The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice Of The DSO Industry – Episode 72

Group Dentistry Now recently sat down with dental consultant, Lois Banta, to discuss how eAssist Dental Solutions helps dental practices outsource their dental billing. To learn more email – Businesssolutionsteam@henryschein.com

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Our podcast series brings you dental support and emerging dental group practice analysis, conversation, trends, news and events. Listen to leaders in the DSO and emerging dental group space talk about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry has listeners across North & South America, Australia, Europe, and Asia. If you like our show, tell a friend or a colleague.

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Full Transcript:

Bill Neumann:

Hey, I’d like to welcome everyone to the Group Dentistry Now show, I’m Bill Neumann and I appreciate everybody tuning in today to find out what’s going on in the emerging dental group and DSO space. Without a great audience like you, we would not have a show and of course without great guests, we wouldn’t have an audience. So whether you’re listening in today or whether you are watching us on YouTube, we appreciate you joining us. We have a great guest up next, her name is Lois Banta. Lois is a highly regarded practice management consultant, she has 40 years experience in the dental industry.

Bill Neumann:

In this episode, we’re going to talk, we are going to discuss revenue cycle management and how eAssist, which is the nation’s number one leader in dental billing, has been helping practices of all sizes and shapes in this space. If you do enjoy this podcast, and you’d like to find out more about eAssist or find out more from Lois about what she’s up to, it’s eAssist dental solutions, you can go to www.henryscheindental.com/eAssist. And you can either schedule a complimentary discovery session, or you can learn more there. So I will have that website address in the show notes, but it is again, henryscheindental.com/eAssist, that’s all together. So without further ado, let’s talk to Lois Banta of eAssist dental solutions.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to the Group Dentistry Now show, the voice of the DSO industry. Kim Larson and Bill Neumann Talk to industry leaders about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. Visit groupdentistrynow.com for more DSO analysis, news, and events. Looking for a job or have a job to fill? Visit joindso.com. We hope you enjoy today’s show.

Bill Neumann:

Hey, I’d like to welcome everyone to the Group Dentistry Now show. I am Bill Neumann, and again, as always, thanks to all our listeners that are listening in on Spotify or apple or Google or any one of the listening platforms that we’re on. Or the folks that watch us on YouTube, really appreciate it. Without great listeners and viewers, we would not have a show and of course, without great guests, like our next guest, you wouldn’t be listening or watching, so we really do appreciate that. So next guest here is Lois Banta. Now, some interesting things here, which I don’t know, this could be a typo, but apparently Lois has 45 years of dental experience. So she probably started when she was about a year old.

Lois Banta:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I can’t remember exactly, but yeah, I was a child prodigy.

Bill Neumann:

There we go. Before the child labor laws were in effect, right?

Lois Banta:

Yeah, exactly.

Bill Neumann:

So, she does speak nationally and internationally, and she’s also the owner and CEO of this speaking consulting network. She has memberships with a lot of groups. One really that you probably know in the dental group practice space is the AADGP, so the American Academy of Dental Group Practice. So the other thing that’s really interesting is she’s won a bunch of awards, but the one I think that she’s most proud of, she’s proud of them all, but the prestigious Gordon Christensen lecturer recognition award. Which she actually just won, and she received that award this year from the Chicago demo society.

Lois Banta:

Yes. I was honored and humbled at the same time to be able to receive such an award. And it’s Gordon Christensen is someone I lecture for frequently and have a huge respect for him and his organization. So to be able to receive a reward, an award like that is life changing, it was amazing.

Bill Neumann:

That’s really great. And yeah, I mean, everybody knows Gordon and has high regard for what he does and his organization does. So, to receive an award from him is pretty cool. And then I saw one that I have to bring up because I’m a big fan of Adom, so I saw you had a lifetime achievement award. In fact, I think their meeting just recently ended, they just had their conference.

