Jennifer Schultz has spent over 20 years in dentistry and is the owner of Virtual Dental Office and Dental Insurance Navigator. Jennifer is passionate about increasing efficiencies and decreasing mistakes in the front office.
In this episode we discuss:
– What is a Virtual Dental Office?
– Using a Virtual Dental Office to more efficiently process insurance claims
– The benefits of having a third party looking at your accounts
What is Virtual Dental Office?
We have Virtual Assistants that log directly into the practice’s practice management software and we complete insurance tasks for the practice. So we will contact the insurance company to find out why they havent paid on outstanding claims, put notes in the management software for the practice, and we can also get patient benefit information and enter that directly into software. We do coverage information, deductable maximum, and history. We can also send claims for the practice. So we have a variety of insurance based tasks that we complete for them.
Do you do anything else other than insurance?
We focus mainly on insurance. Insurance tasks are tasks that can be completed virtually and almost seamlessly. We are not speaking with the patient, we are speaking with the insurance company and I believe that it really adds to the customer service that the practice can provide when they don’t have to be on hold with the insurance company when a patient is walking up. When you are on hold with the insurance company, if it has been more than thirty seconds, you really hate to lose your spot and sometimes team members will just motion to the patient or to another team member, but when you outsource that, they can really focus on the patient.
Is this something that is immediately done or do you have to submit information? How do you do this?
For outstanding claims, we run the report weekly and follow up every week. For benefits, our clients work for the most part a week in advance, meaning that they will look ahead and tell us what patients they have to so that we can get the updated benefits, and then as they schedule new patients, they will let us know. We do for two business days notice for new patient benefits or if its an emergency and its just put in, so its not on the spot in that way, but we do have protocols setup with our clients and they know exactly what to expect.
So if I have a new patient coming in, where do you step in? How does that work?
So what our clients do, depending on the software they use, Ill use Dentrix for an example. In Dentrix they will use the status on the left hand side of the appointment to change it to a VDO (Virtual Dental Office) color. So if we are purple, then we can look at the appointment book and any patient a week in advance that is purple, we know that we need to get benefits for, and then we change the color back when we are done and put notes in the appointment. There are a variety of ways that we work with our clients to let them know that we have completed the task. For a new patient, if they are scheduled out a week or more in advance its the same thing, but if its last minute they simply send us an email.
How does this work with HIPPA?
So I have HIPPA training for my team members and they sign HIPPA agreements and I give that to the practice. Really I think that you should look at it as having a normal team member working with you, just not in your physical location.
How does one become one of your clients?
So they would simply contact me and we have a conversation about what they need and what they would like assistance with. Depending on the service, certainly, how we get started changes. If its benefits we need to make sure that we have the benefit sheet that you would like, what benefits you want entered and where you want that information entered in your software because every practice is different. So we really do customize it for the practice. We communicate with your team members via a spreadsheet so that they can easily see what claims have been followed up on, what the next step is, as well as putting that information in the software.
You also offer something called Dental Insurance Navigator. What is that?
So I was consulting and working with dental practices that way and I also used to be a Dentrix trainer as well and while working with practices, over and over, I kept seeing the same thing, which is front office team members really feeling the burden of additional insurance paperwork which is why I started Virtual Dental Office. So through what I have seen through VDA and my experience as a software trainer is that so many insurance mistakes can cost dentists tens of thousands of dollars so quickly, so I started looking for a resource to send clients to, to get insurance training. What I found was that there are a lot of experts on many aspects of insurance, but there wasnt one place that brought it all together. So I created Dental Insurance Navigator, which is an insurance training system for the dental practice.
So if I wanted this service, what kind of questions do I need to ask you? How do I connect with you?
Dental Insurance Navigator is basically a membership. I have structured it in two different ways. One is certifications, where you can purchase modules for your team members to go through the training and then be tested. They have to pass the test with an 80% or better in order to receive their certificate. The other way is a membership where you get access to all the training videos and all the expert interviews but also an insurance forum so that if you or anyone in your practice have any questions about insurance, you can simply post to the forum and I or one of my experts will answer them.
What is one thing that you want our listeners to know?
One thing I have found that is great about Virtual Dental Office is having someone else’s eyes in another area of your finances. Obviously, we are not taking any money so it is very safe for us to be doing what we do but I think that it is great for accountability. It can just be helpful to have someone else taking a look at these processes in your practice as just another set of eyes and other ways to be more efficient.
So for my listeners, do you have any special offers or special links that you want to share with us?
I do have a link that we can post for Dental Insurance Navigator that will give your listeners 20% off their membership. All they have to do is click on that and they will be taken to a special Passionate Dentist page.