If one of your goals as a dentist is to move from a solo dentist or small practice to a multi-location practice, then we will let you in on the best-kept secret in the industry that will help you achieve this: centralizing dental support services.
Most successful dental practices are able to keep growing and remain successful because of this trend, and if you want to increase profitability and your growth rate while managing costs, you should consider centralizing your dental support services.
Still not sure?
Let’s break it down.
What is Centralization?
Simply put, centralization is having the same business-related activities done at one location, this includes accounting, billing, HR, IT, supply procurement, marketing, and insurance verification, to name a few.
Now ask yourself this, do you want to constantly worry about staffing/payroll management, marketing, equipment failures, billing, scheduling, insurance verification, and other dental-related activities?
If the answer to the above is No, then you should consider centralizing all or some of these critical elements of your practice.
Advantages of Centralizing Dental Support Services?
The benefits of centralizing include:
Savings
Centralization results in savings. When you partner with an efficient outsourcing company you can realize savings of up to 75%. This reduction in operating costs can enable you to upgrade equipment such as x-rays or move to a bigger location.
Frees up your time
Time is a valuable resource and using it on repetitive tasks can actually cost your practice.
However, dentists can spend their time seeing patients and building long-lasting relationships that can results in improved patient experience as opposed to trying to run every aspect of the practice.
Consistency in branding and marketing
We can’t ignore the need for branding and marketing dental practices. However, not all dentists and dental office team members are great at marketing or have the time to give 100% focus on branding and marketing.
You can think of dental marketing and branding a having a Push/Pull effect on your practice.
Marketing is anything that you do to push your name to a larger audience to get new patients (Push). Branding, on the other hand, seeks to pull people through communicating your values, culture and unique characteristics.
The right outsourcing partner can provide you with a qualified virtual team member that can strike a balance between marketing and brand centralization.
SupportDDS provides insourced team members that can do your marketing and brand management. Learn more about why we call it insourcing here.
Less Patient frustration
Imagine trying to order a cup of coffee at Starbucks and the person that is taking your order seems busy with other tasks and is not paying attention to you.
Frustrating right?
This feeling is part of human nature, we get frustrated sometimes regardless of what the other party is going through. We sometimes don’t consider how many tasks a person has to juggle on a daily basis.
You must be thinking that wait, but it’s their job! And we agree with you.
Dental practices are no different. When traffic and calls increase, your staff could get overwhelmed, which affects their performance.
To avoid these frustrations, you can centralize some tasks so that your team can focus on the patients.
Eliminates Duplication
Centralization reduces and eliminates duplication of efforts. Mostly in billing, patient records, and insurance claims.
It’s important to stress that the opportunity cost of these tasks is high. Imagine realizing that all that time spent on tasks only resulted in a duplication of efforts or a mix up of patient information and records.
Eliminates office inefficiencies
Inefficiency is unacceptable in business and this is no different for dental practices. Inefficiency can be caused by employees spending a lot of time on the phone (usually on hold) trying to verify insurance or searching for mismanaged documents and patient records.
However, when you centralize dental support services, you allow your team to attend to more productive activities. Furthermore, outsourced dental assistants are able to remotely link with your current systems and are able to manage all virtual documents.
Reduce employee turnover costs
Josh Bersin of Deloitte believes the cost of losing an employee can range from tens of thousands of dollars to 1.5–2.0x the employee’s annual salary.
These costs include hiring, onboarding, training, ramp time to peak productivity, the loss of engagement from others due to high turnover, higher business error rates, and general culture impacts.
The chart below highlights how most employees are a “cost” to the organization, and that over time, they become more valuable.
Simply put, outsourcing your dental team can save you a ton of money.
I-verify Now is a service offered by SupportDDS that helps you find a dedicated virtual team member that works the same hours with you and is essentially a part of the organization. This program can save you up to 75% on your payroll and staff turnover costs.
Growth (No need for offices and other resources)
As highlighted above, new employees can be costly to hire and train. But we had not included the costs of new equipment (laptops or PC), stationery or office space.
Centralization eliminates the need for you to buy extra resources. Your outsourcing partner provides these. All you have to do is to help your virtual assistant to quickly understand your systems and how you want your work to be done.
FREE GUIDE: The Ultimate Guide to Outsourcing Dental Insurance Verification
What Dental Support Services Can I Centralize?
We get asked this question a lot of times. Here’s a breakdown of some of the services you can centralize today.
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Centralizing Accounting and Finance
Your finances are the lifeblood of your practice. When you neglect this function, you risk losing employees and even shutting down.
However, centralizing your accounting and finance can ensure that your practice has the expert support that it needs.
You can get an affordable qualified CFO to advise you on tax, income and expenses management.
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Centralizing Insurance Verification
Insurance verification can be a form of insurance for dental practices. This process cannot be ignored and it can lead to huge losses.
Outsourcing companies that offer insurance verification can help you speed up this process by using trained virtual assistants.
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Centralizing Dental Billing
Insurance verification is just the first step, the billing process has to be completed in order for us to get paid. However, the process is greatly related to the verification process.
The same virtual team that makes claims can use the same paperwork. Centralization there for helps practices in more ways than one.
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Centralizing Marketing Support
As highlighted above, branding and marketing are essential. You can benefit from expert digital and social media managers that focus on your practice.
Having experts work on your marketing at affordable monthly flat fees
Having a good follow-up system ensures that patients feel well looked after by their dentist and that they keep returning to your practice. Following up on your patients is one of the best marketing strategies you can ever invest in.
SupportDDS is a leading Texas-based outsourcing company that provides virtual assistants and administrative support for dental practices. Moreover, we provide both short and long term virtual outsourcing services customized to suit your business process needs.
