USPS postage rates just keep going up and up! Eliminate the expense with automated dental patient billing, which sends bills and reminders instantly — and hands-free. Start today and have paperless billing within a week.
According to USPS:
“The U.S. Postal Service filed notice with the Postal Regulatory Commission of mailing services price changes to take effect July 14, 2024. The new rates include a 5-cent increase in the price of a First-Class Mail Forever stamp from 68 cents to 73 cents.”
As the cost of postage increases — again — dental professionals are increasingly feeling the financial pinch. Many dental offices still send paper statements to patients, and though this cost increase seems small, those nickels will add up quick when you’re sending hundreds of bills and reminders.
If your office is also still using the post office’s “snail mail”, consider this…
When you have a paperless dental practice, your postage expenses will decrease, giving you the opportunity to reallocate those funds to new equipment, office improvements, or team bonuses. An easy way to cut out a huge chunk of your postage expenses? Automate your patient billing process with DCS Patient Billing.
When you automate your patient billing, savings on postage is just one of many benefits you’ll see. Let’s take a look at what more you’ll get…
How will the postage rate increase affect your dental practice?
We asked our Assistant VP of Strategy & Special Projects, Will Snipes, for his two cents (forgive the pun!) on the increasing postage rates:
“73¢ for a stamp is crazy. Add in paper, ink, envelopes, and your people’s time… it’s going to cost around $2–$3 per patient statement.”
If you’re seeing 50 patients per week, that’s up to $630 per month to mail out statements. Add mailing second and third payment reminders to slow-to-pay patients, and your total cost is even more.
That’s at least $7,560 per year!
Think of how else you could spend that much money. You could repair equipment, get new (more useful) office supplies, or give your team raises — or you could automate your team’s entire patient billing process.
Related: How to prioritize dental practice expenses: What’s most important?
Will continues:
“For $700 per month, you can send unlimited invoices and reminders by text, and do email outreaches. You’ll also get paid faster, and all of it will be automatically reconciled in each patient’s ledger within your patient management software.
Plus, you’ll get our free merchant services add-on, so you won’t be pummeled by transactional fees. It just seems too good to be true — but it’s good and true.”
You might be thinking, “So you’re telling me to spend the $700 I saved on postage on services that do the same thing?” 
Nope! First of all, most DCS Patient Billing customers pay less because they bundle it with our other RCM solutions. Or, they get DCS Patient Billing for their group practice or DSO, so they enjoy a volume discount. Read more about our patient billing discounts on this page.
Automated systems like DCS Patient Billing get you paid faster, are more reliable than snail mail, more convenient for your patients, take a load off your team, and even increase the amount you collect from patients.
So instead of spending money on paper statements that may sit ignored on a kitchen counter — if they arrive at all — you’ll have digital bills and reminders sent instantly to your patient’s phone or tablet, and collect even more because patients can pay immediately online.
Why go paperless with your dental practice?
Dentrix illustrates the point best:
“Imagine a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. If you’re familiar, you know that paper covers rock, but scissors — that’s a different story. The analogy works, especially if you’re committed to becoming a paperless dental practice. Paper does indeed cover a lot. Even so, there are limitations to its efficiency.”
Going paperless is easy with today’s technology, and will truly improve your office’s efficiency—
- Instead of printing, organizing, and storing paper documents, your team work with digital files on the computer.
- You’ll spend less money on printer ink (which we all know is astronomically expensive).
- You’ll have less clutter in your office.
- It’s much less likely that a document will be irretrievably lost or thrown away.
So, how can you start going paperless at your dental practice?
Going paperless is just a matter of putting a system in place, then truly leaning into and taking advantage of the automated technology that supports vital functions of your practice.
DCS can guide the technical parts of the setup, and you’ll soon see how automated patient billing eliminates the need for paper statements, paper billing reminders, mailing outstanding balance reminders, etc.
And as we mentioned earlier, it will be so much easier for patients to pay you, you’ll collect more, and more often.
Related: Outsourced patient billing services vs keeping it in-house: The good, the bad, & the time-sucker
When you use DCS Patient Billing, the set-up will be complete within a week, and you’ll start collecting from patients immediately. Not only will your patient collections skyrocket, you and your team will:
- Save time, money, and effort in collecting from patients
- Provide a modern convenience for your patients
- Offer more cost transparency to patients
- Have consistent cash flow from fast electronic deposits
- Give your team more time to focus on in-office patients
Committed to automation? You can go all in on building a paperless dental practice by also automating your credentialing and patient scheduling processes. Automate all 3 for a discounted bundle rate with our DCS Expansion Pack.
When you automate credentialing, scheduling, and patient billing, you’re taking a huge administrative load off your front-desk team. You’re also modernizing these typically tedious processes for greater speed, accuracy, and efficiency. And your patients will especially love the convenience that automated scheduling and billing provide.
Implement paperless billing at your practice: Automate your patient billing process
The rising cost of postage doesn’t have to mean increased costs in your dental practice. Get proactively and avoid the extra expenses by automating your patient billing from start to finish.
Automated patient billing services will:
- Issue digital statements automatically, as soon as the balance is known
- Send balance notifications using email and text messages
- Follow up automatically with friendly reminders
- Accept payment from all major credit cards and wallet apps, on any digital device
- Monitor direct deposits and outstanding balances instantly
In short: Cut out the paper statements and bills, and let your patients pay conveniently and quickly online. Your revenue will skyrocket, your team members will have more time to devote to your patients, and your patients will appreciate the ease and simplicity — it’s a win-win-win!
Related: Learn more about DCS Patient Billing
Related: Watch our free Patient Billing Made Easy workshop
DCS provides end-to-end revenue cycle management services, including automated patient billing.
“You guys are amazing! I love to see those extra monies coming in from past due accounts.”
— Marcia Stewart, Stephens and Burrell Family Dentistry
Let technology collect more money for you: Book a free 30-minute consultation with a DCS Account Specialist today.
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