Good morning, everyone, and good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us. Give you a few minutes, those of you that might be coming in from lunch or just starting your day. We are thrilled that you decided to join us today for this really important topic, and I'm ready to dive in in just a few minutes.

We'd love to know, where you're coming from. We're gonna use this chat interactive today. Because this topic is so valuable, we wanna make sure you leave with something you can change starting tomorrow. So feel free to put in the chat or the q and a where you're coming from and also what your role is in the office.

Looks like Kayla's here from California.

Welcome, Kayla. I'm coming from California too. And, Colleen, where are you joining us from?

I am from, Grand Island, New York, which is right between Buffalo and Niagara Falls.

See, we're all all across the US here. Yep. Excellent. Looks like more and more joining. Love to hear from you in the chat. And, again, feel free to put all of your questions there. We do wanna make this interactive, and Colleen has so much to share with us today.

I am Sheela Roth, head of clinical education here at Pearl, and I am thrilled to have you join us for our webinar, ready for a wealthier year end, train your team to maximize practice profits. And Colleen and I were speaking earlier saying that you guys all get the gold star for being here because you're way ahead of the game, and, excuse me, and thrilled to have you. Before we dive in, let me ask you a key question.

Are you confident your practice is completely prepared today to finish the year strong while setting up for a successful twenty twenty AI? And when I used to run a practice, my answer was I'm sorry. Successful twenty Twenty twenty six. Hopefully, it was a successful twenty twenty five.

Right? Yeah. AI was running a practice. It was almost November first where I could bring my head up and think, okay.

Did we send our end of the year letter? Are we fully staffed? Are we ready to go? Today, you're ahead.

We're gonna be covering practical tips to ensure a smooth end of the year transition for your practice. You're gonna learn things like reviewing important updates that may affect your dental insurance procedures, prepare preparing for changes that come up with new insurance year, and communicating these essential kind of parts of information to your patients to maintain a full schedule as well. So we wanna make sure that, you guys walk away with something, like I said, next steps and to do tomorrow. So make sure you're staying till towards the end, and, Colleen's going and I are going to share a wonderful checklist for end of the year.

I am excited to introduce you to Colleen Huff. Colleen has over thirty years of experience in dental insurance starting at MetLife Dental, customer service representative, and then later managing multilocation practices.

She founded a study group for practice administrators and is now known as the dental insurance coach.

She specializes in RCM, which is revenue cycle management, consulting, and has shared her expertise nationwide through conferences, podcasts, online courses, webinars, speaking engagements, and be sure to look out for her book, A Mouthful of Insurance. Great read. So we are in for a practical interactive session, and I know you'll leave with actionable strategies to help your practice finish the year strong. Let's get started, but don't forget to stay to the end to get that checklist, find out about the book, and also more ways that you can work with Colleen directly. Thanks so much for joining us, Colleen. We'll have you take it away.

Thanks, Sheela, for that great introduction, and thank you all for being here. You're probably eating your lunch while you're listening to me. I did that for many years. And if that's what you're doing, thank you for taking the time.

So when Sheela and I were talking about certain subjects for this time of year, one of the things that came to mind for me was at when I was a practice administrator, I I managed for twenty one years.

It would be, like she said, October, November before I pop my head up and go, oh gosh. We have all these treatment plans, and we have patients with insurance left over and all these other things. So today, I'm gonna talk about things you can do to help for a wealthier year end as well as some things you can do that will set you up to be success more even more successful in twenty twenty six.

So let's dive in. Okay? So to start with, you're gonna go right where we always go. We're gonna start with a list.

And I want you to sit down, take some time when no one's interrupting you, and I know that might be difficult. Try and find a room to lock yourself in or sit down with your doctor, but decide what needs to be accomplished before the year end. So when we're done with this webinar, I I want you to take the information and decide which parts I mean, you can do all of it, but which parts of it are priority for your practice. And what can you do that might wait till January?

What needs to be done now?

And from there, as you're making that list, you're also gonna make decisions on who's gonna do the task because it doesn't have to always be just you. And I know you're probably saying, but it always is me. It doesn't need to be just you. You have a full team, typically, or if it is just you, then you need to prioritize what parts.

And with that, think about if there's gonna be any time from now until the end of the year that you have without patients to maybe focus on year end projects. Is the doctor leaving early? Is the doctor taking a vacation?

Are you gonna have a day or a few days at some point in December that the office is closed to patients, but maybe you don't have anywhere, you're not going anywhere, you have some time that you can focus on some of these projects.

Finding that quiet time when we're not interrupted, a full day when possible, can make things move so much smoother, and we can get a lot more done. And then lastly, we're gonna talk about and this is gonna be towards the very end of the year of how to handle the new breakdowns in the new year just to give you a few little tidbits to help you feel less overwhelmed and less stressed when January does hit.

So what do I see as a typical list? My list used to con in include patients with outstanding work. We wanna make sure that we're not letting people slip through the cracks.

We know there's insurance outstanding insurance for them to utilize, and many patients don't really pay attention to that, and this is money that's sitting there for them to do. We also don't want them to wait until the third week of December to wanna have a crown done, and the office is gonna be closed. We can't finish it for them.

