The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice Of The DSO Industry

In this special episode, Dental City invites their partners to discuss their emerging dental group and DSO solutions. They discuss:

Why they have formed a partnership with Dental City
Partnership benefits for emerging dental groups and DSOs
Leveraging new products, services and technologies.

Guests include:

Jordan Lorenz, Director of Special Markets at Dental City
Jane Levy, Co-CEO of Plan Forward
Shawn Lehmann, Director of Equipment at Dental Whale / Dental Fix
Kevin Gladstone, Director of DSO Sales at Abella / OrthoFi

To learn more about these companies visit:

Plan Forward – https://www.planforward.io/dentalcity/
Dental Whale / Dental Fix – https://blog.dentalcity.com/dental-fix/
Abella / OrthoFi – https://www.abellaar.com/dental-city/

Thank you to Dental City for sponsoring this podcast. To learn more by visit https://dentalcity.com or email Jordan Lorenz jlorenz@dentalcity.com

If you like our podcast, please give us a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on iTunes http://apple.co/2Nejsfa and a Thumbs Up on YouTube.

Our podcast series brings you dental support organization and emerging dental group practice analysis, conversation, trends, news and events. Listen to leaders in the DSO and emerging dental group space talk about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry has listeners across North & South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. If you like our show, tell a friend or a colleague.

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Full Transcript:

Bill Neumann:

Hi everyone. Welcome to The Group Dentistry Now Show. I’m Bill Neumann. And as always, we appreciate everybody listening in. Whether you happen to be listening on Spotify, Apple, Google, or maybe you’re watching us on YouTube, thanks for being a part of our community. Without you, we wouldn’t have great guests like the lineup we have for you today. We actually have, I think, one of the biggest crowds we’ve had on a podcast. So this is going to be fun logistically, but we’re going to have a lot of, and we have a diverse crowd here too, with a lot, with a great knowledge base. So first off, I’d like to thank Dental City for organizing this podcast for us getting these key opinion leaders in the DSO industry, these experts. So Jordan Lorenz from Dental City, thank you number one for getting Kevin, Jane and Shawn to agree to be on the show.

Jordan Lorenz:

Yeah, thanks Bill for having us all. Excited to get things going and thanks everyone for clearing time in your schedule to join us today. I’m really excited for this discussion and the opportunity to share some ideas with each other.

Bill Neumann:

So Jordan, just so everybody knows, he’s the director of special markets at Dental City. Not everybody knows who Dental City is, so why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about Dental City and then your focus when it comes to emerging dental groups.

Jordan Lorenz:

Sure. Yeah. So Dental City, we’re a dental distributor out of Green Bay, Wisconsin. We are privately held, so we have three owners that have owned the business from the very beginning and we are actually celebrating our 30th year this year in November. So really excited about that. And what we focus on is really that customer experience, whether that’s a DSO, small or large, GPO or private practicing dentist. The customer experience is what is really key for us and we view that customer experience in the scope of what our expertise is, which is providing great products through distribution from the beginning, the procurement process, however a customer might prefer to order, whether that’s over the phone, text, email, many of the procurement solutions that are in the market today over our website, we are really here to meet the customer’s needs wherever they want to be met.

And our focus is really on that procurement process, distribution and everything that happens after that. And with that, we know that offices need to be supported, potentially need to be supported in other areas, and that’s where we find fantastic partnerships like the people we’ve assembled today. We want to put our focus always on customer experience and customer experience and distribution. And what we can do is bring fantastic partners to the table when it comes to supporting the organization in other areas. And that’s why bringing Abella together with Plan Forward and Dental Whale and Dental Fix today is really important to our organization so we can provide solutions outside of just procurement while we focus on doing procurement exceptionally well.

Bill Neumann:

Excellent. Yep. So why don’t we let some of these partners that you’ve brought on today, introduce themselves, maybe talk a little bit about your organization and the relationship that you have with Dental City. Jane, Jane Levy, co-CEO of Plan Forward. Why don’t we start with you? Good to see you, Jane.

