Re-releasing a DAT listener favorite!
The Dental A-Team is Team Online Statements over Team Paper Statements! This podcast episode is a sign your practice needs to get on the online statement train. Lots of practices struggle getting collections up because they’re doing it the old-fashioned way.
Listen in for the four steps you should take to make it as easy as possible to collect payments from your patients.
Episode resources:
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Transcript:
Kiera Dent (00:00)
Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera. And today we are bringing you something so special. I am so excited because this is one of our most popular episodes from the archives. Whether you're hearing this for the first time or catching it again, I am so excited because it's jam packed with a ton of takeaways that you can start using right now in your practice. We have released thousands, literally thousands of episodes. And I wanted to start bringing a few of these amazing episodes back for you. So I hope you enjoy. And as always, thanks for listening and I'll catch you next time.
on the Dental A Team podcast.
The Dental A Team (00:32)
You guys, happy day to you. I hope you're doing fantastic wherever you are. And I hope you are just enjoying life. I think I need this podcast more than you guys might need this podcast. I've got the COVID crank, guys. I feel like I've just gotten angry and sick of not being able to hire people and frustrated with just feeling like I'm trapped. Maybe any of you are feeling that way.
Hey, just shoot me an email, say me too, you can text me. ? But I hope we can all remember today, for me, when I'm in those modes, I have to literally go to my journal and do gratitude. And I also listen to, I've got a podcast that I listen to over and over and over again. Yes, you guys know I'm obsessed with Tony Robbins. ?
And this one is when it says change your life in 2021. And I will literally listen to that podcast over and over and over again and remind myself of how many great things there are in my life. ? I don't think it's important to say like my life could be so much worse because while it can, that just negates your feelings of feeling yuck. And right now for me, I feel like I'm feeling very stagnant. But last night I had to remind myself that ? just like...
The world has seasons, our life has seasons. And right now, instead of maybe being in massive growth and full bloom, it's not quite spring yet. So maybe being okay to hibernate, to slow down a little bit more, to get ready for that hustle and bustle of bloom seasons. I didn't feel like I really slowed down through the winter hibernation seasons. And so maybe just also allowing yourself and your practice to go through the seasons as well. That way you can have vibrant springs. You can have very
flowing summers, you can have more harvest in the fall and then have that hibernation quiet time as well. But definitely give yourself that space and not mitigate the reality of what you're facing. So today guys, ? with that said, I'm here for you. If you wanna be here for me, I'll take it. So just email me guys. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. I'd love to hear from you. I truly do, I enjoy hearing from you guys. So thanks for being my pen pals.
I never really had a great pen pal growing up. Did any of you guys have a good pen pal? Because if you did, also tell me that. Like you guys, you don't understand. Your emails that are just like a, Kiera, I'm a massive fan, I love the podcast, yeah, I had a pen pal. Those ones are some of my favorite emails of the day. You guys, I average hundreds of emails every single day. And so to get those little sprinklings of fun ones, they just make my day. So thank you for those of you who have done that. And if you're thinking about it, do it.
Also, I do love ? in the I travel a lot guys and I get bored a lot. I'm a very busy human. I appreciate when you guys leave us ? reviews on the podcast. You guys are helping shout out to this podcast family guys. Our downloads are cranking. So whatever you're doing, keep doing it. If you're sharing this, if you're leaving reviews, do it, do it again. Have somebody else that you know do it as well because guys we are on track to break that millionth download this year and you guys are the only way that we can do this. So.
Keep it up, we skyrocketed in the month of January. February is on track as well. So guys, keep moving, keep moving. And the way you can help us out, I'll give you specifics. Number one, if you have not done so, go leave a five star review on the podcast. Whatever platform you're listening, that helps us, because it helps them rank us higher so other people can find us. Number two, download the podcast. I know it sounds so dumb, but actually,
Download it not just listen that helps it as well because then more people will find us because they're ranking us as a higher podcast and number three shared on social platforms So when you guys are listening, please guys have a story about us tag us in it post if there's a great topic that you're loving post that podcast because I know a lot of you guys are listening you can even just take a quick selfie while you're in the car and tag Dental A Team podcast you don't even have to list the episode those are three great ways you guys can help us
radically increase our downloads and break that millionth download. Why do we care about one million downloads? I'll tell you, because we're on a mission to positively impact the world of dentistry in the greatest way possible. Well, guess what? If you guys don't help us share the word, we can do the work all day long and create great content. But if you guys don't share, we're only going to be able to impact as many people as we have, which is thousands, guys. I can't believe how many people listen to this podcast. It's almost three years old, guys. And guess what?