Next, I want you to think about sitting down with your doctor and discussing your office fees, and you wanna do that now and not in a rush at the end of the year or worry about at the beginning of the year. You wanna make sure that you have it because you also may be able to if you know the fees are going up, do you have a set amount of time that the quotes you give now are good for? So it might be that you stand behind a quote for six months. Do you stand behind a quote for twelve months? Do you stand behind a quote till the end of the year?

Making sure that the patients know that in January, these fees for what they're being proposed now could go up can sometimes help in getting them to schedule now.

We're gonna talk about cleaning up the software. There are things that happen in our software that can make it more difficult, things that need to be taken care of. One of them we're gonna talk about has to do with the outstanding treatment plans, making sure that there's no old ones in there. We're gonna talk about updating the insurance fee schedules. I know. I said that lovely word.

And then I'm gonna talk about something that not everybody thinks about. At the end, we're gonna talk about researching plans in the area, mainly under Medicaid but Medicare, but there's others that you might be able to do.

And lastly, now is the time to set up our schedule for our team meetings, and we'll talk about why in a little bit.

But let's start with treatment plans.

This is a cash flow part of the of the, I like to say, the fall, what we wanna be looking at for a year end. So I want you to think about outstanding treatment plans, and I want you to define your parameters.

Who are you going after? Are you strictly gonna go after the patients that have insurance that's going to be expiring? Are you gonna go after people that have outstanding hygiene? Is your hygiene department looking light?

Do Do you need to fill those? Do you have major work? Does the doctor say, listen. I'm tired.

I have filling after filling after filling. I wanna see some crowns. So once you decide your parameters, you run your list. You get that solid list or you might be running different lists at different weeks, Or you may decide that certain people are working on certain lists.

So you have to sit down and make it some decisions, and this might be decisions with the doctor.

This may be decisions that you're doing all on your own. This is something that you have to decide.

And then next, you're gonna assign it. So you wanna make sure that you're splitting up the work when possible, but you also wanna have who's accountable.

I'm very big anyone who's ever taken my classes knows or anybody I've ever done any consulting for.

I want there to be accountability and responsibility. You have to know who to go to when something works and when something doesn't. It's not strictly for the blame game. It's to know who are you turning to if you need help. So you wanna assign whether it's one person is going after the crown, somebody else is working on hygiene, but assign this information to a certain team member.

And then have reporting from that. Have a way to track it.

Also, I want you to use the tools you have.

Your software, all software out there has ways to run this. Eaglesoft has the money finder. Dentrix has ways. I don't know what they call it, ways to run it. Every single software has a way for you to access your outstanding treatment and what's out there. Are you using a third party payer to help? For example, Dental AI, Practice by Numbers.

Those those systems help you. Do you have something like Mango or or any of the other ones that are helping you do those things? They can help you sometimes pull that information.

So run your reports for those outstanding treatment, but also break it down. Do you have more than one dentist? Break it down by dentist or hygienist if you need to if your patients are particular. Some only like to see one particular hygienist. You don't wanna be calling missus Smith who will only see Susie if Susie's booked till the end of the year.

And, again, break it down by types and by patients with insurance benefits left.

This is gonna help you figure out and get things scheduled in a way and really know where you're looking and where you're sending the information to. You're then gonna take and set up and utilize some of those third party payers to reach out to these patients.

Use technology.

I am not saying you have to call every single patient personally.

Personally, I would prefer you to do text messaging and email. That's how people work now. That's how they will respond.

Very few people are gonna answer the phone when you call them, and even less people listen to voice mails nowadays.

The plus to using whatever communication system you're using is you usually can do what they call a campaign.

So once you pull this information, once you've reviewed the treatment plans to make sure they're accurate, gotten rid of any inaccurate ones, we all know there's extra ones floating around that somebody changed it, make sure you've you've rejected the ones that are not valid anymore, but start sending things out. Use a text message.

Set up a template.

If you have someone that's really good at that in your office, give them that part of the project. Maybe they're the ones that sets up the campaign, and then everyone else plugs in the names after they've reviewed. But be careful to not be sending out work that's already been completed.

So if you are not if your treatment plans are kind of a mess, then that's the first step of this before you start sending out.

But use the software and the technology that you have to make this an easier process.

Many years ago, it was a phone call to everybody, then it became an email to everybody. Now you can send out a group text, and you can reach out to them and say, hey, missus Smith. Did you know that you have x amount of insurance left that we would love to see you AI this year so your benefits are free in case something happens next.

And reach out to me if you're looking for any help in the verbiage. I don't have any preset ones that I ready to give away today, but I'm certainly willing to share with you if you're interested.

So to start with treatment planning, making sure that work that has been completed is a big part of what I would work on first.

This is gonna help the cash flow. This is gonna keep the schedule full so that you have time to work on other things instead of scrambling to fill the schedule.

Okay. So next, we're gonna talk about fee schedules, and we're gonna talk about two types. We're gonna talk about the office fees as a whole, and we're gonna talk about the insurance fee schedules. And I know everybody out there is cringing because this is the least favorite part for most.

But first, I wanna talk about your office fees before the end of the year. I want you to sit down with your doctor and decide if you're gonna do an increase and what type of increase.

Are you gonna do an overall percentage, or are you gonna do a per code?