Jane Levy:

Great, thanks Bill, thanks Jordan and hi, the other guys. So Plan Forward is a membership plan company. We have a software platform that really keys off of direct care, the notion that the patient and the provider should come together to determine their care, the care that they should be receiving or be giving without the intervention of the payers. And that’s really what membership plans enable. We were started in 2018. Megan Lohman founded the company. She was a dental financial coordinator in a dental practice. And so our DNA is really based on her experience in a dental practice and what it was like to grow and scale a membership plan. We have a two different platforms. We have Plan Forward Essential, which is a platform that is really just core to launching your membership plan for your patients. And then we have just launched Plan Forward Advanced, which has integration to many PMS’, actually 20, all the 28 PMS’ that there are in dentistry. And we can pull data and show you the impact of membership plans on your practice. And that platform’s available now and we’re very excited about it.

We’re also very excited about our partnership with Dental City. As I mentioned, we are very focused on the patient experience, on the practice experience that’s really built into our DNA. We believe that membership plans are really the way forward for dental practices, both in the delivery of fantastic care, but also improving the patient experience in getting that care. And so the way that Dental City approaches their practices, both their independents and their emerging groups is really in sync with the way that we approach our practices. And so there’s really a great synergy between the two companies.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks Jane. Why don’t we move on to Kevin Gladstone. So Kevin is the director of DSO Sales at Abella and Ortho Fi. So Kevin, good to see you again. I’d love to have you just give a brief overview of what Abella does on the RCM side of things and then maybe Ortho Fi, which a lot of people probably if you’re on the ortho side of dentistry know about, but maybe some others don’t.

Kevin Gladstone:

Yeah, Bill, thanks for having me in Jordan and Dental City, thanks for including us on the panel here. Abella is under the umbrella of Ortho Fi. Why don’t I start with Ortho Fi cause that’ll maybe provide some context for the conversation here. But Ortho Fi started as a company that specializes in revenue cycle management and patient acquisition for orthodontic practices and orthodontists. It has since expanded to include support for DSOs as well because as you look around the industry, you see a lot of practices either specializing just in orthodontics or offering orthodontics services within their DSO. And we support those practices on both the RCM side for insurance and patient collections as well as helping those practices drive additional revenue by doing some unique things with patient financing in the practice. So that’s the parent company.

A few years ago, Ortho Fi acquired Abella, actually acquired a company called Comprehensive Finance, which included Abella. And Abella’s unique product because it allows practices to fully automate their patient AR solution so they no longer have to spend time sending paper statements, maybe making phone calls to patients. And we really can focus on patient experience in the practice. So we offer the mobile solution for patient AR management. We think it’s a highly effective consideration for a practice. And I would offer that if you’re not offering text-to-pay or mobile solutions for your payments offerings for patients, you’re missing out on a great opportunity to really maximize your revenue cycle management. So that’s Abella in an overview.

Bill Neumann:

And your relationship with Dental City.

Kevin Gladstone:

Dental City, so we started talking with Jordan probably a couple months ago and as he explained earlier, he was looking for ways to offer additional solutions to patients or I’m sorry, to practices. And we thought, you know what? As Jordan said, they specialize in offering procurement solutions to practices. We kind of take the burden off of the practices from a patient AR perspective. We thought listen, this is a great idea, let’s explore an opportunity. We put a partnership together and we’re happy to be here.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great, thank you Kevin. And we also have Shawn Lehmann. Shawn is the director of equipment at Dental Whale and Dental Fix. So Shawn, great to have you here. Really appreciate it. Talk about, I think a lot of people might know Dental Whale. Dental Whale does a lot of things. And then you’ve got the, so you’ve got the focus on equipment on the repair side and then also on the sale side of equipment.

Shawn Lehmann:

Correct, correct. Yeah. So Bill, thank you for having us and Jordan, thank you for the invitation. So yeah, so Dental Whale definitely made up of many organizations. Doctor founded, several, sorry, several years ago and a roll up of different companies and really the focus is we came up with an acronym called Dental Purchasing and Service Organizations. So basically covering helping you with equipment and lab purchases, continuing education and then service for your practice and office. And so with those companies we basically can offer a lot for a practice. And so the partnership with Dental City has been great because they’re experts on procurement and supplies, we’re experts on service and equipment.

