How can your dental service organization protect profitability in an era of rising costs and payment delays? A recent webinar featuring industry leaders from Rectangle Health, PepperPointe Partnerships, and AirPay shared practical strategies that maintain margins while enhancing the patient experience.
The Pressure is On: Profitability Challenges Facing DSOs
Today’s DSOs are facing a perfect storm of obstacles:
- Payment delays from insurers: Insurance companies frequently delay payments, creating cash flow problems and extending the revenue cycle.
- Rising operational costs: Overhead expenses continue to climb, pressuring practices to maximize efficiency and revenue collection to maintain profitability.
- Severe staffing challenges: Employee turnover has become a universal problem, creating inconsistent revenue cycle operations and forcing front desk teams to juggle patient care with administrative tasks.
Automation is the Answer—If You Can Get Staff to Use it
Automation tools can dramatically reduce labor costs and improve efficiency, but only if your staff uses them.
Tools That Lighten the Load
Numerous automation tools can help lighten your dental practice’s workload. For example, the panelists described a tech stack including:
- AirPay for automated insurance verification
- Rectangle Health’s PayerSync for patient payments and text-to-pay services
- InsideDesk for claims management
Implementing solutions like these will help free up staff time, reduce errors, and accelerate revenue collection.
Why Staff Buy-In is the Hardest Part
Procuring the right tools is important, but the biggest challenge is change management, especially in dental practices where staff have performed tasks similarly for years.
Elizabeth Davis of PepperPointe Partnerships shared at the webinar, “Change management is probably the most challenging thing I face. It’s not dealing with payers or vendor relationships. It’s getting our teams to adapt to technologies that will make their jobs easier. When you’ve done something the same way for 15 years, that’s what you know, and changing that is hard.”
She continued, “We’ve found success by framing technology adoption around improving the patient experience. In our rural offices, where patients are like family, that message resonates. We challenge teams to try a tool for just one month, promising to cancel if they’re not satisfied. Guess what? It never happens. After about two weeks, they say, ‘Wow, this is so much easier!’ Suddenly, they have time for things they’ve never done before, revenue increases, and everyone gets motivated.”
The New Patient Experience is Financial
How is your entire patient experience from the chair to the checkout? Patients increasingly judge dental practices based on billing clarity and financial communication rather than just the clinical care they receive.
Transparency Up Front
Online dental practice reviews frequently mention billing issues rather than clinical concerns. Billing issues can overshadow even the highest-quality dental care. Unclear costs or unexpected charges can lead to bad reviews and patient loss. Accurate insurance verification and cost estimates go a long way. They help your practice avoid surprise bills and build patient trust and loyalty.
Tech That Meets Patients Where They Are
Dental patients want the same convenient online payment methods they have in every other area of their lives. Therefore, traditional billing methods, like phone calls and mailed statements, are less effective.
As Davis noted in the webinar, today’s patients respond better to text communications: “Patients don’t answer their phone, but they will look at their texts and say, ‘Oh, I have a bill.'” Tools like bulk text-to-pay and card-on-file collections allow your practice to make payments more convenient for the patient and increase your chances of a timely payment.
Speed and Interoperability Define the Modern RCM Stack
Leading DSOs are shifting from manual processes to speed-focused, integrated revenue cycle management (RCM) systems that reduce friction throughout the payment journey.
PayerSync and Real-Time Payments
Rectangle Health’s PayerSync shortens the gap between payer reimbursement and patient billing by automating payment flow from insurance carriers. The technology accelerates access to cash while providing staff with the information they need to pursue any remaining patient balances.
Your Tools Should Talk to Each Other
Instead of relying on an all-in-one payment platform, choose tools that connect seamlessly and complement each other. The most valuable technologies excel at specific functions while easily sharing information with your practice management software, dental patient engagement software, and other systems.
A Smart Starting Point for DSOs
Davis offered practical advice for DSOs feeling overwhelmed by technology options: “Find out what your biggest pain point is, or what is causing your revenue to not come in at the same speed, and start there.”
Start small by implementing one technology solution at a time. Testing tools that relieve pressure points can help your DSO demonstrate value and build momentum.
Watch the webinar replay: DSOs’ revenue playbook: Tactics to protect profitability