frustrated with ‘new’ dentist
- [Article] It’s Time to Clean the Old Accounts in Your Dental Practice
- [Article] “Just a Cleaning”? Absolutely Not! But it Takes a Dental Team Effort to Get Patients on Board