So diving a little bit into what we do is we have the fourth largest equipment service company in the country. So basically technicians we have in the field can go to your offices and service equipment. So we’re very well known for Dental Fix, it’s a very big brand out there. And then we also help out with new offices. And so whether it be a large DSO, a regional DSO, a startup practice, we follow different principles based on what the doctors or group are looking to do and we can help design and do that product. So we’re very, very unique in that because we have a very big push on education. So with the dental Whale being doctor founded, we have a couple companies that do from office management to starting your practices to starting a DSO, we can help out in those scenarios. So the partnership with Dental City has been fantastic as we’re able to put two different but great companies together to give a good solution to both the private practice and the DSO.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks Shawn. Now I’m going to go back to Jordan cause I’ve got a question around procurement. There are a lot of dental procurement platforms on the market now, it seems like every time you turn around there’s another one. There’s a lot of interest from emerging groups I think from some buying groups out there as well, what to use, how to use it. You talk a little bit about how you work, how Dental City works with some of the procurement platforms out there and just maybe some of the trends you’re seeing with groups, how they’re using these platforms and are a lot of them using them yet?

Jordan Lorenz:

Sure. I think we’re seeing more of them is observation number one. I think there’s a few years ago, five, six years ago, there was a few of them that were popping up. Some of them did accounting really well, some of them did the procurement solution really, really well. Some of them now do both components incredibly well. But I think what you’re seeing is more and more adoption to procurement solutions, especially from emerging DSOs in the large DSOs that are in the space. And you’re also seeing it on the independent side as well.

I think there’s different components of a procurement solution, some of these technology platforms that really help improve that efficiency in the office. And the approach that we take is our customers really will help us dictate which procurement solutions that we’re going to work with. It’s up to the practices that we work with, the DSOs that we work with. If they found a procurement solution that’s going to really fit for their locations, for their office, for their organization, we’re going to do everything we possibly can to have a relationship with that procurement solution and really still be able to service it and offer our distribution and our customer service to those offices as they work with that procurement solution. So really what our customers find, we’re going to go and try and create a relationship with that procurement solution and continue to work with them to continue to service those offices that we work with.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks Jordan. Jane, as far as membership plans go, I think that they’ve been around a while. I think they’re becoming a little bit more mainstream. You have practices that maybe had in-house solutions that worked differently depending on the practice and the solution. And so maybe you’ve had experiences where they’ve worked well, maybe didn’t work so well. Maybe talk about why Plan Forward’s unique and maybe some of the trends you’re seeing with the adoption of membership plans as it relates to emerging groups.

Jane Levy:

Great question. So you’re right. Membership plans have been around a long time. This is a well-worn topic in dental. What’s new and different is using software to manage them and there’s a lot of benefits in doing so. First and foremost is the fact that you can automate payment processing, you can automate patient notifications, renewals of these plans, and so a lot of the burden is off the front office. Actually, the example that I like to use is many years ago salespeople used to manage all their sales leads on an Excel spreadsheet and it worked very well, but there was no nuance, there was no understanding the funnel and how those leads moved through the funnel. So once you had HubSpot, you could understand your funnel in its entirety and a lot of the movement of a lead through the funnel became automated.

It’s a very similar notion, which is really what we do is we try and lift the burden of running these plans off the front office. But in addition, the business benefits are that you can now segment your patient population very, very carefully and price plans according to that patient population and their proclivity to buy. So and in times like this where you can really set the pricing of your plan and change it very easily using technology, you can set your own fee schedule and change it in bad economic times when perhaps patients don’t have as much disposable income or obviously reimbursements don’t change from payers in times like this, even if you raise your price up of a hygiene checkup, payers are not going to be increasing reimbursement. But certainly with membership plans you can change your pricing to adjust to different economic times.

