Optimize Practice Revenue!

[music] Welcome to the Navigating Dental Insurance Podcast [music] where we don't take from insurance companies. Here are your hosts, [music] Mr. Jordan Comtock and Mr. Ben Tuy. This podcast is sponsored [music] by BoomCloud Dental Membership Software, www.boomcloudapps.com boomcloudapps.com and [music] veraritoss dentalresources www.veritass [music] dentalresources.com. Enjoy the show. What's up everybody and welcome to another episode of the Navigating Dental Insurance Podcast. I've been gone for a long time but I'm back. My name's Jordan Comtock. You forgotten. I have been extremely busy over the past year uh

growing BoomCloud and uh hiring people, firing people uh and managing all that comes to a growing business. So, I apologize for not being on the podcast. I've missed everybody, but now I'm back. I have a plan to be on quite a bit. Um this morning I'm driving in my car to the office coming with some thoughts uh for you this morning so I can share it and get going. But uh I'm going to be doing a new series um with some of my uh employees at

BoomCloud, my team members. Um and we're going to be talking about optimizing revenue for your practice in this time where inflation's crazy on the rise. there's threats of stagflation, meaning inflation is continuing to increase, but then I think we'll see a shrinking um GDP and employment, uh which will be quite the interesting journey here. But I actually love these times cuz it's a time for us to get scrappy. It's a time for us to be quick on our feet. Um I don't know why, but I've

always enjoyed it. probably because in the early days of my career um I was managing the dental lab during a recession and it was challenging but you know what I learned a lot and we came out ahead um during those times. So I we're going to be doing a series on that where we talk about the importance of optimizing your revenue and we'll we'll talk a little bit that about that today because I think it's so important and I've been looking so BoomCloud is we've just

barely um created an integration to all practice management um systems out there and I've been able to look at a lot of data that practices have and I'm realizing that there are there's so much opportunity in in dental practices via the collective uninsured patients, inactive patients that you can reactivate somehow. Um, even your PO patients, I'll talk to about how you can optimize that, too. Um, from accounts receivables. Did you guys know that the average the average um practice loses about $120,000 per year on accounts

receivable? That's insane to me, you know. So, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about how you can get some profitable financing, patient financing that is. Uh because the nature of membership plans, the nature of PO plans, I want to talk about how you should be optimizing your patient financing so that your practice [clears throat] makes more money versus you're paying out all this money to, you know, the financing companies when you need when you when a patient needs to get some funding.

Um, another thing that we want to talk about is how you can increase your value of the practice in good times and bad times. I think that's really important. So, first off, let's talk about a membership program. If you've haven't heard me before, this is my obsession. I love recurring revenue and I and I see so many practices create and grow recurring revenue through our platform. And you know, in fact, I see we see a range from smaller practices generating about 50k per month in recurring

revenue all the way up to 60 or 70k per month. We've seen that and it's we've seen lots of people do it and I'll talk why that's important especially in a time where the economy may be uh iffy. Um, so the reason why I love membership programs so much is because of the predictable recurring revenue and the and the the loyalty it brings to your practice. So predictable recurring revenue is extremely important because in any type of market, you want it and you need it. But

specifically, if we're if everyone's saying we're going to hit another recession here soon, you know, you want that predictable recurring revenue coming in. So, you get revenue whether you whether you do dentistry or not, you know, and the cool thing about a membership plan, especially if it's managed by a system like BoomCloud, is that you have access to revenue control. Meaning if you do need to increased pricing because of inflation or because some type of cost increased you know from your business and you need to

increase it from the the patient side. Um you have access to revenue control through a membership uh plan. Meaning you've got hundreds to thousands of patients on a platform paying you a subscription every month or every year. And if you need to increase that, you can dial that up, increase it, and you get that you see that revenue within the next day or two um or the next month whenever you you know alert your patients and all that fun stuff. So that's why I like recurring

revenue from membership plans um in especially in bad economies. Then patients will probably either in a bad economy, they'll either lose their job or change jobs and they'll need they still need dental care. They still need to pay for dental care. People just don't, you know, forego those things. They still need to get up. Um so um a membership plan is awesome opportunity for for you to help out your patients. You know, that's what it's all about, helping out your patients um get the access to

quality dental care. The next thing we want to talk about um after recurring revenue is um finding those uninsured patients to get more recurring revenue, right? Um often so many practices tell me they're like, "Well, Jordan, we don't want to offer our membership program to our existing [clears throat] uninsured patients." And I always take a deep breath and say, "Why don't you want predictable recoccurring revenue?" often if it's a fee for service practice and they say, "Well, we don't we're get we're getting 100% of our

of our um fees anyway, so we don't want to bother with that." Okay, that's cool. But the reality is you're missing out on predictable recurring revenue. That business model or that revenue model is so essential to any business. If you don't install it, it's you're going to have feast and famine, right? And I know this cuz the dental lab was like this. uh feast and famine. Every quarter there was some type of famine month. You know, April and September are I know are two known famine