Lois Banta:

Yeah. Last week when I lectured, Adom was also on a panel. It was really great, tons of insurance questions so it was amazing. They sold out that conference, over a thousand people attended, they had a waiting list of about 125 people. So it was a good conference.

Bill Neumann:

That’s great. So people are ready to get back at the meetings, there’s no doubt about that. And yeah, certainly great to hear that you’re back on the lecture circuit as well. So did I miss anything with your background before we get going? I mean, 45 years, so I’m sure I missed a couple of things.

Lois Banta:

Oh, no, I’ve been doing this a long time and I’m happy to participate in your podcast today and bring any semblance of knowledge to the table that’ll help DSOs especially, get to that next level of business perfection.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, that’s what I guess everybody striving for, right? And it’s kind of a moving target.

Lois Banta:

It is. I’m telling you, you have to want to do it. When you go to dental school, you learn to be a dentist, you don’t necessarily learn to run a business. And when you’re a DSO, that’s a huge machine to keep running.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, it sure is. So, our audience is kind of a made up of the emerging groups. So clinicians that may have 2, 3, 10 locations, up to the heartlands and the aspens of the world that have the people in place to do just about everything, but they’re still trying to reach perfection. Revenue cycle management, so this is something that comes up quite a bit and a lot of questions around it, we get people that come to us that are seeking somebody to manage that, right? Revenue cycle management, we need somebody qualified. It’s hard to find people that have that skillset, that area of expertise. So talk a little bit about your background there, how eAssist can help, because again, probably one of the top issues right now with emerging groups, for sure, and I would say even the veteran DSOs that have been out there for a long time.

Lois Banta:

So much has changed in the last two years regarding everyone’s experience with the pandemic and the ongoing challenges of hiring, finding, training, and keeping really qualified business team members to help with that revenue cycle management. There is the struggle of finding good people who may not want to work in the healthcare field because they have a fear, for whatever reason their fear is real to them. The other added stumbling block that we’re experiencing lately is the government mandating that healthcare workers must be vaccinated in order to work in a dental office or any healthcare field. So there’s a lot of pushback in dental team members not being vaccinated and therefore being exited from a dental practice because they’re not following the governmental rules that are being set in every state. Right now, I’ve learned about five states that are mandating, the most recent would be Maine.

Lois Banta:

So that creates quite a challenge, especially in the revenue cycle management of not only finding qualified team members to be able to deal that and to be able to implement the systems in a practice environment, but also in finding those good quality team members. And so one of the solutions, and I’ve actually been recommending this for years. One of the really great solutions is to outsource that revenue cycle management process to trained experts who can keep the revenue cycle management beast machine running in a very accurate way. You can have a revenue cycle management system in a dental practice or a DSO, but if it’s not managed properly, it’s going to become a beast in the completely wrong direction down the road.

Bill Neumann:

Interesting. And I know you kind of mentioned that eAssist is really that solution, what is a typical group practice or a DSO? So who is typically doing that? Let’s say at a group that has three or four locations, who’s handling that?

Lois Banta:

Who’s handling…

Bill Neumann:

The revenue cycle management, if anybody really is.

Lois Banta:

In a dental office?

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, at a dental office. So, a smaller group.

Lois Banta:

Sure. Well, that would be your financial administrator or your insurance manager, or maybe even the practice administrator. If they’re understaffed, that one person is going to be handling the revenue cycle management in all areas. Ideally, they would have a revenue cycle management person handling the insurance claims one, one handling the collections, one handling the accounts receivables, one really monitoring and checking the checks and balances and making sure everything is being submitted accurately and that the adjustments are being monitored accurately, and then it grows from there. So if it’s a large DSL practice, you’re going to really have more than one person handling that revenue cycle management process. And at ESS, when you outsource it, you are outsourcing it to experts who have the expertise to handle all of those areas in one stop shopping.

