Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Financials. Did just reading that word make your head start to throb? You are not alone if it did. Financials is not at the top of anyone’s list of conversation topics. They are not a go-to topic because dealing with them, whether personal or work-related, can be a real chore. They are time-consuming and stressful. And no one wants more stress or any wasted time in a dental practice―including your patients.
Your patients have busy schedules. They simply can’t afford to spend any extra time waiting in your office to deal with their treatment payments.
Handling financials for your records and for your patients shouldn’t be a drawn-out, complicated process for your patients or your staff. You want it to be a painless process for everyone. So stop wasting your patients’ and your staff’s time. There is a simple way to make receiving your billing statements and paying you easy. And when you do make it easy to receive a statement and make a payment, your patients will pay you, and they’ll pay you on time.
So what can you do to avoid the long hours and headaches that almost always accompany the financial paperwork?
Use digital financial technology. Most practice management software has billing and payment functions, but I’ve found the easiest-to-use are QuickBill and PowerPay LE, which are part of the Henry Schein Easy Dental system.
How exactly can they improve your life and your practice? Let’s start with electronic billing such as QuickBill which makes sending billing statements to your patients simple and affordable. When you manually handle statements, your staff spends hours printing and sorting through papers, and then stapling, folding, stuffing, sealing, addressing, stamping and finally mailing the envelopes.
With electronic patient billing you eliminate all of those hassles. This not only saves you money, but, more importantly, it eliminates hours of mundane work, giving your staff time to spend on more useful tasks. QuickBill completely streamlines all of the necessary steps into just a few clicks of the mouse, and your statements are instantly sent to the desired patients. You choose what statements you want mailed and when you want them mailed. You also can add personalized notes, switch up the information that’s shown on the statements, and customize your invoice.
What about returned letters and all the wasted money spent on postage and time spent tracking down correct addresses when you see the dreaded “return to sender” in the incoming mail? QuickBill statements receive National Change of Address verification, so if patients officially changed their addresses and forgot to notify you, their address corrections are automatically sent your way so you can update them in your patient files. These types of automated services eliminate any worry about patient statements not making it to the right patient.
Another digital service that works hand-in-hand with electronic billing to give you full control of your financials is digital payment processing such as PowerPay LE.
With PowerPay LE integrated in the Easy Dental software platform, you can accept credit card payments without leaving the practice management software interface. It is completely integrated and even includes a credit card reader that simply plugs in to your computer’s USB port, so you can process payments without tying up your office phone line.
In addition, because it is directly integrated in the Easy Dental software, PowerPay LE takes care of the details behind the scenes by automatically posting payments to your Accounts Module, which eliminates the chance of double entry, and it encrypts the patient’s credit card data to ensure your office meets PCI DSS regulations. This type of software integration is a key part of digital payment processing.
When it comes to paying their bill, your patients want the easy and quick payment options that automatic payment systems like PowerPay LE provide. By giving your patients the convenient payment options they desire, it leaves them happily satisfied and leaves you even happier as you watch your collections calls and billing costs go down.
It is time to simplify your life and your patients’ lives as well. Using automated billing and digital payment processing solutions helps your practice and your patients get what they want―and they get it in a timelier manner with no more stress-induced headaches.