Personally, as the one that had it implemented into the software, I am preferential to an overall percentage increase.

If you go per code, it can get very difficult to track and to make sure that you're doing all of it. And then I want you to think about making sure that you update any in office plans to reflect this increase. Now this may not be done until December or end of December, but you wanna make sure that those in office fees if you have an in office plan that you are doing yourself or if you are outsourcing, those fees have to be increased the beginning of January. Or when you decide to increase the fees, it doesn't have to be January. Doctor might decide to increase the fees tomorrow.

But make sure you're updating everything, and that also includes making sure their treatment plans, whatever date that fee gets increased, you have to update those treatment plans.

I was working helping an office recently, and they took over. They bought the practice.

The new doctor had different fee schedule than the old dentist.

And the first month or so, the accounts were a little bit of a mess for a lot of reasons.

But one of them was we went back and realized that no one had redone the treatment plans. Now I came in after the purchase. I will say that upfront, but no one had updated the treatment plans. So patients were given the old quote.

Patients were getting charged out at that old fee. The new fees weren't being were being but the new fees were being sent to the insurance. So there was this big mess with everything.

So make sure that when you enter and update in a fee, every software out there has a way to make sure it updates your treatment plans.

But you also have to have a way to note if someone was given a time span. If you have a three month or something like that that is put on there, you need to make sure that the old fee the old treatment plan is saved so that we don't quote patients wrong.

But something to think about. Now let's say you sit down and your doctor is never sure if they should increase or not.

There is a site that's called fair health consumer dot org, and this is a fascinating site. You can have so much fun if you're, an insurance geek like me. And you can go in here and you punch in your ZIP code and you punch in your code, and it will tell you what those fees are like in your area. What is the average out of network insured price? What is the average in network price? So not only are you able to see your UCR, you're able to see if your fee schedules are where they should be.

Same thing. So you can do and you they could also look at your general area.

So this was for Whatcom, Massachusetts, and these are two other areas that were nearby. So this was the nearby, but there was also results for that exact ZIP code depending on how you wanna look at it.

The other thing you have to think about is making sure that you've looked at any new codes that are coming up.

The worst thing that can happen is January hits, say, as the the the office manager, you were the one in charge of learning the new codes. You put them into the system, but they're all at zeros. Now the doctor goes to use a new code. We don't have a price.

So, again, you can order this. It comes out middle of September.

I want you to review all those new codes with your dentist and decide which ones they use.

Okay? They may not use all of them. Some of them may be nothing that they wanna be a part of, but do you use them?

And then what is the price? And that's where that Fair Health consumer, if they do have any of that information, which usually it's about a year lag, or if you've gotten new fee schedules, you might be able to see what Delta's paying or Aetna or something, and then you can help you choose.

And then I want you to also make sure that you have a time that you're training all the team members on those new codes.

Now this may be something you wait until January for. I used to try to do it in December so everybody was ready for it.

But make sure that everybody is prepared for those new codes and knows what they're doing.

Now next, I wanna talk about your insurance fee schedules.

So you should have someone scheduled to look out, reach out, and to reach out to your participating plans.

Try to obtain any of the updated new fee schedules when they have them out, and then you you need to update them in the system by January.

Okay? So this might be a project the end of the end of the year.

Sometimes it's a project the beginning of January. I highly recommend it end of year because as we all know, insurance breakdowns take up ninety percent of our time come January.

So try to get them into your software as close to the end of the year as you can so you're not quoting patients wrong, but you do need to get them in.

The nice part is there's some out there now that do it in a much easier way than every single code. You can you can upload them.

If you can't reach or you aren't able to get something by phone, many times you're gonna be able to find it on your website. Okay? And so you can download every year, and I believe Delta usually puts them out in November or December of the year before.

Many of the insurance companies are starting to put those fee schedules on their websites now.

Now once you get those new fees, you also wanna review with your doctor because AI, this is the decision to go out of network.

So if you do wanna go out of network when you see those fees that there hasn't been any change, now might be the time that they have that discussion. It's easier to go out of network with a clean break. I like to say June. January or June are my two favorite times because it's kind of a clean, easy to remember, every six month kind of thing.

But, again, this is when you're seeing. Did they raise them at all? Are they staying the same? Does doctor wanna stay in network?

The other thing that I want you to think about is when it comes to the insurance plans and the companies of have you heard about any new changes?

So starting in October, you're gonna start getting those phone calls from some big group in the area that they're changing employ insurance companies, and they're asking you if you're in network.

These are the things to pay attention to. So if you're the person answering the phone and not necessarily a person that makes all these decisions, keep in mind what you're hearing. Are you hearing a large group or knowing finding out a large group is changing plans?

Sometimes, not always, but sometimes you can actually get that breakdown and what's considered the evidence of coverage before the end of the year from their HR department because they have to hand it out to all the page people that are signing up, or a patient may bring it in. Now you can get ahead of the game. You can have the twenty six benefits entered into the computer, and all you need to do is verify eligibility.

And I know that's a little outside the box thinking, but I've done that. And you'd be amazed if patients are willing to bring you what they got or they call up and say, hey. We got new insurance.

And you say to them, hey. Did you get a booklet? Did they give you the fee schedule? Sometimes they can bring it in. You might only be able to get the breakdown, you know, the percentages and not all the details, but at least you can get something in there.