months. And I I'm able to see that in in in our BoomCloud dashboard. I can see what's trending, what's not trending during certain times. It's kind of fun. Um so, you want to find your your existing uninsured patients. Most of the time they're not um active in your practice or they're not saying yes to treatment as as often as they probably should or needed. Um so finding your uninsured patients uh as I said before Boomcloud integrates into Eaglesoft Dentrics and Open Dental and will automatically find

those uninsured patients and allow you to send text messages to them and invite you invite them to your membership program. So it's kind of fun. I love stuff like that. By the way, automation is another thing we need to do when we hit um a strange economic time period. you need to be as productive as possible. And one of the ways you can do that is by automating all your um [clears throat] automating as much as you can, you know. Sure, people will still manage it,

but they will touch it less, you know. So, for like example, your membership program, BoomCloud automates that. So, your practice managers and staff just need to look into it here and there every once in a while, make sure things are running all right, need to update some credit cards or things like that. Um, so recap real quick. So recoccurring revenue is good. Don't miss out on that opportunity even if you think that you're, you know, you don't want to add your existing uninsured patients. It's super

important to do that because of the recurring revenue. Um, you want to also think about [clears throat and cough] automating uh certain processes and things like that. Next thing I want to talk about is accounts receivable. I mentioned earlier that the average practice loses about 120k, excuse me, in accounts receivable every year. That's crazy. That's insane. You know, that's revenue you can take home. That's revenue that you can share with your employees. That's revenue that you can buy a boat with, whatever you want. So, it's

crazy to me that that goes unmanaged. Um, I was talking to several office managers on this topic and a lot of the times they just say, "Yeah, we just don't have enough time to look into that and um, manage that appropriately." So, once again, automation is your friend. Uh, BoomCloud, we're we're actually building a cool little technology piece of our software that helps you automate accounts receivable um, from one-time payments to allow you to create payment plans, which is another strategy that we need to talk

about here. in a in a in a rough economy, payment plans. Um, so your accounts receivable is extremely extremely important. I learned this when I was at the dental lab. My dad was so obsessed with collecting money on time cuz he knew that after a certain amount of time and the longer it gets out, the less likely people are to pay you. And that's work that you've already uh done for that uh patient. you've spent your money, you know, on on lab bills on on your

employees. So, it's really important that we get accounts receivable right. Um, asking for payment upfront. Obviously, if you can't do that or if you've got a long list of of delinquent invoices out there, check out BoomCloud in the next uh end of the quarter, beginning of next quarter, which is like June of 2020. And we with our integrations, we have our accounts receivable automation which basically reaches out via text and email to patients and ask them to pay their balance. Whether it's a one-time payment or

it breaks up a payment plan and from, you know, 3, six, 8, [clears throat] 12 months, uh you can you can kind of set parameters inside of BoomCloud to help you automate that. That'll give you peace of mind and hopefully a new boat at the end of the year. [laughter] Um okay so membership programs accounts receivable automation and and processing processes that you can automate s everything is super important and guess what in a good economy this is just as important as well but these are

areas of focus um at all times during a you know a potential recession or potential stagflation. For those of you that don't know that stagflation, it's it's when the market inflation increases and jobs in in the economy decreases. It's kind of the worst scenario of a it's a one of the worst types of recessions we can have. Kind of it's fascinating to me. I love reading about this stuff. Um, not cuz for fear, it's because I I always want to prepare, excuse me, and figure out

the best way how to help my own company, but also help our customers cuz I'm all about, you know, helping our customers through revenue and all that fun stuff. It's just I wake up every day excited to do that. So, okay, the next thing we want to talk about is cutting out the PPOs. I you everyone knows what I feel about PPOs. I think they're crap, garbage. There's a place for them for sure. But I think if you really the number one thing you need to

do in your practice is optimize your revenue, meaning maximizing re your revenue you get per patient or per treatment that's done. And the PPOs aren't doing you any good there. What they're doing is they're causing massive discounts which causes massive devaluation of your service. I think discounts, you need to have some type of strategy for discounts, but PPOs are getting out of hand. It's like the average is like 40% discount that you're you're have to write off 40%. On top of that, you got uh other

things that are rising, right? Like employees are and other costs in your practice are rising. So, you got to keep your eye on that. So, you got to cut out PPOs. And Ben and I have done so many um courses on this. I would go go to boomcloudapps.com our website under the resources tab. I Ben and I have so many uh resources that we host on on Boomcloud's website. We got some webinars cutting out PPOs. I think Ben's an absolute genius when it comes to that.

