DCS vs CareStack: Let's compare two top RCM companies [3 of 10]

The dental revenue cycle management (RCM) industry has experienced an unprecedented surge in popularity, emerging as an invaluable resource for dentists striving to optimize their businesses.

The challenge is choosing the right dental RCM resource for your dental business. There are so many options, and many of them seem to offer similar services.

A reliable RCM company should operate as an extension of your practice, fostering collaboration and enhancing operational harmony. But they also need to provide visible results for your dental business. 

In this series, we will guide you through the RCM provider landscape, comparing and examining the top 10 dental RCM companies. The information included in this article came directly from each RCM company’s website. 

This article will compare DCS with CareStack: Two top performing dental RCM service providers. 

Discover each unique RCM company profile

Each dental RCM company has its own unique characteristics. How do they compare?

We’ve simplified the comparison between DCS and Carestack for you. We’re comparing what we believe to be the most valuable characteristics of each RCM company: 

• Years in business
• Location of the main office
• Company founders (dentists, office managers, etc.)
• What kind of customers they serve
• Which services are offered
• Pricing structure
• Google reviews by clients and customers
• Glassdoor reviews by employees and staff

The combination of these factors will give you a good idea of:

• How established a dental RCM company is
• Who is running the company
• How it’s being run
• How they support dental businesses, and
• The quality of their services

Let’s dig into these two reputable RCM companies.

Explore DCS as a revenue cycle management provider

Dental Claim Support (DCS) was founded by former dental office managers who saw a common problem across offices: Collecting from insurance companies feels impossible. 

Thus, they formed DCS as a dental billing solution, then evolved into a full-service revenue cycle management provider.

Year founded

2012

Main office location

Savannah, Georgia

Customer base:

• Dental practices
• Dental start-ups
• Groups or emerging DSOs

Services offered:

Provider credentialing 

• Adds in-network providers, so you get consistent referrals from popular insurance networks
• Expands locations — our dental credentialing services take care of all the tedious paperwork
• Credentials incoming doctors — our hands-off dental credentialing services get doctors credentialed and re-credentialed as needed

Insurance verification

• Updates your patient record 3 business days before the patient’s appointment
• Provides a detailed breakdown for every patient on your schedule
• Works with most PMS systems, including Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, and Curve

Insurance claims management

• Posts all insurance checks and electronic funds transfers (EFTs) 
• Maintains and analyzes accounts receivable (AR) — insurance aging reports
• Takes care of proper adjustments, secondary electronic attachments, missing patient information, deposit detail match/reconciliations, and appealing denied claims

Patient billing

• Issues statements and friendly reminders automatically
• Provides easy online payment options
• Monitors direct deposits and outstanding balances instantly and automatically

Oral surgery billing

• Collects reimbursement from all available medical and dental benefits
• Confirms that appropriate codes are selected from current code sets
• Ensures all supporting documents are attached for successful claims

Revenue cycle receivables

• DCS does not offer reporting and analytics as an individual service because they are already rolled into our claims management services.

Get a fuller picture of DCS services 

Pricing structure

DCS pricing is based on the services you choose to bundle for your dental business. The more RCM services you use, the less you pay for each service. Our tiered pricing is explained on our website.

Google reviews

4.9 of 5 on Google Reviews.

Glassdoor reviews

4.7 of 5 on Glassdoor.

Dive deeper into how you’ll work with DCS by reading our RCM Checklist. 

Examine CareStack as your revenue cycle management solution

CareStack was founded by Dr. Mark Huzyak and Abilash Krishna. Dr. Huzyak was an owner of three dental groups, while Abilash’s experience was in technology. Together they created a cloud-based software for dental practice management.

Year founded

2015

Main office location

Kissimmee, Florida

Customer base:

• Dental practices
• Dental start-ups
• Groups or DSOs
• Mobile dental practices
• Specialists

Services offered:

Provider credentialing

• No provider credentialing services offered

Insurance verification

• No insurance verification services offered

Insurance claims management

• Aging report: summary and detailed
• Insurance revenue cycle aging
• Claims module
• Insurance aging report
• Claims report

Patient billing

• Patient revenue cycle aging
• Patient aging report
• Text-to-pay
• Statements

Oral surgery billing

• No oral surgery services offered

Revenue cycle receivables 

• Analytics dashboard & scorecard KPIs
• Front office dashboard tracking
• Reporting
• Pre-organized workable lists

Pricing structure

Google reviews

4.2 of 5 on Google Reviews.

Glassdoor reviews

3.9 of 5 on Glassdoor.

Complete your quest for a stellar RCM company to elevate your business

To recap, we’ve compared the following factors of DCS and CareStack: 

• Years in business
• Location of the main office
• Company founders (dentists, office managers, etc.)
• What kind of customers they serve
• Which services are offered
• Pricing structure
• Google reviews by clients and customers
• Glassdoor reviews by employees and staff

This analysis of each company has shown that both companies have been operating for similar amounts of time, with DCS having 3 extra years on CareStack. They both serve similar customer bases, but DCS offers a wider range of services, including provider credentialing, insurance verification, and oral surgery billing. 

While CareStack offers an individual service that provides analytics and reporting, DCS provides reports for you within all of our services, mainly our claims management services. 

CareStack has a customer rating of 4.2 of 5 stars and an employee rating of 3.9 of 5 stars, while DCS boasts a higher customer rating of 4.9 of 5 stars, with a higher employee rating of 4.7 stars.

It is the customers and employees who make a company successful. An organization is usually more reliable if both parties are happy.

These factors will give you an idea of what you can expect from the services of an RCM company, and also their customer experience, which is key. You’ll learn more when you get in touch with a sales representative. 

When you talk with sales representatives at either company, consider the following questions to inform your final decision: 

• Was the company’s sales representative easy to get in touch with?
• How did the conversation with the sales representative go?
  • Were they pushy?
  • Did they ask you any questions about your dental business?
  • Are they transparent about pricing?
• What does the company’s RCM process look like?
• Were they clear about what the role of your in-house team would be? 
• Will you continue to communicate with a real person if you work with this RCM company?

If the experience of your first sales call is anything less than positive, consider it a red flag. 

DCS’ first priority is customer satisfaction and ensuring your dental team collects what they’ve earned. Janice Hong at JJ Family Dental says:

“I was reluctant to sign up with DCS initially because of the cost for a small dental office like mine, but I have to say it's been such an amazing service to my office. Their customer service has been always prompt and thorough and our account manager, Kristin, has been wonderful putting our insurance accounts in order. It was the best business decision I've made this year, and I highly recommend DCS to anyone who is considering to hire the third party billing service.”

You can supercharge your dental practice's cash flow. Book a call with our RCM experts today.