Bill Neumann:

So is it a difficult transition? So, you had somebody handling this, they leave for whatever reason, because of the fear factor or there was a better opportunity outside of healthcare or within another organization. Talk about that transition process, it was done in house, and now you want to take that out of house. What’s the process look like?

Lois Banta:

So, the process of implementing an outsourced company such as eAssist, there’s a hierarchy of things that have to be done first, second, third, and fourth. The secret is making sure that the dental practice is willing and able to be able to outsource. So they have to have digitized x-rays, there are things they have to have in place in order to outsource easily. So they have to have electronic claims, electronic attachments. They have to have the strength of the internet. They have to be able to have a dedicated server for eAssist to be able to monitor and file those claims. And then they have to have that trust, and eAssist really… Not only do they bring the trust to the table, but they also bring the expertise to the table, that builds trust from the dental practices point of view.

Lois Banta:

So there has to be the confidence from the practices side, and the awareness that they need to outsource. And then eAssist brings to the table all of the checks and balances, and explains in a very detailed fashion how that process will work and is designed. They have this system in eAssist called the hub, and the hub generates these reports. Those reports can be sent to the practice daily, weekly, monthly, that update them on the status of claims, the status of all their revenue cycle management. eAssist brings more to the table than just dental billing, but dental billing is their number one beast in our company. They also bring a service called full schedule, so if let’s say they recognize, “Yes, we’re giving the money off the books and in the bank, but we also have to get the money on the books and schedule appropriately.” So they bring a service to the table that helps dental practices schedule appointments and track treatment plans, et cetera, and there’s so much in between.

Lois Banta:

But back to dental billing, before the claim even gets sent, there’s a team in place that does their checks and balances, to make sure that they have the resources in place, that the systems are in place, that they’re accurate, before that claim gets sent. So one of the biggest mistakes we make in a dental practice, is we send claims all willy nilly and we don’t really check the accuracy. And then the claim gets kicked back, it gets delayed, there are a lot of things that happen on that realm and eAssist has checks and balances that before that claim is sent, we make sure that there’s a proper note in place, that the proper attachments are there. We follow up on those claims where our goal is to have zero claims over 90 days old, so that’s a pretty big promise. And we do that very well.

Bill Neumann:

Is there a way with eAssist to take a look? So I’m thinking again, of our audience and we’ve got somebody that may have five locations. So are we able to take a look at revenue cycle management from location to location and almost benchmark and be able to say, “Well, the Smithtown location seems to be doing things a little bit better than the location in Monte.”?

Lois Banta:

Absolutely. There are checks and balances through streamlined reporting mechanisms that can determine how the effectiveness is in each location. I’m working with a practice right now, it’s a three location practice, and the reports that are being generated for those locations, ones the big giant beast location, and then there are satellite locations and we’re able to generate reports focusing on each location.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, good. That’s wonderful because I know that’s one of the concerns, we kind of want to slice everything up and look at it and then be able to send those reports to each location and say, “Hey, just to give you an idea, this is how you’re doing compared to these three or four different locations.”

Lois Banta:

And in the process too, Bill, there’s a lot that can be cleaned up in the process. So as a client comes on board, as an eAssist customer comes on board, we can have our checks and balances in place to identify where their trouble spots are very early in the relationship.

Bill Neumann:

We talked a little bit before we started to record this podcast, about how eAssist talks to the Dentrix platform. So, talk a little bit about the relationship there.

Lois Banta:

So, eAssist is now embedded in Dentrix, which means that as the revenue cycle management reports are generated and the statistics are gathered, once a statistic goes in a certain direction, it’s almost like a little alarm bell that will go off and a little popup will enter into their software that says, “Hey, you’re having some challenges with your revenue cycle management, you may want to reach out to eAssist to see about outsourcing some of the things that are causing you to get bogged down.” It’s a really great resource, and it’s also an opportunity for the dental practice or the DSO to recognize it early, rather than when it’s too late. “Hey, we need to change directions a little bit, and we need to enhance how we’re monitoring our revenue cycle management.”