Any questions in the chat yet at all before I move on?

Not yet.

Okay. Mhmm. So now we're gonna talk about cleanup. And when I talk about cleanup, I like to go into one of the other things you can do. Let's say you feel like your schedule is good, your fee schedules are taken care of. What are some other things you can do to go into the new year in a cleaner way?

And what I like to talk about is, have you thought about purging your schedule?

Okay?

Cleaning out the old schedules out of our software is something that we don't think about, but this is something that needs to get done. It can affect how the software is working.

Your balances.

One of my favorite things to do, and I know this sounds weird, but it's in November every year, I would review and go through and really work on my old balances and my larger balances. I like to have it all cleaned up before I get into January or as cleaned up as I could, and we'll talk about some of that.

Insurance carriers and employers will talk about what I mean by that in a minute.

Purging your inactive patient.

So this is another thing that we're supposed to do as managers, but we don't always think about. So this is a good time of year to think about it, and we'll talk about how what parameters.

And then credits. Have you looked at your credits? Do you know you have credits?

Do you know your state rules with credits? We let credit sit AI, and they really legally are not supposed to. So there's a number of reasons why it's important.

The other reason doing some of this cleanup is if you have any new team members, now you can double check how they've been entering the insurance. So you have somebody new, maybe they've been messing something up. So you're gonna see and catch those mistakes possibly sooner.

You can catch the credits before they get out of hand. And AI, whether you see credits or balances, if you're really paying attention to those things, you might double check some of your processes for your collections.

So, again, you're gonna work with your team. You're gonna decide on the go forward standard when it comes to your insurances and, some and your employers, and we'll talk about what I mean by that. What you wanna what we're gonna talk about is making things easily identifiable and repeatable.

And, again, you're gonna make a schedule. Who's handling which parts of it? You may have this already broken up depending on how your office works.

But if you're talking insurance list, there's some basic steps to start with. What do I mean by that? I mean, do you have three Aetna's of the same group number in your in your computer?

We don't want that. We need one. If they're the same address, the same group number, the same everything, I want this in there once.

Many times, it ends up in there more than once because of how we abbreviate.

So one of the things that I teach a lot of my offices is I want them to make decisions.

How are you gonna abbreviate?

So one of the first things I did, and then one of the biggest practices I worked in when I first started was we had Delta Dental of New York, Delta Dental of AI, DD of NY, and DD of NY, all with the same group all with the same claim payer ID, all with the same address. But because it was in there this many times, I couldn't utilize the bulk payment system that they had in the software.

So we made a decision. Now my office, as a group, decided Delta Dental of AI was what they wanted to utilize.

There is no right or wrong. It's how your office sets it up.

But once you set it up, make sure it's written somewhere, and it's part of your onboarding process for those the new hires. So you make sure that they know the same thing, and then take your time to do it.

Same thing with your employers and your employer list. There's a number of different ways you can do it.

But if you can merge them easily, here I've got in this one, this is a true example. They had all these different Aetna's with numbers in them, but when I went through them, they were all the same thing.

So some of them some of the newer softwares allow you to literally pick them and merge them. Those are my favorite. They make life easier. But if not, you do have to go through and move patients to the correct one, but take your time. Hopefully, you're on a software that merges easily.

If not, I need some pointers. Honestly, feel free and and reach out. But if nothing else, print a list so that you make sure that you're keeping the tasks AI. Whether it's a spreadsheet, I don't care how you do it, but have an organization in a way that anyone else can pick that up for you.

And like I said, same thing with the employers. AARP, here's my carrier ID. Here's my group number that are the same. Here's AARP plan two.

Again, it's in there twice. I only want it in there once. And the main reason I only want it in there month once is I only have to do one breakdown then. I don't have to do two.

I do one.

So I know that's a lot thrown at you, but deciding on your abbreviations, deciding how you're naming your employers.

Do you name it? Are you just naming it abbreviation? Are you naming it what's on the card?

Are you naming it with what you find on the website? There's been a number of ways I've seen practices do this. But, again, pick one and make sure that when your team members are searching, they search by group number and not by name.

Because, again, if they put in AARP Dental and you only have it in there as AARP, they're gonna add a new one that shouldn't be added.

So this can make life easier in the long run for new employees. This can make this is a lot of different ways to clean you up. You can go in a little bit cleaner and more efficient because if you're not spending time doing two breakdowns next year or even this year, that's more time to work on filling the schedule, following up on claims, following up on outstanding balances.

Now when it comes to purging, when you talk about purging your patients, the question we get asked is, how old is too old?

What do you consider an active patient?

And same thing with your old schedules.

Now, typically, the ADA says a an ADA defines an active patient of record as those that have had dental services provided within twelve months or a patient of record who has dental services provided by the dentist in the past twenty four years, but not in the last twelve months. So they're saying twenty four months, and then you should purge. I know offices that purge at eighteen months.

But what this will do is this will clean up so that when you do any of those bulk mailings or you're reaching out to people, you're not reaching out to someone who maybe has moved.

Recently received a phone call from our medical practice stating that my son was due for a checkup. My kids are away at college now.

Turns out AI one son had only been going for one particular doctor, but not to the general doctor.

