I think COVID-19 has made us reevaluate a lot about our practices. Many of us did something we never imagined we would do—laid off our entire teams. If I told you in January 2020 that you would do that, you would have thought I was crazy. When we come back to full-scale practice, I think many of us will want to try to keep our teams lean and mean.
I am fortunate to have a salaried office manager I can afford to keep on my payroll. She handled a lot of things during the downtime, including finally being able to spend time on old claims and accounts receivable issues. Many dentists did not have that luxury. In the wake of COVID-19, I think we will see a trend in moving some of our administrative tasks off-site. Dental Support Specialties can help us with that.
This company is a family-run business out of Uniontown, Ohio. Their 50 employees focus on helping practices in three different ways. First, Dental Support Specialties helps offices with off-site phone and scheduling services. This was where they got their start. Imagine having all or some of your phone calls routed through to a trained professional. Would that relieve some stress from your admin team? Absolutely! It might even enable you to reduce the number of team members you need. A smaller team means fewer headaches and fewer expenses. Lean and mean! Dental Support Specialties can make that a reality.
The second way that Dental Support Specialties can help your practice is with insurance billing and accounts receivable. When you subscribe to this service, you allow one of their professionals to handle collections for your practice. Generally speaking, collections is every admin team’s least favorite task. The same goes with hunting down rejected insurance claims. With their background and resources, Dental Support Specialties can make this process much easier for you and your team and will cost you less than hiring and training someone new!
Finally, Dental Support Specialties can help you with insurance verification. I have had specific employees who only do insurance verification. Even with that, my other admin team still has to work on this from time to time. If you off-load this task, you could have one fewer employee and save on insurance, taxes, and training time.
Dental Support Specialties gives you the option of choosing which of these three services you want to use. If you have a great collections person but need help with the phones, they have a package for you. If you just want them to handle insurance verification but nothing else, that works too. Or you can use all three services—the choice is yours. Let’s get lean and mean after this COVID-19 disaster and let Dental Support Specialties help. Double to deep left field for Dental Support Specialties!
Joshua Austin, DDS, MAGD, writes the Pearls for Your Practice column in Dental Economics. After graduating from the University of Texas Health Science Center Dental School, Dr. Austin associated for several years. In October of 2009, he opened a solo general practice in a suburban area of San Antonio, Texas. Dr. Austin is involved in all levels of organized dentistry and can be reached at [email protected].