Bill Neumann:

That’s great, that’s great to know. What a great idea, that’s a plug in, it’s almost something there. There is a reminder, it’s going to kind of benchmark things a little bit, and if you need the assistance, it’s almost like a warning, right?

Lois Banta:

Yeah, exactly.

Bill Neumann:

So, let’s move. You’ve got your consulting hat on always, right? So, as we move away from revenue cycle management, let’s talk a little bit about the biggest issue we hear today. So, I just came off of the DSO leadership summit we did in San Francisco, and besides culture, I think we threw culture around more than anything, which is huge. But staffing issues, right? So, whether it’s recruiting, whether it’s retention, a combination of the two most likely. Talk a little bit about those staff shortages, huge challenges right now, especially on the administrative side, clinical and admin side, but specifically on the administrative side. Can you just talk a little bit about what you’re seeing and whether it’s outsourcing or how to handle that?

Lois Banta:

I just feel very strongly that we have an epidemic of short staff in the business side right now, and we need to have our ducks in a row and plans in place to be able to handle that. So there’s two ways to handle it. One of course, the most brilliant way is to outsource the things that you can outsource from the dental office, so that when you hire these not necessarily highly qualified team members, you can focus on the relationships shot side of the dental practice. So you free the dental team member up to have face to face encounters with the patient, and then the behind the scenes machine is running 24/7. So, there are so many mandates coming down the pipe on requirements to hire people in the dental office and that they have to be vaccinated, and the healthcare industry has gotten a lot more complicated. The insurance industry has gotten a lot more complicated, and no longer can we just hire someone off the street to be able to run the front office without some sort of advanced knowledge of the insurance strategies and how insurance claims and processing actually works.

Lois Banta:

Even the EFT payments and the balancing of all of those insurance payments has gotten so much more complicated, and eAssist, their outsourcing service has checks and balances. We have an accounting division that will help them balance their EFT payments in their own checking account. So, I’ve heard every story on a planet from, “Look Lois, if I have enough money in my bank account to pay my bills at the end of the month, we’re doing great.” But you’re not doing great, you’re turning the machine, but you don’t understand the machine. You have to understand the machine or have the wherewithal to outsource those services to the experts in the industry who can help your machine run and move forward.

Bill Neumann:

Do you find that there are more companies, more dental practices groups, outsourcing now than ever before? And if so, is it just because they can’t find people or because it’s a better option or a combination of the two?

Lois Banta:

It’s really a combination of the two, and I see a huge increase in outsourcing now. And I think the increase comes from the fact that outsourcing is working, right? And so that builds trust and a confidence that if outsourcing is working, and the claims are being processed in a timely manner, and the money is getting off the books, that then will breed more confidence in that process. And combined with not being able to find highly qualified revenue cycle management experts to work in the dental practice, for me it’s a no brainer. Outsource it, and then save the energy in inside the practice to focus on building relationships with those patients and collecting the out of pocket at the time of service, and then everything else can be outsourced.

Bill Neumann:

As far as the type of group that would be outsourcing, my impression is that, “Oh, it’s a smaller group, that they just don’t have people that have that expertise,” or when you’re smaller, you outsource, right? Until you get to scale and then you hire and bring somebody in house. Are you finding that or do you see some larger groups that are outsourcing as well?

Lois Banta:

I’m seeing an increase across the board. Smaller practices, one doctor practices, multi-location practices, specialty practices, and large group practices. It is increasing across the board, the outsourcing.

Bill Neumann:

Really? And did you find that because of COVID, did that accelerate things? Or was that even pre COVID that you saw it?

Lois Banta:

COVID accelerated that, pre COVID it was on the rise, COVID totally accelerated it. Because if you think about this, a team member that can work from home to be able to utilize that outsourcing service, is the machine that keeps on running. So, the outsourcing of getting that money off the books and in the bank, especially during COVID, became a huge, important part of the process of keeping the doors open.