And they told me if I didn't get him in with six within six months, he would be wiped from their system because he hadn't been in in the years he'd been away at school.

They did a phone call. That was their office policy.

You may wanna reach out to these people via text, via email, via phone call before you inactivate them, but decide as a whole at what point are they inactive.

Reach out once or twice and then go from go forward from there.

Same thing with your schedules. Do we really need the old schedules anymore? How long should you keep yours?

I had one office that he would never let me delete, another office that wanted him gone after a year. How often do you really need to go back to the schedule? Typically, when there's outstanding insurance and maybe a patient's name is different. So my own philosophy is anything over two years can be gone. You should have gotten paid by then, and you shouldn't have to refer back to that schedule.

But, again, talk to your doctor and find out what they're they're looking for. And also take into account whether you're server based or cloud based.

Because server based, purging can be essential because this it can slow down your software, and you may need, and you may need help from your software provider sometimes to do some of the purging depending on what you have to do, but this can slow it down.

Now cloud based has two ways to do it. One is removing, and one is deleting. And so you need to find out how you're cloud based. I see you there, Sheela.

I am here, Colleen. We have a great question. Sure.

So the question is that we have several group numbers, the same for the same employer, but the yearly max is different. What do you do in that case with purging?

So they should have what's considered a sub and a branch then. You're probably missing a key point in the software.

Typically, when there is either a sub, a branch, or a class, if you have the same group number, there's usually a dash and then zero zero zero one or zero zero zero two is what should distinguish. So that's might be part of what's missing getting put in the software for you to distinguish them.

Otherwise, I used to and it depends on the software.

Sometimes I would distinguish them in the name and put fifteen hundred, a thousand if there is nothing distinguishing. But what I did find out, most insurances either have a sub or a branch.

Sometimes there's a double dash, zero zero zero one dash zero zero zero one, but you need to ask that. You can either find that out online or via fax or sometimes a phone call.

Guardian has what's called classes, and they are not upfront with this. So you sometimes have to ask call and ask for that class. That happened to us. We had a large hospital group that had five different levels, but they only had one group number. And after a number of phone calls so that's how you would distinguish which is which.

So I would push a little bit. I hope that answered it for him.

Excellent. Thank you.

Okay.

So let's move on to your AR, and this is the health of your practice. And this is where you really can also be bringing in income that's already been produced. So this is very important. This includes looking at your outstanding claims.

So but I like to like I said, I like to do a big final push to take care of those large balances.

Who do I you know, who needs more than who needs one more contact? Who do you need to maybe possibly send to collections if it hasn't hasn't if they haven't responded? And here's an interesting note, everyone.

As of July fifteenth, the ruling that debt from a dental practice will not hit a patient's, credit report has been removed. So we are back to and there's no limit on it. So there's no five hundred dollar limit. Nothing. So we are back to if we send to collections, it will affect their credit reporting, which is good news. And if you would ask me this two months ago, I would have told you different. So it literally changed on January fifteenth or July fifteenth.

Judge in Texas reversed the order, and it's been held upheld so far.

Now that could change again, but getting these people off of your books onto collections because the other thing is if it's written off depending on your state and how the doctor does his taxes, this can help them with their taxes. So doing it before the end of the year, not only do you go into the new year with the trouble accounts off your plate, doctor gets somewhat of a tax break in certain cases. Again, it all depends on a lot of things. I don't wanna say he definitely will, but, typically, there is a write off. So I would make sure it's also specified AI you adjust it is a write off for collections or AI off uncollectible.

So try not to start off the new year with outstanding claims and make sure those outstanding claims have been taken care of. Your over ninety should be I won't say none because I'm not delusional, but they should be low. They should be under three percent of what you have in your outstanding claims. And if not, do a big push to get a hold of those. You know, strong-arm some people.

You know, do what you AI to get those taken care of. Find some quiet time.

And then the other thing that really does need and this is the opposite of income, but those credits need to be cleaned up. We shouldn't have them on our books more than thirty days is technically the rule.

But I don't want you to just assume the money is due back. Did do you run the reports to check your credits? And you should be doing this every month, ideally, or even every week.

Are you sending them back? But are you making sure that you have true credits?

And if you can't reach the patient, their every state has what's considered unclaimed funds. I've had many offices go, well, we can't find them. We don't know where to send the check. You then have to send it to the unclean funds for your state, and then it's done.

But before you send any credit back, double check everything. Make sure they're due the money. Have the PPO discounts been done correctly? If there's dual insurance, have you done your credits correctly? Don't write off more than you have to.

Are there any double payments or double charges?

So double your software sometimes can help you with this, but make sure that it's a true credit before you ever put it back.

If you're utilizing an outsourced company, make sure they're doing your dual insurances correctly. One of the things I found, and this is not to bash the outsourced company because most of them have very amazing people working. But every once in a while, you have someone that's not really double checking the lowest PPO.

So double check those before you ever send a credit out.

Okay?

And then I like to say the end of the year is for cleanup and organizing. The beginning of the year is to focus on different information in efficient manner and put things into place. And so once we've done what we've done in January or up to this point and you start thinking about January, I want you to prepare for it in December. And that's part of why I included this in this because this is also part of the organization.

