Your dental practice revenue is due for a checkup

When is the last time you assessed your dental practice revenue health? Like a mouth, if it doesn’t have regular checkups and preventative maintenance, things can go south quickly. Without preventative maintenance — or a “checkup” — what seems to be working may one day cause other systemic issues within your dental practice. What could you implement or streamline before you start experiencing revenue pain? Let’s talk about why your dental practice revenue needs a regular “checkup” and how that can keep your dental practice happy and healthy for years to come.

How do you know if your dental practice revenue is healthy?

Here are three areas you can quickly assess that have obvious direct impacts on your dental practice revenue:

Dental accounting and bookkeeping:

Do you have accountability for every dollar and cent that runs through your practice?. Without adequate management, or limited access account creation, that money can quite literally run away from you, leaving you will a mess of financial mistakes that can add up to a hefty monthly overhead bill. 

Ask yourself:

– Are a majority of our transactions EFT based or do we use checks?

– Do my employees need access to my personal or business bank accounts to pay the bills?

Patient scheduling, treatment, and consistent statement payment:

We’re about to hit you with a hard dental practice revenue truth: you can’t collect 100% of what you’re rightfully owed if you don’t go after it. Outside of insurance collections, your patient statements offer an insight into whether your practice is committed to consistent and reliable profitability. We all know patients who will pay “next time” or “after this one”, but why not start today, while they’re in your office with the healthy new smile you gave them?

Ask yourself:

–  Are we collecting estimated patient copayments when the patients are in the office?

–  Do we have systems and processes for regular, and respectful, patient copayment reminders for outstanding balances? 

–  When is the last time the recare report was run and worked?

Dental billing:

Proper dental billing procedures allow your practice to achieve financial goals faster and with better collection rates, often near 100%, making it the single most valuable asset in your dental practice. If you’re not sure how often, or how many, of your claims are denied each month, it quite literally pays to take a look at your overall collection ratio. If the dental billing processes aren’t consistently completed, your practice profitability will tumble farther than you expect. 

Ask yourself:

– How many hours are we spending each day/week trying to reconcile claim denials? 

– What’s the best way to streamline our dental billing processes to allow more focus on patient care? 

Complete dental practice revenue health assessment

Looking for an easier, better way to streamline your revenue process to work for you instead of against you? Our Revenue Health Assessment is a comprehensive look into the primary financial aspects of your dental practice, including total collections, accounting, and overhead — giving you critical insight into dental practice revenue cycle best practices that can help you freshen up your dental billing processes. 

Click here to give your dental practice revenue a checkup.

Patricia Escamilla

Quality & Brand Promise Specialist