This is the story of an oral surgery practice with big ambitions to open multiple locations. They accomplished that goal through persistence, planning, adding personnel, and calling in helpful experts from DCS.
Spoiler Alert: They partnered with the OMS Department at DCS and saw incredible results that paved the way for their big ambitions to be realized. But let’s start from the beginning…
Our client, Aspire Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery of Michigan City, Indiana, was happy to share their success story. We spoke to Sarah Christ, Aspire OMS’s Finance Manager, to get the full scoop.
If you want to grow your dental business but don’t have the staff or bandwidth for expansion, then you’ll want to hear how Aspire OMS hopped over their growth hurdles with the help of our RCM services.
You can download the full case study here.
Picture this: An overwhelmed one-woman OMS billing team with a mountain of work to climb
Aspire Oral Surgery was doing well with their production. They were even gearing up to add a third location. Seems great, right?
But behind the scenes, only one person was handling the billing for both locations, and she was drowning in work. How was she supposed to take on a third?
Sarah Christ, the Finance Manager of Aspire OMS, saw trouble on the horizon:
“She was doing all the billing for two offices, and we were growing to add a third. To have one person doing all of it while also doing pre-determinations, and also pre-treatment estimates for dental and medical — it was just piling up.”
Growth can be a double-edged sword. It’s great to have more patients and more revenue, but if you don’t have the administrative support needed to sustain that growth, it’s going to have a negative impact on your staff, your patients, and your dental business. This is started to happen as Aspire OMS continued to grow.
In November 2020, their accounts receivable (AR) over 30 days had crept up to 75% of their overall AR, and timely filing was becoming an issue. Handling dental and medical insurance claims was a never-ending mountain of work for their one insurance coordinator, and she could never reach the top.
Imagine it: As soon as she got a claim submitted, she had to appeal a previously denied claim, then get back to submitting new ones, then circle back to her appeals pile. It’s a huge workload for one person at one location — and she was doing this for 2 locations! And soon, there would be 3.
Stacey Westbrooke, Aspire OMS’ Practice Administrator, saw the toll this was taking on their one-woman insurance billing team, and it was disheartening. It was high time to bring more hands on deck.
Aspire Oral Surgery hired more staff, but continued to face workflow issues
It was clear that Aspire Oral Surgery needed more team members to help with the massive — and growing — administrative workload. But they would soon learn that some business problems aren’t solved by how many people you hire, but who you hire.
“As you grow, it becomes difficult to keep hiring people who check every box while also filling your needs as quickly as possible.” -Inc. Magazine
Aspire OMS needed a larger insurance billing team ASAP. So, they tried to build their own in-house. But alas, there’s a nationwide staffing shortage. The pool of healthcare personnel is shrinking, while simultaneously, the demand for more experienced staff is increasing — it’s a no-win situation.
Related: 3 reasons DCS customers aren't feeling the dental staffing shortage
Still, Stacey Westbrooke hired some team members, and while it helped spread out the workload, they still struggled to keep up. She was already dealing with staffing issues and high turnover, so hiring and paying an even larger insurance team was likely to add challenges instead of removing them.
As you know, high turnover can lead to dysfunctional interactions and disorganized workflows. Aspire was also juggling a buyout and a rebrand at the time, plus that third office was on the way, not to mention the ongoing pandemic — they needed more help, but they did not want to hire more staff.
So, Aspire Oral Surgery gave DCS a call, and then…
Building a larger in-house team wasn’t a fix-all solution to the issues Aspire OMS was facing.
So they found DCS, our full-service revenue cycle management company that serves dental practices, groups, and of course, oral surgery practices. But the leaders at Aspire Oral Surgery had questions and some doubts about making changes:
- Where are the bottlenecks in our processes?
- Where is it both smart and safe to use a shortcut?
- How do we whittle down our workflow and stay compliant?
With these questions in mind, they took the leap and partnered with DCS for our insurance billing services. This took claims submission, claim appeals, insurance payment posting, and AR management off the in-house team’s plate — to their great relief.
Aspire soon saw positive results, and it didn’t take long for them to add 2 more services from our suite: Credentialing and Patient Billing.
Sarah Christ explains:
“We did not blink an eye when we found out that DCS also had a patient billing service that could piggyback on top of the insurance billing services. We know that we can leave it to DCS to handle the filing of the claim. And we know that with our team working with you, and us working with our patients, it’s just going to be an overall pleasant experience.”
Thanks to DCS’s daily claims filings, timely filing denials are no longer an issue. Aspire is able to collect every cent it's owed instead of leaving money on the table. Plus, Aspire can add that third office without overwhelming their in-house staff, who are now hyper-focused on providing an amazing patient experience.
The results speak for themselves → Download the Aspire OMS case study to see Aspire’s numbers.
Related: More freedom with RCM services: 5 ways your dental team will invest their time
Create more growth possibilities for your oral surgery practice — call in the experts at DCS
Today, Aspire Oral Surgery proudly has three locations that run smoothly and profitably, and DCS manages the revenue cycle for them all.
“Billing can be time-consuming, and it can get complicated and muddy. The knowledge they all have at DCS is just top-notch — and we love it. We love everyone that we’ve had to work with, and we’ve never had an issue. It’s just clear and easy. Which is good, because a lot of times, billing is not easy.” – Sarah Christ
DCS has now been with Aspire Oral Surgery since 2020, and we have been honored to be a part of their growth. Read the full case study here to dive even deeper into the results our RCM services provided Aspire Oral Surgery.
We work with dental practices, groups, and oral surgery practices of all shapes and sizes to provide cash flow they can count on.
Sustain your business’s future growth with confidence: Book a call with DCS.
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