So September, October, November, you're working on bringing patients in. You're working on those treatment plans. You know, you're cleaning it up. Maybe you're AI. You're you're getting through your AR. You're getting through all those insurance claims.

But in December, I want you to think about how to make your January a little bit nicer. Okay? So when it comes to breakdowns, and because I'm an insurance person, this is where my mind goes, I want you to consider an adjusted schedule from January to March.

Double up on who's helping with those breakdowns.

The last practice I worked in, there was two of us at the front. My coworker was in charge of breakdowns.

But come January, I was doing them too. I had to adjust what I was working on to help get through this. But what we used to do is we would do a shortened breakdown.

So the first month or that first big push, we would simply get the essentials, the deductible, the maximum, all of those different parts of it, and I'll give you a list in a minute.

But I would then save the PDF for future reference, and then I would keep a list of who we did a shortened version so that when she had time or if I had time, we would go back in and complete it and then take it off that list.

Use that real time eligibility that you have an option for to get those basics in there. You wanna have enough to handle that patient coming in the door. So what are the things I'm looking for? You're gonna enter your essentials.

You're gonna enter your maximum, your deductible, but make sure the correct fee schedule is attached, all of your percentages, and any history that's necessary. Do you have a new patient coming in the door? You're gonna AI, can we get, can I get can I get their history? You're gonna make sure that can we do an FMX.

Can AI, you know if they're having a crown, are they coming in for an emergency? Are they having a crown that's out? What is the age of the replacement for that crown? What specific to that appointment are the essentials that you need?

Put those in. Typically, the way our breakdowns are now, we can get most of this through those real time eligibility around the website. We don't even really have to make a phone call.

But the other thing is for anything we're talking about in this webinar, I want you to find time in the schedule to have quiet time for anybody. So if you give a task to a team member, one of the things I do with all the offices that I consult with, one of the first things I set up when I come in the door is once we figure out who's responsible for what, each person is designated a minimum of an hour a week of quiet time that they're not disturbed. Now, ideally, you have admin days. Right?

But how many offices really have that? Not a lot. And so if you don't have any quiet time, you have to carve it out. And what I mean by that is look at your schedule.

Find times throughout the week that there might be an hour here, an hour there that tend to be a little quieter.

Obviously, not on a Monday. Typically, not even on a Tuesday, but it depends on your practice.

And give each person undisturbed time to work on the task that we gave them to make us successful for the end of the year. This will allow them to get twice as much done in half the time, but the whole team has to be on board. So doctor has to know they can't go interrupt them. Assistants need to know they can't go interrupt them. I want them to act like they're not there. How would they handle whatever situation is happening if that person wasn't in the practice?

And give them that quiet time, and you will be amazed if you do this with each person.

But they have to show you that they've been working on stuff. They can't be, you know, off on their phone and talking to their kids and all that. They have to be working on their their list and show you afterwards what they've gotten done. But this can make a huge difference in how you get things done and what you accomplish, and I would say continue this into the new year for any other work they're doing. If they're having to do phone calls on on on accounts or even texting to the patient back and forth, have it so they don't have to be interrupted answering the phone, or check out a patient, or have someone come up and start talking to Mary about their day.

Make it so they have quiet time. This is key to success in any of these things. If you're gonna sit down with the doctor to talk about codes, I want you to have a set time that you're doing it. So you have to tell the doctor, I need fifteen minutes on this day at this time. I don't care if you're eating lunch while we're talking.

This is what we're gonna do, and no one else can disturb you. If you're going to be making decisions on fees, you have to have a set time to do that. If you're going to be setting up a campaign to send out treatment plans, send out information with the treatment plans to people, make sure you're doing that.

So I wanna also talk about Medicare Advantage, and this is where you can actually get ahead of the game for what's in your area and have it set up in your system before January. So the Medicare Advantage plans come out in October.

Okay? And so you can go on to medicare dot gov, and you can research, and you can get the basics into your computer, typically, plan name and sometimes group number and all, into your software ahead of time. You can make a spreadsheet so everybody knows who's what's what.

And if you do this when you can first research AI, I think you can start researching actually in September, You can help your patients decide to pick the ones that you're in network with.

Because in October, that's when they're gonna be calling because it's from October fifteenth through December seventh that they're signing up, and they're gonna call and say, hey. Do you take this? Or I'm looking at this, or I'm planning on this. And so if you've done some of this research in the next the next month and you have a quick spreadsheet, you can know even if you only know which ones you're in network with before the time hits, this is where it can really help you get patients in the door, retain your patients, and do a help to the patients before they come in. And then, also, now if you get some of these in there with a basic breakdown, that's one less plan you have to enter in January.

So it's very important to prepare yourself and think ahead of what can help you, not just now, but help you in January to be successful going into the year.

The last thing I wanna talk about is right now is the time that you should be setting all of your teams your team schedules in terms of your team meetings for next year.

We live on a six month rotation, people. So if I don't set up my team meetings and put them into the schedule so no patients get scheduled now, I'm never gonna get it. So we're actually a little behind the eight ball. I should have done it in June, but if I wanted one in January.

But if nothing else, just do this. Set up at least the first six, if not all of them, and sit down with each of your team members and find out what subject they want. And if you're not doing team meetings, start doing team meetings at least once a month. This is a great way to make sure that you're educating your patients.