So you really have much more control over your practice and the impact. And of course we see lots of knock-on effects like increasing treatment acceptance and increasing hygiene re-care, et cetera. So lots of good benefits from membership plans. As you said, we’re kind of in the fat part of the curve where a lot more emerging groups and larger DSOs are starting to outsource this to folks like us that have a great turnkey, easy to use, easy to implement solution.

Bill Neumann:

Kevin, I think similar to what Jane’s discussing, automating and organizing where things maybe on the Abella side, the RCM side were more manual and maybe there weren’t systems in place to manage things, Abella solved some of those solutions for practices. Talk about what are you hearing from emerging dental groups when it comes to RCM? That’s another thing that you never used to hear in the dental industry and I think last year AI and RCM kind of fought it out for which was going to be the acronym of the year and I think maybe RCM won. So let’s talk a little bit about that and the adoption that you’re seeing, Kevin.

Kevin Gladstone:

Yeah, I think along the lines of automation, really there’s two things driving that conversation. The first one is the staffing crisis that’s prevalent in the industry seems not to be letting up. So where we can automate and find ways to maximize efficiency, practices are looking to do that. I mean you can imagine if you had a key team member in your office or in your DSO leave the organization or retire or whatever reason, weren’t available for a long period of time, what are you going to do to be able to reach out to patients to connect with them and then get them to respond? So Abella solves that issue by being fully automated. You put patients into the system, they recognize when they owe money to the practice, we reach out to those patients with a payment link, easy way to pay.

The other reason why automation is important, particularly as relates to mobilely getting to patients, so getting to patients where they want to be, most patients now respond to or engage with a text message within a few minutes. So if you’re not communicating with patients in an automated fashion in the way that they want to be communicated with, you’re missing out on the opportunity. And I think that’s the two reasons why automation is so key. It’s consistent, it reaches patients where they are, and it takes the burden off the practice.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks Kevin. Shawn, talk a little bit about what you’re seeing on the repair side of things with Dental Fix. Kind of curious because that’s something that as equipment has evolved, it’s become maybe less about mechanics and more about technical acumen. So you’ve got people that really need to understand technology when they’re doing repair work as well as the mechanics of just need fixing a chair. So I’d love to hear how Dental Fix handles that and maybe some of the changes that you’ve seen.

Shawn Lehmann:

Absolutely. 20 years ago or 15 years ago, about 20 years ago I entered the dental industry, your average technician, there was a big split. There was either the computer guy and then there was the guy that did mechanical room and then there was the guy that did installs. And in reality now the technician has to be such a higher level, they have to be able to do all of those tasks especially on the technology side. You see a lot of products that are tied into the IOT or internet of things and that, I mean it could be from a cone beam perspective or being able to do that or being able to integrate sensors. This technology is a big part, and I think that’s probably where we’re seeing a lot of the buying trends where people like for operatory equipment are looking, I would say the “the Toyota,” basically it’s a function over brand, reliability over brand, value over brand, something that’s stable that works.

And we’re seeing a large increase on the spend. So if they were going to spend X amount for a new office equipment, they’re spending probably over 50, upwards of 50% on technology because the technology can drive the practice. And so that encompasses more technicians, either it’s software maintenance or new things that they’re having to do. And so we see that quite a bit. We do a big focus, we used to do separation where it was mainly mechanical room and operatory focus for training for our technicians. And now those technicians are all driven towards the X-ray companies or scanner companies or 3D printing as those functions are now have been brought in-house to get rid of analog impressions and to print up 3D models or dentures or whatever. And so our technicians need that training and that’s where we definitely have a big focus.

Bill Neumann:

Interesting. Yeah, it’s fascinating what’s going on. Jane mentioned this earlier about the economy, so I’d love to get impressions from everyone on what you’re seeing is trends from your group customers, how they’re handling maybe the higher interest rates and then the impact on patients. So just in general maybe how it’s affected the businesses of your customers and then maybe how you’ve had to adapt to that. Maybe Jordan, we can start with you.

