Have you considered limiting or even completely removing insurance from your office because of the fear that your patient’s insurance will get rejected? If so, you should know that you are far from the only dentist to do this. Insurance companies make it increasingly difficult to keep up with their changing plans and terms, making it harder to know what can be covered and what cannot.
However, you don’t have to settle for fewer payment methods when you have dedicated dental insurance support.
These days, it’s hard to find employees that are not only good at their job, but reliable when the office gets busy. Unemployment is lower now than in previous years, so chances are the employee you’ve been searching for is already employed or has moved elsewhere for another job opportunity. With that being said, what if there was a way to get a highly-qualified employee whose only role was managing your practice’s many administrative duties?
That’s where a dental answering service comes in. Here’s what you can expect when using their services!
As a dental professional, your biggest concern is making sure your patients are properly cared for. You also want to confirm they have the tools to manage their oral health for life. Of course, running an entire dental practice is rarely a simple process. Missing calls from prospective patients and having current patients’ insurance rejected only makes your job more stressful.
To curb stress and missed opportunities, a dental answering service may be what you need. Here are three ways they can save your practice money in the long-term!
When dentists learn about the concept of a dental answering service, it’s common that they have many questions. For example, if answering service employees aren’t required to show up to the office and learn how the practice operates, how are they supposed to help? How is there service any different than an answering machine? How are they supposed to use the practice’s existing software?
Today we’ll go over how this process works and set expectations for dentists looking to improve their office’s productivity!
If your current dental answering service only answers calls for you and leaves messages, you should definitely take a moment to learn what it should be offering you. While it’s convenient to have extra support when answering patient calls, it’s actually nothing more than a glorified call center. Most of these centers don’t cater to specific industries and will attempt to work with any company that hires them.
However, some services cater their expertise exclusively to dental practices. By choosing that service, you get so much more. Here’s what you can expect.
When you hear the phrase “dental answering service,” you may assume that it’s only job is to answer calls when your own staff is too busy speaking with patients in the practice. However, it truly is so much more than that. While having a dedicated support staff can catch more calls and take messages as needed, it can also make your patients feel like their part of something bigger when they visit the dentist.
Here are five reasons why they’re perfect to support your practice.
You may have already experienced this at your practice or heard another dentist tell you about an angry patient they had because their dental bill was much higher than expected. When it comes to patients, the absolute worse thing your practice can do is mishandle their money.
If they’re told a service was covered and learn later their insurance doesn’t provide as much as you told them, they’ll assume your practice is incompetent, when in reality you just don’t have a team dedicated to the process of dental insurance verification.
When you speak with a marketing consultant for your practice, do they tell you that reaching a certain conversion rate is necessary? Do they hound you for not reaching rates as high as 80 percent? If so, you should know that reaching that percentage is actually nonsense. That’s why your local dental answering service wanted to provide practices three factors that actually help you keep patients.
The three points of success for landing quality conversion and a better patient base include process, people, and patients.
As a practice, you understand that getting that conversion is key to building up your patient base. However, it can be difficult to keep that patient’s interest elevated. In some medical practices, no-show rates can reach as high as 50 percent, leading to tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Uninterested patients also waste your time and the time of your other dental staff.
To convert calls into appointments, reduce the no-show rate, and find the right patients to build your base, you need a dental answering service to build sustainable connections with patients.
Is it a common problem for your patients to not attend their follow-up appointments for treatment? Maybe you schedule an appointment for a first-time patient only to have them never show up? When people live such busy lives, it can be easy for them to forget when their dental appointments are happening. Once the date passes, they typically won’t bother to reschedule, costing you a patient and money.
With effective dental scheduling, you can keep your patients informed on upcoming appointments!
