In Episode One of the Best of Cash is King, AADGP President Dr. Brent Barta, Vince Cardillo, Founder & CEO of Maeva Dental Advisors and George Radigan, Former Vice President of North American Dental Group discuss the most important things you should do to maximize your Practice’s revenue from an administrative viewpoint.
Transcript
Brent Barta: Kind of the income side of dental group practice, looking at the best practices there, to start with a very basic pre staff besides having an AR department. What are some more important aspects of managing on the income side?
George Radigan: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean you know, as self explained, the title of this cash is king, so I mean really just keeping an eye on your account, receivables right, I mean that’s obviously a necessary part of operating practice, making sure that you keep a keen eye on your day’s outstanding. Third, making sure that you know claims are getting refired when, when necessary, making sure that you have systems and inabilities to track things that do get kicked back. I think we all know insurance companies are very, very skilled at being able to reject claims even when it doesn’t really facilitate a rejection. So just making sure that you have good systems, good tracking ways to make sure that you stay on top of it, because it’s really easy to to let that fall by the wayside. You know, especially in the front desk, when you’re you know, managing the patient’s incoming outgoing treatment, planning, confirming pulling charts, et cetera. You know it’s pretty pretty easy to lose track on on. You know not only the part of it, but you know other other big components of that is making sure that you’re proactively verified insurances, that you’re also proactively collecting the appropriate co pays at the time, in making sure that you just really stay on top of managing patient expectations, that you know they’re going to get a good service rendered and you know that’s not free and and that they’re okay with pain. You know, Vinnie , this is a little more in VIN’s world here, from the operational consulting part of you. So I kind of let you throw your spent on there.
Vince Cardillo: Yeah, thanks, George, not that you stole my fire, I’ll try and jump in here now. So yeah, everything George stated is right on. You know it’s interesting. Is that front desk like George was talking about? Let’s making sure that those insurance verifications are happening, making sure fee schedules are entered into the system, the latest fee schedules, and really putting together the appropriate systems for your front desk team to be able to create an appropriate treatment plan with the right breakdown and providing patients with different options for paying for their services. At the end of the day, if we have fee schedules in place, the right break bounds. You don’t have much on the insurance side of things and if you do have a good payment collections methodology in the front in the beginning you have a low. So really it’s really a preparatory state. The more you’re prepared upfront, the less are you going to have and the less you’re going to chase. So with clients that we have it’s typically the least policies, procedures and systems they’ve got to front, the more they’ve got, the more they’ve got that set up up front, the less they have.
George Radigan: Keep in mind too, and I mean it costs you additional money to go chase the money that you let walk out the door. So I don’t know if this is a factual staff, but I’ve read that it costs about seven cents on every dollar to go collect and post and process any of that outstanding outstanding. Once you have that, leave the building.
Brent Barta: Yeah, that sounds, actually conservative at seven percent so you guys are spot on in my eyes.