Jordan Lorenz:

Yeah, I think just following all along the general trends in the industry of DSO growth and that’s kind of where I’m seeing more of the effects of the economy in that I think more private practicing dentists are looking for alternative solutions to kind of take on what may or may not be coming from an economic perspective. So we probably continue to see some of the consolidation in the industry and not just consolidation from a practice perspective but with some distributors as well. But that’s kind of the economic impact from a very high level that I see is that we continue to see the growth in the amount of DSOs and the size of the DSOs and the targets that those DSOs now have. So being a larger DSO, what is the target office or practice that they’re looking to purchase or merge with? And I think that’s some of the early high level indicators that I’ve seen or changes that I’ve seen is just that this growth of DSOs continues to accelerate itself.

Bill Neumann:

Kevin, I’d be curious, you mentioned this because this may be one of the first times where you see this economic slowdown, higher interest rates, yet you also have this challenge that maybe we haven’t had in the past with talent where people that you would think would be maybe looking for jobs aren’t still after the pandemic. So it’s kind of interesting, but what are you seeing in the market Kevin?

Kevin Gladstone:

So it’s interesting because we have visibility across, from a patient perspective, we have visibility across both the specialty market and the general practice market. And maybe I’ll start with general practices because that’s where a lot of the DSO market is right now. But on Abella does two things really, it helps practices collect on aging patient AR and also helps practices maintain current AR. And I mention that because on average Abella collects about 40% of aging patient AR within 90 days. In a tough economic environment, you’d think that that would start to go down. You’d think that patients would be pulling back a little bit and saying I’m going to delay responding to my dental office, and we have not seen that at all. We’ve seen about a steady 40% collection rate. What we have seen is a little bit of an increase in patient opting for a managed collection plan, meaning they’ll pay over three or four months, which Abella enables.

On the ortho side we see starts being very consistent actually. We haven’t seen practices start to go to dip in terms of their average start. So what we are seeing though again is that patients want more flexibility in their payment options. So they want to be able to have maybe a longer payment plan, they want to be able to have a lower down payment, something like that. And I mention that as it relates to staffing because your staff needs to have that expertise in the industry to be able to know when patients might need a little bit more flexibility or they might need to have a lower down payment.

The reality is team members like that are so difficult to come by. I mean if you have a patient or you have a staff member that’s been with you for 20 years, they know all your patients, they know how patients respond during a treatment plan presentation. You lose that key person, man, you’re really stuck. I mean lean on technology right now more than ever to help patients pay off their balance, help patients get the treatment they need. That’s from a technology perspective, that’s what I would encourage DSOs to look at so that their team members can focus on giving patients a great patient experience in the practice, not in the way that necessarily they pay.

Bill Neumann:

Jane, I would think that you’ve probably run into similar things that Kevin does as far as membership plans. This would seem to be an ideal time for maybe practices that haven’t embraced the membership plan to offer that, maybe make some adjustments that you talked about earlier as far as the monthly pricing goes. But on the talent side of things, you still need somebody that’s able to present the membership plan just like the patient financing options.

Jane Levy:

Yes we do. So we do press a lot on the marketing side of things. So we do equip that front office person with brochures and scripts and patient savings sheets and all kinds of things that they need to in order to talk to the patient about the value of membership. But you are right, I mean in an evolving environment where that front office person may not be there or they’re a temp next week and there is a lot of training retraining that we have to do. What is fabulous about membership plans though are they can drive the patient behavior that you desire. So what we are starting to see, and again we don’t see this that often, but the attach rate of treatment to hygiene is really interesting. So if you could offer a patient a membership plan that costs 360 but offers a 5% or 10% or 15% discount of treatment, what you’re really doing is driving treatment acceptance with that plan.

And we do see that recur in our data. We see something like a 50 to 75% higher treatment acceptance amongst members, member patients versus uninsured. And so really what it is it’s a tool to drive patient behavior the way you want, the practice wants that patient to look. So if you want hygiene re-care, you price your plan a certain way and you bundle certain services in order to drive that behavior. So in tough economic times, honestly we haven’t seen it manifest yet in the practice. We hear a lot of talk about it, so maybe it’s still coming, but we really are ready to price these plans and help those practices figure out how to price them correctly to achieve the metrics they want.

