Automating your DSO has many benefits, the main one being how it standardizes operations across all your locations, especially your patient billing. When you automate systems at your multi-office organization, you’ll see more organization and efficiency, which leads to higher production and revenue.
Managing a Dental Service Organization (DSO) presents unique challenges — specifically, ensuring consistency and efficiency across all your locations.
When you are operating multiple locations, inconsistent workflows create inefficiencies that lead to back-office confusion, billing errors, and subpar patient experiences.
This is typically a problem if you’ve acquired locations with various systems, rather than building them from the ground up using the same systems.
As a DSO leader or owner, you know how frustrating and costly these inconsistencies can be, especially when they’re multiplied to a bigger scale — but the solution is actually simpler than you’d think.
Enter automation — the tried-and-true modern solution to standardize operations and create a unified workflow across your entire organization.
But don’t worry: Human touch will always be a key part of your business. Not every single part of your revenue cycle can (or should) be automated, but with DCS’ Patient Billing solutions, your patient collections workflow will be.
Let's explore how automating your patient billing process helps DSOs like yours overcome workflow challenges and improve overall operational performance to give you happier patients, a more efficient staff, and better cash flow.
Key takeaways for automating your DSO:
- Organization and efficiency come from consistency
- Automating patient billing does not prevent your team from presenting treatment and costs to patients, it supports it
- Automated systems can be set up fast to get you even faster results
The importance of standardizing workflows in DSOs
Consistency and efficiency are the cornerstones of any successful multi-location business, and DSOs are no exception. When workflows differ from location to location, the results are often chaotic. The consequences of this chaos are:
- Patients receiving varying levels of quality of service, souring their experience and eroding their trust in you
- Billing becoming error-prone, causing delays in claim reimbursement and patient payment
- Overall operational quality suffers, leading to patients seeking out other providers… in other words, losing your source of revenue
If you’re familiar with DCS, you know that we find standard operating procedures (SOPs) are essential for continued success. Part of creating the most effective SOPs is having streamlined systems to start with, and then updating and simplifying processes when needed.
Related: Elevate your DSO revenue: DCS eliminates these 5 problems for you
Looking to simplify patient billing? Adding automation to that part of your revenue cycle is an easy way to optimize that process.
By automating your patient billing, you can achieve the consistency you need without overloading your team. Here’s how…
What happens when you automate patient billing as part of your operations
Let’s break down patient billing as a part of your DSO’s operations and see why and how it should be automated for maximum impact. 
Collecting from patients is a crucial part of your overall revenue. But the process behind it can’t be purely logistical — you have patients’ feelings involved. It might seem backwards to automate patient billing to improve their experience because that feels like you’re removing the human touch. But that’s not necessarily the case.
When you automate your patient billing, you’re making the payment part easy and convenient for patients. And with this part of the revenue cycle taken off your team’s plate, they’re actually able to spend more time presenting treatment to patients, and also giving them breakdowns of their out-of-pocket estimates.
So when a patient gets that automatic billing statement via text, they’ll remember, “Oh yeah! They already explained to me why I owe this much.” And then they’ll click the link in the message to pay online.
But let’s get even more specific about patient billing challenges, and how automation solves these core problems:
The patient billing challenges:
Printing and mailing statements and payment reminders is tedious and costly — postage and paper prices keep going up and up, plus the hours your dental team spends each week on this critical but time-consuming task.
And you can’t depend on snail mail to delivery bills reliably. It’s too easy for a paper bill to be forgotten or discarded before a patient gets around to writing a check and putting it in the mail.
The less convenient it is for patients to pay, the longer it takes and the less likely they are to do it. Make payment easy, and your patients will be quick to pay.
Why you should automate patient billing:
Your patients will be billed automatically and electronically, then they can easily pay online at any time of day or night, every day of the year — even on weekends and holidays when your office is closed.
Those who don’t pay right away will continue to receive automatic friendly payment reminders via text or email with a direct link to pay.
After payment, DCS Patient Billing will automatically write-back to your patient management software (PMS). This makes patient billing hands-free for your team, from post-claim reimbursement to the direct deposit at your bank.
And the set-up is quick and easy. We have it ready to go and integrated seamlessly with any major PMS within 72 hours..
How automated patient billing will improve your business:
You’ll get faster payments from patients, they’ll love that their experience has become vastly more convenient, and your team will be relieved from a host of tedious, recurring manual administrative tasks.
They’ll also be able to focus on presenting treatments and shaping a 5-star experience for today’s in-office patients, instead of chasing down payments from patients past.
Read more: Patient Billing Made Easy: Watch How Automation Improves Dental Practices
DCS offers automated solutions to streamline your DSO
Our goal is always to provide cost-effective solutions that provide real results. That’s why we offer DCS Patient Billing Solutions.
DCS Patient Billing will:
- Issue payment links via email or text as soon as the balance is known (no manual data entry by your team)
- Follow up automatically with regular friendly reminders by email or text
- Allow patients to view account credits and insurance payments online, and also pay their balances
- Accept payment from all major credit cards and wallet apps (such as Apple Pay and Google Pay) using any digital device (mobile, desktop, or tablet)
- Minimize the time and cost of issuing paper statements
- Monitor direct deposits and outstanding balances instantly
Automating these crucial parts of your revenue cycle is smart for any DSO aiming to drive more revenue through to streamlined processes and deliver the modern digital convenience that today’s patients expect.
Build a more profitable DSO with our automated solutions
To recap, when you don’t automate your patient billing, you’ll see:
- Lost revenue from errors
- Slowed cash flow due to bottlenecks in your payment processes
- Dissatisfied patients with an eroded experience and trust
- An overworked and stressed dental team
When you standardize your operations using automated patient billing solutions, you’ll see:
- Organized, efficient, and productive workflows
- Higher, faster revenue from patients
- Happier, more loyal patients
- A peaceful dental team focused on more meaningful work with patients, such as treatment presentations and their in-office experience
The DCS technology-driven approach to patient billing simplifies the day-to-day operations for each of your locations, and it also helps you standardize workflows among all the locations of your DSO to scale efficiently.
If you’re ready to take your DSO to the next level, we’re here to help. Book a free 30-minute consultation with DCS to learn more about automating your DSO.
Related Posts
Dental billing resources