You can set up your lunch and learns here. But this but doing it ahead of time, you have to lock it into that schedule.

That way, it doesn't get just jammed in or forgotten about. And I highly recommend you do an hour and a half, okay, because they need some time to eat, more time for someone to run late, or a patient to show up early. All of these things will cut in. Don't just put a solid hour. Put an hour and a half. Give some lunchtime. Give some time to just bond as a group before you get into anything.

And then consider each month is even run by a different team member and let them pick a topic and have them prepare it. But you wanna schedule them now so that they're set. And maybe even just set up January is gonna be talking about new codes. February is hygiene department picks. March is gonna be admin picks. Even if you go just very generic to start with, but make sure that you're giving that as an option for everyone.

So I know I threw a lot at you. This is it seems like overwhelming, and I'm not saying you have to do every piece of this.

Pick what's important for your office.

Ideally, the treatment plans, the AR, and the insurance are gonna keep the cash flow going.

And then that other cleanup stuff is gonna make sure that you are keeping things cleaner in your software. The purging is gonna do the same.

And then the fee schedules are highly important for making sure that you're collecting what you're supposed to as well as making decisions on the new codes.

So make a list. I'm big on lists. Make a list of what you wanna work on. I don't care how you make that list. I don't care if you use ClickUp, if you use a Google Sheet, however you decide to do it or write it on a on a piece of paper. Just don't use sticky notes because they get lost.

Review the fees and the new codes with your doctor. This is very important to do before January.

Enter as many plans as you can before January and getting and getting to know some of those plans for your Medicare Advantage Plans so that you can make sure the patients come to see you and pick the right plan.

Clean up the areas of the software that need it. This lets you go in. It's almost like spring cleaning. It lets you go into it in a new way.

Pay attention to the phone calls you're getting between now and December.

That is gonna give you a key as to anything new that's happening in your area.

And lastly, try not to be overwhelmed. This is not meant to overwhelm. Break it down into little bite sized pieces.

Pick one thing if that's all you think you can handle between now and January.

Maybe two things.

Ideally, the codes at the very least have to get done. Treatment plans are it's a good thing to utilize the insurance, but don't let yourself get overwhelmed. Bite sized pieces will get you still get you finished. Just have a checklist and mark it off.

So, she did mention my my book, AI of Insurance. This is my it follows the patient's insurance as they travel through the office, and we talk about everybody's responsibility, and this includes clinical and doctor. So if you're a front administrative person, you haven't purchased it, you can get it on Amazon.

Your clinical team should be also there's a part for them, part for the doctor, part for hygiene.

Okay?

And, if you have any new team members, she was saying how can you reach me. I work with offices remotely and in person, as well as if you maybe have a local conference in your area and you're looking for them to bring somebody. I speak on a variety of topics.

Most of them all of them revolving around administrative and coding.

I also do have a jump start course for anybody new that you AI that's brand new to dental is how it's set up. And you can find me at dental insurance coach dot com, email me, or text if you want.

Excellent. Thank you so much, Colleen.

We That was a lot.

Sour webinar. That's what I was thinking.

Yeah.

So this is such powerful information, very impactful to take one piece today and put it in place. We'd love to hear in the chat, what are you gonna take home? Right? What is gonna be your number one today?

Let's get going, guys, in the chat. Hold each other accountable here. I will tell you when I started putting in monthly meetings, we actually went to weekly meetings in my practice, and they're so hard to protect. But once we did, it was it was AI all the things we wanted to do, we just marked off every single week. And in thirty days, it was a completely different practice.

So Yeah.

We need to put our our time aside, and I love that you talked about that a lot all the way through. And I want to make sure that we really invest in each other and in the practice so that it can grow and AI.

So somebody's going to be focusing on checking codes and fee schedules.

That's a huge win. Something that It is. Kind of on the back burner, right, for all of us that are so busy, but it should be on the front burner.

Well, it should be. And and the thing is and I'm even guilty of it. I mean, I and I was you know, when I was running a practice, I would do this, and it was usually February, I'll be honest, until I really realized the impact it had. I used to do do this about February would be when I'd finally bring it to the team.

And then I started paying attention to the fact that I should have been doing this in October when the codes came out, and I would so I used to have to force my doctor, and I'm saying force. I literally there were years that I was like, sit down. I get you for fifteen minutes. You're not moving.

I don't care if you're eating. And we would go through it, and then I once I had the habit of true team meetings in the schedule ahead of time, I would run through the codes every November with the team. December is kind of a lost month. If we are gonna have a team meeting, we're gonna have a Christmas party, and I didn't wanna take away from that.

So that's the other thing you have to think about is, how is your office working? Is everybody out out of the office in December? Do you have too many things going on? So if you can't do it November, try to do it at the beginning of January, but at least get them into the software.

Because there's nothing worse than you spend the time or the software updates the codes, and then someone checks it out and it's zero. So I love that you're gonna do that and checking your fee schedules, and good luck with all of that.

Yeah. It's so big, so important.

And I wanna take a minute to invite you. For those of you that are not familiar with Pearl, we are associated with being able to read your radiographs in real AI.