Bill Neumann:

On the equipment side Shawn, what are you seeing as far as your customers go on the group practice DSO side of things? There’s the repair or replace dilemma. I mean are you seeing any changes there? And I don’t know if you offer these, but as far as service plans, one thing that I hear from a lot of the more established groups is they like to understand what their cost is going to be every single month. They want consistency across the board. You don’t always get that with equipment, you have something big go down, needs to be repaired or replaced. All of a sudden you’ve got this crazy cost in this one month that you don’t have in any other month during the year. So I’d love to just get some insight as to what you’re seeing there.

Shawn Lehmann:

Yeah, that’s a great question and I think we’ve been working on software for quite a bit and now it’s on the market, but I always think about the adage, bad economies don’t last but good companies do. And I think part of being a good company is looking at technology and how it can drive out some of the inefficiencies you had. And I think from the DSO perspective, even the private practice is probably one of the reason why we always thought for several years ago and it’s out now, it’s basically our equipment purchasing management. So no matter what equipment you might buy, it’s like how are you measuring the performance? Are you maintaining that product? And then if you’re buying a practice or selling your practice for CapEx, if you’re going to buy, replace or seeing that and that’s kind of driven that platform and it’s taken off because you could buy a little amount or a whole practice.

And like Jane was saying earlier, it’s kind of interesting because this is how the equipment world is, even the best practices out there, they maybe have a spreadsheet that talks about, has when they bought the product, good luck if it says what the warranty is remaining or the ongoing maintenance. And then usually with staff turnover as Kevin was talking about maybe that assistant manage it maybe the office manager. So we’ve kind of gotten rid of all of that and it’s tied into our platform. So we upload the products you buy, we give it to customers for free, it’s bundled in their sales] that it helps manage that. And so on top of that, that’s where Dental Fix comes into play is that we have something called the Ultimate Service Plan. So we have software helps you track the maintenance and do whatever might need done, but then what do you do?

What’s the next step? Well we have a whole service arm and we have reasonable rates for monthly service plans. So that might be maintaining your autoclave or maintaining some of the delivery units or water purification or your compressor, depends on the brand. Those are big things that a lot of people, a lot of DSOs lose control over because you have different brands or you don’t have a good process and that’s when our company comes into place, to help facilitate a good maintenance program so that large investment you did or procured lasts a long time. So we’ve seen huge changes on that, really driven about technology.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks Shawn. I think it’d be great to maybe focus on you’re experts in certain areas and maybe some tips for our audience. So Jane, on the membership side of things, do you have any just general ideas for practices, whether they’re using a membership plan or they’re not or what to really hone in on and how to make the most out of whether they’ve got something in house, whether they’re using Plan Forward or trying to balance the patients that have insurance and the ones that don’t. Just some insight as to things that have worked really well for your clients.

Jane Levy:

Yeah, that’s a great question. So I think what we really value when we talk to practices are those that really understand their numbers. And so understanding what the average gross production is for an uninsured patient versus an insured patient. Understanding what your percent UCR is for across the board for all your patients understanding your collections. And these are obviously metrics that most practices, well run practices will monitor. Production, collections, hygiene, re-care, show rate, treatment acceptance. If you know those metrics and you think that they can be improved on, let’s talk because we can certainly show improvement on all those metrics with membership plans.

We have the data and now with the new integrated version, you can frankly track the data yourself and see the impact on your business of a membership patient versus those other patient cohorts, and you can really direct where your practice should be. So you might be in network with a couple of insurers, maybe that’s not the right thing for your practice and it’s great to know that from the data. So I think the tips are really dig into the numbers and see if there are benchmarks out there. We can certainly provide the benchmarks that we’ve seen across all our practices and evaluate your own practice against those benchmarks and if you’re falling below, maybe you should consider a membership plan.

