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If the primary goal of a DSO is to streamline dental practices to improve operational efficiency and increase revenue, why do so many struggle to realize revenue goals? Often, the challenges of one practice do not manifest across all other practices and so focusing on those issues rather than operations and workflows across all locations doesn’t get prioritized properly.
Keeping the end goal in mind, DSOs must overcome the following additional challenges to revenue success:
Managing multiple locations- Consistency and conformity when it comes to managing crucial business tasks, especially those that generate revenue, is essential. That means standardizing, across all locations, methods for validating insurance, filing claims, billing patients, and collecting payments. With multiple procedures and multiple timelines at different locations, revenue can be difficult to predict and cash flow management becomes a struggle.
Ensuring business continuity- For any number of reasons, dentists seek out the support of DSOs to help run what were once private practices, or to avoid the challenges (and costs) of a private practice in the first place. Sometimes there’s a move to ensure a practice is sustainable during retirement or, in the switch to a DSO, other transitions occur. That can be challenging, especially when it comes to staffing. As a result, staffing issues sometimes mean a practice may be without the dentist, hygienists or front desk staff to maintain existing client loads.The result? Business continuity becomes a revenue issue. Additionally, if the DSO isn’t continually assessing revenue and productivity across all locations, then money is just sitting unclaimed and revenue is lost.
Patient Retention- In the same way that staff may leave during a major transition, the same is true of patients, especially as new procedures or policies take effect. Most people don’t like change and this is definitely true when it comes to their health and dental care. Expect some patients to leave a newly acquired practice.
Similarly, if a DSO brings on new dentists or new practices within the group, consistency will matter here too. Ensuring that all of your dentists are providing the same level of quality care can significantly impact patient retention.
In addition to the potential loss of revenue, you’ll also have to handle the cost of acquiring new patients. It can cost you on both sides if you’re not prepared strategically or financially.
For many, even the move to a DSO is an effort to reduce costs. The principal idea is that shifting non-clinical tasks to a shared centralized business office promises to reduce costs for dental practices. But for the DSO?
Revenue boosting strategies can take time to implement and time to build, especially when it comes to client-focused efforts. However, one sure way to improve your DSO’s financial footing and cash flow is to reduce your costs.
Staff reductions, though they may lower overhead, can impact patient care and practice productivity. What if you could make better use of the staff you have, the time they have, and reduce costs?
A DSO’s primary focus is the business and administrative tasks associated with a dental practice. The proactive DSOs identify ways to speed up standard, repetitive required tasks like coding, billing, patient and provider communications, and dental insurance verifications. Thankfully, there are solutions on the market that can improve the dental care workflow helping you maximize staff, cut costs, and realize more revenue.
Automated processes are lauded across all industries for their ability to improve efficiency and boost productivity. They simplify repetitive and time consuming tasks, freeing up your team to work on other initiatives and tasks.
In dental practices, one of the most time consuming non-clinical tasks is dental insurance verification. From gathering initial patient information to working with, and calling, insurance providers to confirm coverage, verify information, and rectify errors, your staff spends nearly 30 hours a week on these tasks. Imagine what you could do with another nearly full-time employee without the overhead? How would that productivity and those cost savings allow you to grow your organization?
Automating dental insurance verification can be as good as gaining an extra employee without actually hiring one.
But automated dental insurance verifications solutions do more than save your DSO money. A truly comprehensive software solution can also help identify revenue and treatment opportunities based on patient benefit allowances. Not only do you free up time and resources and save money, but you also improve overall patient care. iCoreVerify provides insurance verifications for every patient on the schedule that week, with automatic error identification for quick corrections.
Identifying opportunities for patients to utilize their benefits means revenue for your dental practices, but that’s not the only untapped revenue opportunity in your practices. In fact, often when we review revenue analytics with dental practices and DSO’s, there are unfulfilled treatment plans and uncollected accounts.
With revenue analytics tools, you can stay on top of patient eligibility and coverage, ensuring your patients get the treatment they need and you can schedule it before they even leave.
In addition to unrealized insurance revenue, iCoreHuddle, pulls real-time data from your practice management software and presents you with a simple to use, simple to visualize, dashboard of your revenue metrics, allowing you to focus on missed revenue opportunities.
Driving growth and boosting revenue isn’t a single-solution goal, in fact, few things in a dental practice are. That means finding the right tools and the right solutions to help you meet your growth and financial goals.
That’s where iCoreConnect comes in. Making the right strategic business decisions is why many private practices turn to DSO’s in the first place. It’s also the reason many dental practices turn to us and state dental and medical associations trust us. iCoreConnect has been vetted and awarded nearly 90 product endorsement agreements by state associations across the country. We’ve developed a software suite that streamlines back office workflows and provides the efficiency, accuracy, and productivity you need.
If you’re ready to cut costs, boost revenue, all while improving patient care and experience, book a demo today!