Bill Neumann:

Really interesting. Yeah, it’s amazing how things have changed in such a relatively short time. And to your point, COVID really kind of accelerated some of the change that was already going on.

Lois Banta:

Yeah. When Dr. Anderson founded eAssist, he really wanted to solve a problem in his multi-location practices of getting the claims paid, and he couldn’t find qualified people. And so he told a couple of friends and that grew into the thousands of eAssist customers that we have now. Is it an increasing need? I don’t see it going away anytime in the near future.

Bill Neumann:

Yeah, for sure. That’s great, and the integration with Dentrix and some of the things, I think that Henry Schein will bring to the table to enhance what you’re already doing at eAssist is going to be great. And the fact that I think eAssist even prior to the Henry Schein one acquisition, hired somebody on as a consultant to see, “Hey, how can we help out? There are issues that are going on with our customers that maybe eAssist doesn’t address directly. But Lois, you can come in and help, and if products need to be built around that, then you’ll see the opportunity.”

Lois Banta:

And probably one of the most rewarding things I do is to have these one-on-one conversations with eAssist clients when they’re struggling in an area that doesn’t have to do with the revenue cycle management. And it’s incredibly rewarding to help them get their aha moments, and to help them lower their stress and increase their profitability in the long term.

Bill Neumann:

How does that work? If I’m a customer, I’m a client and I’m working with the eAssist, and there are these issues that I am having, our group’s having, but maybe they’re not tied to revenue cycle management. Let’s talk about, you mentioned it earlier, and you mentioned Maine being one of the newer states about the recent mandates for vaccinations. And I think the date for a lot of them anyway, is October one, right?

Lois Banta:

That’s right, [crosstalk 00:21:45].

Bill Neumann:

As we record this, we’re right before that, but by the time this is published, we’re going to be really close to that date.

Lois Banta:

The three states I know about firsthand are Illinois, Tennessee, and Maine, only because I’m having conversations with those clients and they have to either be vaccinated or be tested weekly for COVID.

Bill Neumann:

Okay.

Lois Banta:

And have proof of testing, or they can no longer be employed in the healthcare industry and that has been mandated by the state government. So, it’s wreaking a lot of havoc in our industry, in the government getting involved in that process. But it’s not something that we shouldn’t pay attention to, we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got our ducks in a row. And I recommend that your listeners, check with your state to find out if it’s been mandated. They will get communication from the government officials at the dental practice if that state has been mandated to show proof of fully vaccinated team members in order to work in the practice.

Bill Neumann:

And you made a really good point there. And again, it’s probably different state to state, is when you see mandatory vaccination, sometimes it’s or weekly testing.

Lois Banta:

Yes.

Bill Neumann:

So they don’t necessarily need to be vaccinated, but if they’re not, they need to be tested weekly. And so, whose responsibility is that? Is that the practice’s responsibility? Is that the employee’s responsibility? So, a lot of questions around that.

Lois Banta:

What I’m discovering so far is that it’s the practice’s responsibility to know what their state is mandating, and then to be able to deliver that information to each team member in a timely manner.

Bill Neumann:

And this changing.

Lois Banta:

[crosstalk 00:23:27] our company is going to be aware of that, make use of your HR resources, make use of your state government resources.

Bill Neumann:

It’s good to know, and it’s something that you constantly have to stay on top of because it seems like, let’s say daily, but sometimes it feels like hourly, things are changing.

Lois Banta:

Oh, it’s a revolving wheel right now, it’s hard to keep up with it actually.

Bill Neumann:

Yep. Another responsibility that the groups have, right? So, we covered the mandates. Let’s talk a little bit about, again, we’ve been touching on it the whole time, outsourcing, but how does outsourcing business services work? So, whether it’s revenue cycle management or anything else, it seems like this is a really… It’s an option that makes a lot of sense, when you’re in this, you have issues where you just can’t find people. Whether again, it’s a retention issue. Whether people just are fearful of going back to work. We have a lot of jobs open, but a lot of people just don’t seem to want to work for whatever reason. And again, that’s a COVID thing, right? That kind of changed people’s priorities, whether they’re maybe getting some more money than they used to from the government, kind of a combination of everything.