Bill Neumann:

That’s a great point. So it’s not just knowing your numbers but then getting the insight from people like yourself, Jane, to create, what can I do about these numbers? Here they are. First off, do I know if they’re good or if they aren’t good? Sometimes people don’t even understand their numbers. And then how to create some actionable items. So things that we can do to increase whatever that is, whether it’s treatment acceptance, whether it’s more patients, finding the patients that maybe have recently lost their health insurance, moving them to a membership plan, solutions like that. So that’s great and I appreciate that with the KPIs and the metrics. Kevin, are there any, and I’m going to ask everybody about this now because Jane got me thinking about this. Kevin on your side of things, on the RCM side, are there any metrics that practices should be looking at? And then again what do you do with that information?

Kevin Gladstone:

So I think you always want to be mindful of your collection rates. That should be first and foremost on the RCM side. It’s going to vary depending on what type of business you have, what type of clientele you have, where you specialize, that type of thing. And I would certainly echo Jane’s comments about the importance of data, but really being intentional about the data, meaning know what you want to know because there’s so much data out there, sometimes you become paralyzed and I think being very focused on what’s critical to your business is important. I would say there’s almost two other things that I would encourage DSOs to think about, particularly DSOs that are emerging right now, and this has been true for as long as I’ve been in the industry. The first thing is scalability. Find solutions that are scalable to your business because as you grow it’s very difficult to have the capital to support your business and then try to grow into that capital outlay. So scalable solutions is one.

The other one is pick up the low hanging fruit. If there’s easy things out there to implement and take advantage of, make sure that you’re looking at that. I would offer that Abella is one of them. I mean it’s so easy to put into place and start collecting on the money that’s owed by patients. Those are two things that I would say. But to paint with a broad brush and say there are specific RCM data points that I could suggest to practices, I don’t know if I’m that sophisticated. In the orthodontic business specifically though, I would say that if you’re not collecting at a rate on the patient side of 95% plus or the insurance side of 98% plus, you’re probably missing out on some low hanging fruit and that’s where we can come in to support you for Ortho Fi. And on the Abella side, I would say you should be collecting at worst, you should be collecting about 85% of your patient AR within about 30 days, at worst.

Bill Neumann:

Thanks Kevin. Shawn, you mentioned it that you have a dashboard really that people can monitor the length of time of ownership, the repairs that they’ve had. What things should customers be looking at, the emerging groups and DSOs when it comes to technology and equipment? I know they can take a monitor that on online right now with you, but what should they really be focused on?

Shawn Lehmann:

Well I think it’s the first step is the most obvious step is know what you own. You’d be surprised about how many DSOs or practices have no clue what’s in their operatories and then they wonder how treatment varies from provider to provider cause they have different chairs or different hand pieces at different locations. So it becomes a maintenance nightmare is really tracking that. Whether you use an old school way with an Excel sheet spreadsheet, which I wouldn’t recommend or use a platform that manages that, that’s the big thing. I think the second would be what other distributor we would love as far as be their service provider but be on a regular maintenance plan because you’re walking a fine line in between when that compressor or vacuum doesn’t work or autoclave doesn’t work or operatory, if you look how much that costs you when that goes down, that’s significant.

But I think as far as looking out as far as technology is, that’s where we see the practices is that we see more funds moving away from your traditional chair delivery unit stuff more towards stuff or equipment that can drive a better experience for the patient. And that’s where we see the trends is like, and that’s pretty well known as, cause the number one selling trend last year was intraoral scanners. 3D printers was a close second and I think if you saw at the Chicago Midwinter, some of our vendor partners had huge outpouring of interest on the 3D printers with the advent of being able to do permanent restorations in office, that changes everything on a 3D printer versus having to buy a very expensive mill. You can buy a product that’s less than $20,000 and you can now print permanent restorations for your office. That’s amazing.

So anyone on a DSO or a private practice level, you start running the math when it costs you less than $10 to make a permanent restoration and it can be seated very quickly, better patient experience, you have organic growth of your patients and it’s just a less chair time. So that’s huge. So those are the big trends we’re seeing right now. So I would leave it at technology, technology, technology, yeah.

Bill Neumann:

Let’s start with knowing what you own on the inventory side.

Shawn Lehmann:

Yeah.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. Great, great advice. Jordan, what should groups be measuring when it comes to procurement?