So, go check that out. Um but you want to cut out PPOs and you want to do that the smart way. You don't want to cut them all out at once. You want to do it strategically. you may need to look at the best paying out of network PPOs because they do exist. Start with those and start converting your patients over. Now, when you do this, don't send, you know, don't send all your patients an email or text or just any form of communication that says

started this date. We're we're out of network. You you've got to figure it out. You want to you want to communicate it the right way. Hey, so and so, we're we've just become an optimized partner for such and such plan or an unrestrictive partner for such and such plan. We want to reach out to you and educate you on on better ways to save for your dental care. This is where I think strategic discounting is smart. Strategic and controlled, right? this and this goes back to

the membership plan and then you educate them about your membership plan. Get them to sign up right via you can do this via text especially through Boomflap with our integration. Um the text message feature allows you to find certain patients on a specific PO plan and then send them a message and invite them to join your membership plan as you're going out of network. Um I think it's really really smart for practices to to do that. Um because of of the average revenue per user or

per excuse me per patient always needs to be increasing up. When we stagnate our pricing that'll go down or the average profit per patient will go down right. um average pro a excuse me average profit per patient and average revenue per patient are probably some of the the two best metrics that you need to be understanding in your practice right how much how much revenue does a patient spend in a year you know how how much revenue does a patient spend in 5 years things like

that you need to know that um I think it's really critical I think dental intelligence has uh some some metrics in their tool that allows you to do that But cutting out those PPOs, um, it's critical to increasing the value of your practice and your peace of mind, the quality of dentistry, and as well as the quality of your profit margins and revenue per patient. Next thing we should look at when you're trying to optimize your revenue for the practice is um, [clears throat] well, case

acceptance. We know so you need to get patients saying yes more to treatment. We know that I think the average case acceptance in the United States is like 30%, something like that. And that's that's pretty decent if you look at a salesunnel. It's okay, but it can be improved. Everything can be improved. You know, meaning I know for a fact that membership plans, patients when they're on a membership plan, they spend at maximum like three and a half times more than non-members. meaning that same patient

with you says yes to more treatment that is needed obviously and beneficial right so ensuring that you're maximizing your treatment um your case you're getting increasing your case acceptance it's so critical um for for us especially in a time maximizing your production in a time where there's going to be potential recession here in the next little bit uh it's critical next thing you need to look at uh for for maximizing revenue and optimizing revenue is considering your your patient financing solutions out there. This is something

that I've noticed for years now in a in a dental practice where whether you have a a patient on a PO plan that needs financing or a patient on a membership plan that needs financing, um you you're going to take another discount when you use certain financial services for patients, right? often it's it's like 10 to 15% discount again on top of the PO discount which which on average is like what that equates to like 55% discount on your services if they use financing on a

PO plan you know and if you do the same with a membership plan the average membership plan there's like a 15% discount so and they add another 10 or 15% merchant discount from a financing partner that's 30% discount which obviously is a lot better and more profitable than PO, but I would consider looking for patient financing solutions that don't take a merchant fee or a or a smaller smaller discount of a merchant fee, right? That that's going to help you save money over time. Um, and

every time a patient needs financing, uh, you have more control and more revenue in your your pocket. There's so many ways to be optimizing revenue in your practice. Another way is looking at your inactive patients and reactivating them, inviting them to join your membership program, inviting them to something, asking them a question, sending them care packets, you know. Um, that could be a really interesting approach where I know what we do when I want to try to get a partner to work with BoomFlide and refer

us. I'll find out what they like. I'll document it in our system and I will send them either a care box or a a swag box or whatever it may be. Um, we're, for example, I've, uh, have some partners that wanted to or potential partners that like guitars. Now, I am a huge guitar freak. I love guitars. I buy guitars a lot. And, um, so I found out that this person that we're working with that we want to work with with the company for referrals, uh,

she liked guitars, so I sent her a bunch of guitar accessories and said, "Excited to potentially partner." So you could do that maybe with your patients. Obviously doesn't have to be guitar accessories. You could it can even just be a little dessert or something or cookies some or or a coupon somewhere. I don't know. Um just be creative and for those inactive patients and and send them something different, you know, give them an experience that they're like, "Wow, that was actually really cool that that that

our dentist just sent us something." Right? It's unique. It's different. You don't they don't see it. it surprises them. And usually when when you do that, when you surprise people, they end up becoming loyal. They end up talking about your services. So that's a great way to maximize your revenue from your patient v your existing patient base. So those are kind of my thoughts this morning as I'm driving into the Boomcloud office here in Lehi, Utah. So, I'm doing a course uh I think next week

uh called Optimize Your Revenue: Six Ways to Combat Inflation and Stackflation. Um so, if you're going if you're on my email list, you probably received an email. If not, go to boomcloud.com, download an ebook or watch one of our courses. You'll be on our uh our email list. You can get invited to that. I do it on Zoom. I like to do uh educational webinars. cuz that's in fact that's what I've been focused on the past year is just educational webinars. So if you haven't seen

me on a podcast, you've probably seen me on a webinar. I love webinars, love the interaction on webinars and all that stuff. So but come to my course. Um and if you're not, go to our book, go download the recession proofing your practice ebook. It's under the ebook section on the resources on boomcloudapps.com. But really enjoyed my morning drive with you guys this morning. Hope you guys have a rocking day. Peace out.