you're helping to grow this into a legacy of helping other practices. So thank you guys. Kudos to you giving you a massive hug of appreciation. And with that, let's segue into a really great topic and that is on paper statements versus online payments. Ooh, sexy, fun, everything more. Just shut the podcast off right now. I hate billing. I'm just kidding. I'm going to make it fun for you. So if your practice is sending out paper statements, rock on. I'm happy for you. If you have online payments,
even better rock on. If you don't have online payments, get it done because online payments are the way of the future. Let me just ask you guys, how many things do you pay online? Let's just quickly like think of everything we pay online. I buy airline tickets online, hotels online, Amazon. I promise you everybody here shops on Amazon. ? Amazon, I order Christmas presents online, birthday presents, gift cards to favorite restaurants.
99 % of everything we do is online. There's very few things that we actually still physically have to go to a location to do. So a lot of practices struggle getting their collections up because they're doing it a bit old fashioned. That's okay. It's worked in the past. There's still a great thing for it. But paper statements, you guys really, I think are becoming a way of the past. And we need to make sure we have an easy way for our patients to do it, to make payments.
I thought about this, if I were to say, could you please pay me, but I'm only available via check, which, or you can call me during the hours that I'm available. I probably wouldn't get many people paying their payments because odds are the hours that I'm available are the hours that they're actually at work making money to be able to pay those bills. Doesn't that feel a little backwards? Like if we really stop and think about what we've done, we're like, you need to call us between the hours of eight and five.
Like I have a company that's trying to get me to do a scheduling appointment. Oh, I want to poke my eyes out. I'm not kidding. I'm going on five months of trying to get this thing scheduled. Five, count them up. One, two, three, four, five. The reason that it's a pain in the booty is because they are asking us to go to this place from the hours of 10 to three. I don't know if he has, no, but from the hours of 10 to three.
I don't take a lunch, my coaching calls go straight through. My husband is a pharmacist and actually is a clinical pharmacist, so sees patients all day long in heart and vascular. So for us to get time to go to this appointment, what do we have to do? We have to take time off or do it on our lunch hours. But guess what? My husband's in leadership and I run a company, so lunch hours really don't
and it's an appointment I don't really have a burning desire to go do. Hashtag paying payments is something people don't really want to do. So how hard is it for them to actually get in your schedule and pay your bills? The answer is we've made it very hard for them. I don't like to make it hard for people to pay me money. So how can you make it easier? Number one, the first and foremost easiest way to do it is you can actually contact your credit card processor and see if they could actually put that button on your website. Believe it or not,
Dental A Team are pages for payments that clients, so if it's like gold or silver or platinum, those are actually made by my credit card processing company. They made the web pages for my payment portal. So your credit card processing companies can do that. If you need a great credit card processor, give me a call. ? Email us, Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. We've got some great ones that have great rates. Make sure you're, that's actually a like fun, like just saving money for your practices, checking your credit card rates.
but you can have them literally put a button on your website for you. So that's like a great easy way to do it. Then you can update your software that says make a payment online. How many of you when you're paying bills, just go online to pay your bills? I will tell you I do it. The only time I call somebody is if my bill is different online than what it was on my paper statement. So there is a benefit of paper statements to let me know to pay it, but guess what? If we could go one step further and do a text to pay our statements,
we're way more likely to actually text than to respond to paper. So for me, when it comes to online payments, first and foremost, you gotta get it there. Secondly, Modento, and I do think, don't quote me on this, I do think Dental Intel either has or is coming up with online payments. Those are probably my top two. Flex also does it for Open Dental. They only work with Open Dental. Modento works with all the major softwares. ? I know, ? gosh, Care Stack, they also have a built-in for online payments.
but find a way to get online payments into your statements. I personally love to just text people their statement first. You can also email statements first. Think about how much money you're saving just on stamps and paper alone and printing by not mailing out these statements. Also, they've proven you're much more likely to get a text message open rate than you are to have people actually respond to emails or mail. So that would be how I would suggest you set this up. Then if we...