And this is really the the step one for practice growth. Right? Because if your patients don't understand the dentistry you're recommending, which, unfortunately, sixty four percent of patients do not understand an X-ray when it's shown to them in a dental appointment. If they don't understand what you're recommending, then the insurance verification and how much it costs is really kind of irrelevant.

If your team thinks this is a great match, is we will work with you with your radiographs, but also, really to complement what Colleen's talking about is we will go in and verify insurance for all your patients on your schedules over the next two weeks. So, we know there's gonna always be insurances you have to call, but I remember when I was practicing as a hygienist, there were some opportunities for same day dentistry. And that's a really small opportunity, right, because it means all hands on deck. Patient's guest, doctor, assistant.

It's really a bit, obstructive, which is funny to our process, right, when we're working in the front, but it really serves the patient. And with Pearl's PreCheck being in every operatory, you can look up and notice, okay. At least are there benefits remaining. Right?

Right.

You know that, and then you get clearance in the front. Can we do this? And they can do the cost.

I think that's something that is interesting to know that, Pearl does provide for you. And, ultimately, to just enhance your claim submission, you see on this screen here on the lower AI, it's very small, but we will have a printout for you that you can actually just take a screenshot.

It will show bone level measurements. It shows caries breakdown. It shows cavities. It shows periapical radiolucencies.

So you really enhance your claim submission by just having one additional radiograph with some color on there. So I would love for you to schedule a meeting with us, and set up a demo to see how this could best complement your practice as well as being able to identify those lists Colleen was talking about. So, again, not to overdo this big sale here, but I remember when we put Pearl into our practice, it just streamlined everything.

So that in conjunction with this lovely book, I think you're going to be really doing wonderful things. This was the easiest book to read. I think I read it in an hour, but I have to go reread it again and take notes because that's kinda how my brain works.

Colleen, how would you like to finish us off? I don't see any other questions, but I would like to make sure that they oh, sorry. I was gonna tell them that there is your checklist at the AI of the chat here, and it will go out with your recording with all of those emails that you guys have sent to register. You'll get the checklist as well as the recording of Colleen. But, Colleen, feel free to end it for us.

Well, so I and I wanna add to what you talked about with Pearl. So one of the reasons why I like working with Pearl, and I get very excited, if you work with, if you have AI Trellis or some there there there's even now the option that it pulls it the X rays automatic. So when you talk about finding time, you know, we're always talking about finding enough time.

Pearl, for those of you that have are looking to streamline things, the the streamline of Pearl, first of all, identifying and showing things that are gonna help get things paid, but also attaches it automatic to if you're using something like buying Trellis in your practice is a huge is just a huge, time saver. For someone who didn't come from a clinical background, one of the things I had to do was to learn how to read X rays.

And one of the things I still hate doing is reading X rays unless it's for wisdom teeth. It's very strange.

And or training someone how to read an X-ray and feeling confident. So if you can cut down that time, what Pearl gives you is just a huge benefit for your practice.

And for the treatment planning part of it, it it helps with that understanding because they can't read. I can't you know? I used to have to have a doctor point things out to me. Whereas if I had had Pearl in my one practice and I had a really good, you know, close rate on my treatment plans, but they would have would have been probably a bit closer to ninety five percent at that point if I had had Pearl. So definitely look into it. If it's something that, you feel your practice could do or at least have your doctor look at it.

It's where we're going in the future is AI helping, not taking over, but helping us. And that's what I love about and why I work with Pearl because I've watched this grow. Adding the insurance breakdown into it is just, to me, like, icing on the cake.

So I think they should definitely if they get a chance, but, you know, it's it's, if nothing else, just to see the fascinating what it can do and having your doctor look at it. Very few doctors look at this and don't want it instantly that I know of at least.

Excellent. Yes. I couldn't agree more. And those of you that are explaining treatment, like you were saying, Colleen, or Mhmm. Insurance company, so much easier to say, look at this little pink cavity. This is the one the doctor wants to take a Right. A closer look at.

On that note, just a quick note, something I learned, there are some insurances out there that still require you to send the unaltered X-ray as well as Yes. The pearl one.

Not all of them are requiring it, but just so you know, try to send both Yes. Until you get down who's looking for it and who's not.

I love that point. Yes. It's funny because when AI traveled out to an office in Texas, they came to me and said, hey. We've been doing you know, for SRP denials, we've take our same narrative, we resubmit it, we submit it with the panel and the FMX, and then we started submitting the pearl images in addition to that.

So to your point, it's one more layer, and now come their entire protocol because it really shows the bone level that the insurance company is looking for in addition to the openings.

So to Colleen's point, this is how we complement your workflow and ensure that you're getting paid without spending extra time that you don't have for those denials. So please, feel free to reach out to myself or Colleen.

I'm really thankful you joined us today because you guys are really kind of in the top one percent that joined. Colleen, we love having you and look forward to having you again in the future. And those of you that, would like to see additional webinar from Colleen, it's on our website. So we save all of those webinars. If you wanted to do a team meeting with Colleen and really strategize on next steps for next year, feel free to reach out to me if you need anything or, visit hello pearl dot com. At the bottom, there's webinars, and you will just be amazed by all of the knowledge that Colleen continues to share with us. So everyone have a wonderful day.

Colleen, thank you so much for spending your time with us,

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