Jordan Lorenz:

Yeah, I think the percentage of your spend that is supplies, but before that, what are you counting as supplies? Are you properly segmenting the products that you’re purchasing into clinical supplies or how are you as an organization segmenting those supplies? You have everything separated out, making sure that some of your lab stuff probably isn’t in there or maybe it is in there if that’s the way your organization is going to run. Understand and have a set standard operating procedure with how you’re going to plan out what actually is falling into your supply purchases and then measure it, and then understand that measurement against your procedures and against your locations. And is the spend aligning with, are you purchasing the right products in the right categories for the type of procedures that you’re doing and putting technology in place to track those things? And understand what your location based spend is, your category spend and making sure that it’s really aligning with what you should be doing in your practice.

I think the other thing Bill, that I just kind of want to come full circle on real quick is over the course of this conversation, I think it’s pretty evident why we are all on the phone together or why we’re all on this video podcast together. It’s just been really interesting listening to the expertise that each one of these individuals in their organization brings and how it aligns with us at Dental City really being customer focused, that customer experience and then just being great at what we know we do. And I think that’s one thing that I’ve gotten out of this today is just you don’t have to put all your eggs in one basket. Having people do really well what they plan to do and putting that customer first is what each one of these organizations do. And I think that’s been fantastic to watch.

I know that Kevin’s organization cares about RCM and that’s what they’re going to be great at. And I know Jane’s going to offer fantastic solutions outside of just the traditional insurance, and they’re going to put technology in front of you to do that really well. And then from the equipment and repair side, for 30 years we’ve not had a solution at Dental City to repair equipment or offer equipment sales. And then we have this fantastic partnership with Dental Whale, Dental Fix, and I think it all comes kind of full circle why we’re all sitting here. And we all offer unique solutions that can be beneficial to the offices that we support, and that’s what kind of puts us all together today.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. I think that’s a great way to wind down the podcast. Thanks Jordan. We didn’t even plan that so that was wonderful. I think before we go, I would love for each one of you, Jane, we can start with you. If people want to find out more about Plan Forward or want to contact you, how do they do so?

Jane Levy:

Yeah, so we have obviously our website, it’s unusual, it’s planforward.io which just to throw a wrench in things or you can reach out at jlevy@planforward.io.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. And we’ll drop all these email addresses and websites, website URLs in the show notes so you don’t have to write it down. It’ll be listed there so you can just click right on it, you write it down if you want too. Shawn, how do we reach out to you and find out more about both Dental Whale and Dental Fix?

Shawn Lehmann:

Absolutely. I mean it’s website simple, just dentalwhale.com, you can click on service or equipment and it’ll take you to the appropriate person to either book an estimate on repair or if you need help with purchasing equipment, we have a team there. So simply guide there. You can book it through online or make a call, the number’s listed on the website, so very, very easy.

Bill Neumann:

Excellent, Kevin?

Kevin Gladstone:

Yeah, you can certainly go to our website, abellaar.com, but also I’d encourage you to reach out to your Dental City rep too. We put a fantastic program together. Their team can put you in touch with us. They are knowledgeable about our solution, so I’d certainly encourage any customers out there to reach out to Dental City as well.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, that’s a great point Kevin. And anybody that reaches out to Dental City or wants to reach out to Jordan, he can put you in touch with Jane, Shawn, Kevin. And if you do reach out to Jane or Shawn or Kevin directly, make sure that you mention that you saw them on the Dental City Podcast on Group Dentistry Now and thank Jordan for it too, if you can remember to do that. But Jordan, how do they get in touch with you and find out more about Dental City?

Jordan Lorenz:

Yeah, dentalcity.com is our website and on there you’ll also find links to the fantastic organizations that were on with us today, either through our blog or through our dentalcity.com site. You can also email me at jlorenz@dentalcity.com and that’s about it.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. Well thanks everybody. This has been a great podcast. It’s great to get insight in these different corners of the dental industry that all tie nicely together. Again, thanks to Dental City for bringing everybody together and thank you everybody for listening in today. So until next time, I’m Bill Neumann and this is The Group Dentistry Now Show. Thanks.