Lois Banta:

Oh, that’s exactly what happened. They were making more money not working and staying home, so it motivated them to not come back. Even the interviewing process, Bill, has been so complicated because unemployment mandates that you must at least seek out interviews, and they can schedule the interview and they’ve been ghosted many times. So it creates this huge frustration in the industry of not only finding good quality candidates, but making sure that the interviewee shows up for the interview. And so, it’s created this vicious cycle of frustration for dental practices of every single size.

Lois Banta:

And one of the things I teach in my consulting is you got to write the right ad, you have to motivate someone or inspire them to contact your office, to be able to look for a position like that, right? So it starts with writing the right ad, but then you have to inspire them to keep that interviewed appointment. And then the testing process, you have to make sure that there’s a training and orientation process to be able to, if you’re teaching skills, to have the systems in place to those skills as they’re working in the dental practice. No longer can you just hire someone and plop them in front of a computer and say, “Good luck,” it’s a lot more complicated now, there has to be a training process in place.

Bill Neumann:

This is some great insights. So we again came off the DSO leadership summit last week, and we had a panel on recruitment and retention, of course, a lot of questions around that. What are your thoughts on once you interview somebody, how quickly should you get back to them? Should there be multiple interviews? Do you make an offer right away? I mean, if somebody’s there, they actually show up for the interview, chances are they’re interviewing with other dental practices, DSOs, they’re going to have multiple offers. So, what about timing on things like that?

Lois Banta:

Yeah. And you bring up a good point Bill, because what I’ve seen in the industry is hiring the warm body on the spot because they’re afraid some other dental practice is going to snap them up, and then you lose focus on whether or not they have the proper expertise that they bring to the table. You tend to kind of cloud your vision as to whether or not they present themselves professionally in a dental office. So, then you get into this epidemic of hiring the warm body. And now you’ve got a different problem to deal with because maybe that person isn’t going to be dependable, or maybe they’re not going to have the right verbal skills, or maybe they don’t bring the best knowledge base to the table and they don’t have this knowledge of the software system they’re going to be required to work on.

Lois Banta:

So you plop them in front of a computer and you say, “Okay, here’s the user’s manual. If you have any questions, contact live chat.” That’s not the going to help, and then people make tons of mistakes or you’re also at risk of somebody who’s been brought into work in a practice that’s been there less than six months, now they’re training the new person coming on board and they barely know the software. So, it’s created an epidemic of unqualified people doing a very hard job, and trying to get up to speed quickly, and then the panicked syndrome of hiring the warm body because maybe they’re going to have 12 interviews that day, and they’re going to just go with the one that pays them the most money. And then we started getting into an epidemic of paying of our overhead increasing greatly because we’re paying good money for people who don’t really know how to do the job.

Lois Banta:

So it really starts with writing the right ad, and the interviewing protocol that a practice should have in place, the telephone interview, the physical interview. So I want to know how professionally they present themselves for an interview, if they came in flip flops and a t-shirt, probably not going to present as professionally as we need for that director of first impressions position. I could talk 12 hours on the hiring process, and in a nutshell, you’ve got to do your due diligence. In a nutshell, you have to have your systems in place for how you want to proceed in running a business, and then outsource the things where you need more expertise in the help of revenue cycle management especially.

Bill Neumann:

And it’s a great point because I think with revenue cycle management, I mean, it can be taught, but there’s a lot of education that goes along with that. And to find somebody off the street, so to speak, that has that skillset is probably going to be next to impossible.

