How Dental Practice Staffing Issues Impact RCM

Dentists go to school to be dentists. But many dental students don’t realize they’ll also end up becoming accountants, HR professionals, IT experts, customer service specialists, sales representatives, and bill collectors. It takes fulfilling all of those roles, and more, to run a successful dental business and that’s all outside the work done in the exam room.

The truth is, all of those roles require specialized skills. Sadly, many dental practices are short staffed and everyone is wearing multiple hats. Truth is, putting on a cowboy hat doesn’t make me a cowboy. While asking your staff to handle multiple roles is commonplace, it’s also undoubtedly impacting revenue cycle management (RCM) and cash flow. Though it may not be a cowboy, technology can be a hero that not only saves your staff from multi-tasking, but also your practice from falling short of its growth potential.

Quick Links

• Is There Still a Dental Staff Shortage?
• Impact of Dental Staff Shortage on Dental Practices
• Healthcare RCM Challenges
• 9 Strategies to Improve RCM

Is There Still a Dental Staff Shortage?

Yes. It’s that simple. While many employers and newspapers, like The New York Times, declared the “Great Resignation” over, anticipating the end of staffing shortages, that’s just not the case for dentistry.

In part, this has to do with declining enrollment in dental hygiene and assisting programs. More specifically, there was an enrollment decline in 2020-2021 followed by a slight rebound in 2021-2022, which made dental practices hopeful. Yet here we are, a few years later, and the rebound proved short lived with no signs of the declining trend ending.

Impact of Dental Staff Shortage on Dental Practices

Let’s start with the most obvious issue.

When it comes to filling staff positions, dental practices across the board are most frequently struggling to fill dental hygienist positions. In fact, anywhere from 50-75% of dental practices are reporting this is a growing concern.

And, to address these shortages, staffing costs are going up. The same research revealed nearly a quarter of dental practices experience negative impacts on practice performance due to staffing shortages. What do those issues look like?

• Heavier workloads which can lead to burnout, reduced productivity, and, perhaps more concerning, errors and oversights.
• Longer patient wait times which can result in unhappy patients who, eventually, leave the practice.
• Reduced capacity that limits growth and revenue. In fact, staffing shortages may be responsible for reduced capacity up to 10%.
• Decreased revenue based on both patient retention and reduced capacity.
• Continued staffing shortages are also a concern when those working in the role are dissatisfied given the conditions noted above. 

While a staffing shortage may seem like an immediate need, and of course it is, it can have long-lasting effects, especially on revenue cycle management.

Healthcare RCM Challenges

One of the biggest challenges in healthcare RCM is the billing and claims process. Because there is no consistent universal set of rules and regulations, administrative staff often find themselves entangled in a time-consuming web of insurer-specific requirements.

The variation in reimbursement rates, coding requirements, and claim submission procedures can lead to significant delays in payments, ultimately impacting cash flow and practice health.

More specifically, claim denials and resubmissions can delay payments and, when your staff is taxed, the errors that result in denials, such as incorrect codes or incomplete information, can be attributed to staff burnout and burdensome workloads.

However, the challenges are not limited to insurance and filing claims. Changes in the health and dental insurance market means there are more high-deductible plans, shifting a larger share of dental costs on to patients.

Communicating out-of-pocket co-pays then falls directly on the shoulders of dental practice staff. Balancing collecting payments with maintaining a positive patient experience is not easy, especially when there are complications like insurance changes or expensive procedures.

Now, let’s take some of these issues, and combine them with inefficient workflows, data silos, and potentially outdated systems that contribute to billing errors, claim denials, time consuming and labor intensive tasks and increased administrative overhead.

Streamlining these processes through outsourcing and SaaS solutions, especially those that automate these tasks, is imperative for healthcare organizations aiming to enhance efficiency and improve their revenue cycle management.

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9 Strategies to Improve RCM

If you’re like most dental practices, solving revenue cycle managment issues is a priority, but so is improving staff efficiency. Thankfully, both can work hand-in-hand, freeing up staff time while making other improvements across your practice. 

