Chances are, your accounts receivable (AR) is not dialed in. Kiera provides very tactical, specific tips on how to get your AR cleaned up and start bringing in money you've already earned.

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Transcript:

The Dental A Team (00:00)

Hello, Dental A Team listeners. This is Kiera and today is a very important topic But one the people like my rat rat rat, but guess what my rat rat rat is gonna make you a lot of money So I hope you're excited for it. So we'll take that rat rat rat into kaching Because it's dentistry party done and we're just gonna like help you out. I hope you guys enjoy hanging out with me This is my like nerdy geeky side that definitely loves and obsesses of being able to help you guys and it's been so fun I'm working with some people and teaching them about this and

getting them excited on how they can fix their AR ⁓ is something that just like really, really lights my fire because doctors, you do the freaking dentistry, get paid for it. Can I get an amen out there? Like seriously, you do the dentistry and AR and making sure you're paid is something that I am so obsessed about. So, and this doesn't mean doctors, have to do it yourself. So I want us to get into the AR like the womp, womp, womp, it's annoying, but guess what? These are billing tips that work that are gonna make you a lot of money for work that you've already done.

This is like people like, Kiera, how can I make more money and not do more work? And I'm like, just take the money, the what you've already done. it's crazy. lot of people come in and like, Kiera, you're really going to be able to like, ⁓ give us an ROI on your consulting. And I'm like, time. Why? Because I know your AR is out of control. have yet to meet a practice that has perfect AR. And if you are the practice email me, I'm going to give you a freaking shirt and we don't get out done on a team shirts anymore. So yeah, you should definitely email us. ⁓ there are a couple of practices out there.

But most the time, AR is something that is not dialed in. It does not have a plan. And this is something that is going to be very tactical for you. So first step is AR. What is AR? It's the accounts receivable. Okay. And there's two parts to it. AR has the patient portion and the insurance portion. Okay. So when we do dentistry, we need to make sure we collect money and we bill insurance and then we make sure that we get paid for that. Now, insurance is such a sneaky little game and I get so annoyed by it I love to teach people this.

So we need to have it where there's like a few processes that make AR really good. So we're gonna break it down very simply. Number one, good information in means good clean claims going out. I'm always like, we send clean claims. Clean claims mean, clean claims, clean claims. Clean claims, clean claims. ⁓ Clean claims. I'm gonna giggle saying it. I can hear the little jingle in my voice. Clean claims means that we...

have the correct information. So I've got the patient's name, the date of birth, the insurance information. That's all correct. I've got the group number and please for the love of everything, holy, do not make a million group numbers. Do not do that. Make sure AR are so messy and your insurance box is so messy. We just have it. We also need to have fee schedules that are up to date every single year. Please do that. We need to attach it. We do not want write-offs. So what this means, ⁓ also another like, it's not a pet peeve. It's just like,

Oh, I'm sorry. You need to like listen to the podcast and implement this. Stop reporting to me your fees in gross numbers and do it in net. So many times I get on calls with people and they're like, Kiera, we produced like 2 million, but we collected one. And I'm like, ouch. And they're like, well, like our net was like, you know, 1.2. I'm like, so tell me you produce 1.2. Let's live in real land numbers, not the 2 million. Cause you're always going to be mad at me. They're like, well, I produced 2 million, but I'm only making a million. Well, yeah.

Because guess what? You didn't really produce two million. I know you want to say you did, but guess what? Insurance is what really is paying you. So we've got to do that. And I know you don't want to, but when you will do this and you attach the correct fee schedules to it, you are actually going be able to predict your numbers better and your money and your finances are going to get better on your personal side too. So hear me out. It was the worst day. was worse than Christmas getting a lump of coal. I took our production and it dropped us by 30%. And guess what? My goals are to produce 20 grand in a five out practice per day. You want to know how hard that was? I was like, I'm never going to make it.

But guess what? Because I was reporting in real numbers, me even as a TC and an O.M. we were able to schedule more correctly and get us to the actual 15 grand of true 15, 20 grand per day of true production that we were collecting. How much do think my business grew? ⁓ a lot because we were actually producing incorrect numbers, not inflated numbers. So clean claims. We're back to that clean claims mean we've got correct information. We've got the correct ⁓ all of the information is correct.

We've got our insurance verification done and we've got the fee schedules attached. So then when I'm giving an estimate, I'm estimating to the best of my ability. We do not send pre-Ds. I call them pre-denials. You can have your own opinion, but I really truly do not like pre-denials. They take time, they waste energy. And to me, guess what? I got the best information. I'm a thousand dollars. I'm an insurance coupon. I need to be a dang good treatment coordinator that's able to communicate this. And if the patient owes money, guess what? We've got to be really good at communicating that too. This is our best estimate.

I'm gonna do my absolute best. We called your insurance company. I've got the best insurance verification. This is the absolute best I can get today. We're gonna take care of that. And on the flip side, hey, worst case scenario is you're gonna owe this much out of pocket. Tell them that. Then they're not mad at you when you call them. like, hey, insurance didn't pay as much as we thought. But remember, worst case scenario, this is what it is. And I can work with you to get that collected, okay? So then from there, we make sure we have correct documentation as well. We need to attach the correct narratives.

⁓ insurance or excuse me, x-rays, intra-orals, whatever we need to get that paid. Insurance companies are obsessed with not paying for you, but it's because they play the game. So just figure out the rules of the game. We have our fee schedules in there. We send the correct documentation and we send it out every day and we check to make sure none of these claims get stuck in our claim sender. Okay, so we wanna make sure it goes through the clearing house. It doesn't get stuck there. I feel like that's like the post office for claims. We send it through and we make sure all of them get pushed through to the insurance company.

and then we follow up. And now this is where I need owners of each of them. So we need somebody to make sure that all of our...