Lois Banta:

Right? Well, it’s like hiring a new dental assistant. One of the things I learned early on in my consulting career, is those practices that literally took a photo picture of a trace set up, had a better success advancing a dental assistant in their training, right? So, in the business systems in a practice, I created a cheat sheet notebook. So if I got run over by a Mac truck when I worked in the dental office, somebody could come in and easily fill in my shoes by looking at my cheat sheets. So, the training process, you can’t train someone verbally one day and expect them to perform at an expert level. It’s a process, it takes a while, you’ve got to have checks and balances. And then a buddy system or a trainer trainee system that will help kind of check their homework, so to speak, to make sure that they’re implementing the systems in the preferred method of that practice or that DSL.

Bill Neumann:

Great stuff. I think I’ve got one last question for you here, and this is really wrapped around your position at eAssist. So, let’s say again, I’m an emerging group or could be an established DSO or I’ve got one practice and I just happen to be listening to this show. Because we have a lot of those, what I call DSO curious docs that maybe own a practice and they’re kind of going, “Hey, this sounds good but I want to find out more.”

Lois Banta:

We have virtual consulting that we offer where you can get three one hour coaching calls from us to focus on a specific pain point that you’re having. We also have in office training, which is two and a half days onsite to address one or two problem areas in your practice, and that includes three one hour coaching calls. And then we have what I call the Cadillac version, which is 12 months, three visits onsite, two and a half days each time, followed by 12 months of one hour coaching calls, unlimited email, texting, questions, et cetera. And every single type of consulting service we offer is customized specifically to meet the needs of that client. So we don’t come with our big book of consulting rules, we take and we interview you as much as you’re interviewing us, and identify where you’re struggling, and then we design the consulting experience to customize the pain points of that specific client.

Bill Neumann:

Excellent. So, did I miss anything, Lois, before we end the podcast, I want to make sure that, given your vast amount of experience, I want to make sure we haven’t missed anything.

Lois Banta:

Well, really to encourage dental practices, DSOs, large group practices, to look internally and take the temperature of how things are working, make a list of what’s working well and make a list of what’s not working well. And that will deliver to you whether or not you need to decide to take it to the next level of outsourcing your revenue cycle management or going as far as hiring a consultant, a coach, to help you through some of these pain points. [Crosstalk 00:32:20] internally.

Bill Neumann:

I think those are great points. I mean, can we kind of look at what we covered today? We talk about pain points, revenue cycle management’s right up there, I would say maybe what does trumpet is the recruitment and retention issues with staff. So, that has to be the number one issue.

Lois Banta:

Yeah.

Bill Neumann:

But rev cycle, I think is one of those areas where just trying to find qualified people to handle that the right way, is a huge, huge challenge. So I’m glad we’re able to cover that, it’s great to know that eAssist is there to actually provide that outsource solution, and that they have a resource like you, Lois, in case they have other issues where they can lean on you and your years of expertise to really help them. First off, Lois, thank you for being here. Appreciate your time, we appreciate eAssist being a part of this, the Group Dentistry Now show podcast. And of course, Henry Schein one’s recent acquisition really, really cool. And I’m really excited to see how you can leverage that relationship and all the resources that Henry Schein has going forward.

Lois Banta:

Yes, thank you. And thank you for having me on and it was a pleasure.

Bill Neumann:

Yep.

Lois Banta:

You’re a great interviewer, Bill.

Bill Neumann:

Oh, thank you. Well, it’s easy when we have somebody that has such great knowledge and it’s interesting. Again, I told Lois this years ago, I ran into her again, it’s hard to remember all the shows through the years, but believe it was right before an ADA meeting in San Francisco at a networking event. But I remember seeing you speak in one of the events and really happy to have you on the show, kind of an honor.

Lois Banta:

My pleasure. The honor is mine, thank you.

Bill Neumann:

And so thank you all for listening or watching us today on the Group Dentistry Now show. I’m Bill Neumann, And until next time, we will see you.

Speaker 2:

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