are still mailing paper statements, totally fine. ? At the Dental A Team, we actually love to send two statements, so that's 60 days worth of statements, if they haven't paid via a phone call or a text message, okay? This is super important. A lot of people hear, Kiera said I can still send two statements. That is true if you have already called them and texted them to try and get payment before we mail a statement. Okay, did you catch that? Only do you mail a paper statement
if you've already called and texted to try and collect payment over the phone before we mail the statement. And that's both times we mail the statement. So for the 30 day statement and the 60 day statement. Then after that on the 90 day statement, we're going to send our third statement on red paper. Again, this is assuming they have not responded to two phone calls, two text messages, and two already normal letters. That means I've contacted them how many times? Two phone calls, two text messages, and two letters. That was two
four, six times I reached out to this person, okay? Then I'm gonna call them again, text them again. Now I'm up to eight times, I'm going to mail them a red letter. The red letter is going to be like final statement, okay? So you can see that red letter actually, Tiffany did it in a practice, drastically increase the collections because guess what? They saw this red piece of paper through the little window. That's going to probably tell them that they need to fix this quickly.
So that's going to drastically help you guys out a ton. So make sure that third one you sent on red paper. So those are some of the easiest ways, guys, to be able to get your AR down, get money into your practice faster and easier, and make it more convenient for your patients to pay you. But let's not forget the number one most proactive thing you can do, and that is make sure that we're collecting over the counter with correct estimates.
I really can't tell you how much people are just like, we'll bill you or we'll send you a statement. Guys, you can estimate a lot closer and more accurately. It's okay if there's a balance on the account, get smarter and adjust that for next time. So you get more and more accurate, but please, please, please, please, please collect over the counter first rather than just sending statements. Cause that's actually going to cut down the need for online payments. The goal should be that we actually can reduce that exponentially. So just wanted to give you guys a quick like.
Couple of ideas, I hope if nothing else, number one, get a way to make payments online. I don't care if you use a software, I don't care if you call your credit card processor, but this quarter, make it your goal that you will absolutely 100 % have a way for your patients to pay online. Number two, call and text those patients, utilize those services. Again, like I said, my dental's great, dental intel's great, ? Flexa's great, find a way, that way you can text and email statements to your patients.
Your software probably can do it, so check that first. Then the third thing is make sure we're calling and texting before we send those statements out. This way we can make sure that we're maximizing our time and helping our patients do it. Let's think of how is the easiest way for these patients to pay their bills? Well, number one, not to give them a bill, right? Number two, to have it convenient because most people are going to pay bills after working hours when you're not in the practice. That's great. We want to be collecting money when we're not working. And number three,
How can we make sure that we have a solid follow-up process with them that makes it very easy and convenient? Send out two white letters and send the third one out on red paper if they haven't paid. The goal is you should be sending out maybe one or two, maybe at the most 10 red letters a month because we should have already been able to collect. So guys, I hope that was helpful for you. If you need help getting this set up, if you need us to help coach your billing team ? or your practice, just kind of helping review that. Let us know this is what we love to do. So email me.
Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. This is literally my passion, my legacy, what I live to do. Yep, it's to geek out over dentistry. So call us guys. There's nothing like having somebody coach you, guide you, mentor you, save you hours of time and make your life easier.
Kiera Dent (14:09)
I hope you all loved today's episode as much as I did. It is crazy to think that this many episodes have been released since we started the Dental A Team Podcast. And I started looking to say, my goodness, our listeners need to be reminded of some of the things they may have learned a year ago or two years ago or five years ago, because so many things in our practices weren't relevant back then when we heard them, but they are relevant today. And I would be doing you a huge disservice if I didn't re-release some of these episodes for you to remember, to refine.
to optimize and really truly if you ever need a topic or you're like, my gosh, I wonder if the Dental A Team has anything like this, go onto our website, TheDentalATeam.com, click on our podcast tab and you can literally search any topic. So whether it's overhead or hiring or firing or team morale or engagement or case acceptance or hygiene
onboarding or whatever it is, we have so many episodes for you. And so I am going to intentionally be
re-releasing some of the top best episodes for you, pulling back some of the ones that I needed to remember, some of the things that I feel for you to really, really relearn right now and to re-remember, or if it's the first time, welcome. I'm so happy you're listening to it, but I hope you truly enjoyed today's episode. I hope that you share this with somebody. I hope that you go and implement today because we only have one day. We only get today. And so making today the best that it possibly can be. If we can help you in any way, shape or form, reach out Hello@TheDentalATeam.com.
And as always, thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time on the Dental A Podcast.