1. Automate Billing Processes. Implementing automated billing systems can help reduce errors, streamline the invoicing process, and simplify the payments process for patients. From SaaS solutions to white glove services, billing automation can help enhance accuracy and efficiency, speeding up cash flow and freeing up staff.

2. Improve Claim Accuracy. Claim denials are a drain on your resources, financial and human. Ensuring medical cross-coding for dental is accurate is an essential part of this process. While training staff is an essential part of this process, codes change annually which can make keeping up difficult. This is another task you can automate, improving the accuracy of dental claims prior to submission and freeing staff to handle patient care.

3. Gather and Monitor Practice Revenue Analytics. One essential step in managing the revenue cycle is identifying revenue trends and opportunities. This also means identifying revenue delays (like issues with AR), claim denials, and incomplete treatment plans. If you’re not tracking these, you’re leaving money behind.

4. Automated Insurance Verification. As we noted above, changes in healthcare mean an increasing amount of the financial burden of paying for treatments is falling on patients. Understanding what’s covered and what patient costs will be, prior to treatment has significant benefits, from ensuring payment and, nurturing patient relationships with transparency to, and maximizing insurance for treatment plans and patient care.

Further, with frequent insurance changes, it can be hard to keep up, meaning staff spend time on the phone with insurance companies, verifying insurance information, when they could be attending to other essential tasks.

5.Streamline Appointment Scheduling. No’ shows are a problem for nearly every dental practice. Simplifying scheduling for patients and improving appointment communication, including reminder notifications, can reduce no shows. Similarly, keeping track of patients who are flexible and can make last-minute appointments last minute can help you fill those slots quickly.

6. Optimize Charge Capture Procedures. Improving cash flow means optimizing every part of the payments process. No one gets paid until procedures are reported, so ensuring you’re getting this information to insurers in a timely manner can help. And, if there are issues, you can resolve those more quickly as well.

7.Improve Denial Management. While automated insurance verification can certainly help, if you’re getting claim denials, digging to the root of the problem can help you identify and address those issues. Training your staff to understand common denial reasons and implement corrective actions.

8. Enhance Patient Experience. Happy patients pay their bills, make referrals, adhere to treatment plans, and essentially help you generate revenue. Being short staffed often impacts patient experience the most, so automating other tasks can help your team spend more time with patients.

One of the best tools you have at your disposal for improving patient experience is improving communication around financial responsibilities, scheduling, and billing and payments. Taking collections out of the hands of your staff, streamlining and simplifying payments, and being clear about what will be and is due improves transparency and visibility. Those build trust.

9. Invest in Staff Training. If you’ve got good staff, investing in them can improve every aspect of your practice, from patient care to improving billing and coding practices. Similarly, if you’re opting for software solutions to improve your healthcare workflow, then make sure your team is trained. Look for a solution that offers both training and ongoing support to help your team succeed.

And, finally, you want the staff you have, especially if you’re short staffed, to be up to speed on all the tools you use. They’ll be more effective and more efficient (and you might not notice the gaps as much).

There is no panacea–;. Nno one solution to solve it all. Feeling overwhelmed is natural, especially when there’s financial pressure, an overburdened staff, and frustrated patients. Working on preventing some of the issues before they become problems is an important first step.

Identify where your biggest RCM problems are and then take steps to address that first. A lot of claim denials? Focus on your insurance verification and claims process. Patient accounts sitting in AR? Work on patient communication and simplifying your payments process. Not sure where the problem is? Start collecting revenue analytics and assessing problem areas.

If that still feels like a lot, Better yet, give our team a call. With solutions built for every part of the healthcare workflow, your team can be more efficient and less stressed while improving your cash flow. Revenue cycle management tools can and should do more than identify revenue opportunities, they should also help you gather and realize that revenue.

If you’re feeling pulled in multiple directions when it comes to practice improvement, reach out to our team. With a variety of single solutions as well as full enterprise opportunities, iCoreConnect can help steer you in the right direction, save your staff, and grow your dental practice.