Episode 28- Sheri Jolly with Dental Support Essentials

Jordan Smith  

Hey everybody, welcome to the iProv Made podcast where we help you run a more successful practice. As always, I’m Jordan Smith, we’ve got a special treat for you guys today. I’m excited to bring Sheri Jolly from dental support essentials in to the conversation today. Today’s another solo adventure with me but RJ is going to be back soon. Sheri’s had a ton of experience, not only from a training, consulting, outsourcing, you know, billing, basically name it and Sheri’s done it within a practice. If you’re an owner, and you’ve come across this podcast, this is important, right? She talks about for a lot of owners, a lot-  of a lot of physicians that anything that happens in the front desk is just kind of a mystery land, right? If you’re an office manager or practice manager or somebody that works in one of those positions, she always talks about when one of the reasons that she started the company was she realized that, you know, a lot of people can be office managers and a lot of people can be a biller, but very few folks can actually do both. And do both well. So without further ado, I want to hop right into it. And, and and, you know, a real treat and pleasure for us to bring you guys Sheri Jolly with Dental Support Essentials. Hey, everybody, welcome to the iProv made podcast where we help you build a more successful profitable healthcare practice. I’m Jordan Smith, another solo adventure. This time, I promise RJ is going to be back. He’s on the mend. But for today, I am super excited to bring everybody a very special guest that was introduced to us from a previous guest. So if you guys listen to Minal Sampat’s podcast a few weeks ago, she was the one who introduced us to her and I am very excited to bring you guys, Sheri Jolly with Dental Support Essentials. Hey, Sheri. 

Sheri Jolly  

Hi, how are you?

Jordan Smith  

I’m doing great.  Hey, thank you so much for being on here. We appreciate it.

Sheri Jolly  

You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Jordan Smith  

Yeah. So just a reminder to all the listeners out there. You know, kind of Sheri’s organization, I think you guys are gonna get a lot out of this. But just to remind y’all our kind of thought process on how to build a successful practice is starting off from the from the accountability stage, we always say that the best news if there’s a problem in your in your practice, bad news is it’s all your fault. Good news, it’s also all your fault, right? No one’s better equipped to fix it than the people that are listening to this podcast. So once you figure out what the issues are, and take accountability, then it’s about taking a step back and making sure that the problem is not with your vision, you know, the vision is the big picture. That’s where the organization wants to go, that vision should be, should be, should be known by everybody in the organization, the person that answers the phones and takes out the trash all the way through. If you’ve got other partners in the organization, once you’ve got a clearly established vision, we always say then, it’s about figuring out what a coherent, and specific strategy is to help you guys get to the vision that you guys want to get to. From that strategy point. Now you can actually work on tactics. And a lot of business owners, whether they’re a dental office, or a plastic surgeon, or general, doesn’t matter. A lot of people want to work from tactics first. But we’re saying, Look at those issues and figuring out what the underlying symptom is by starting with a vision is the way to do things. very last step that we always say is, once you figure out what the tactics are, the tactics are just steps to help you hit your strategy. Once you figure that out, then you can work on alignment and empowering your team to make sure that everybody’s on the same page, whether it’s an individual issue or a larger systematic thing that’s happening within the organization. So Sheri, that’s just kind of the way that that we talk about how to build and how to maintain a successful practice. I think what you guys do over there dental support essentials, fits in perfectly with any stage that we just talked about. So before we get Go and tell us a little bit about your organization and what you guys do.

Sheri Jolly  

Well we we started five years ago, as a outsourcing billing company. We have been doing outsourcing kind of since it started. I know when I started there were four or five companies doing it now the scene is exploded. There’s all kinds of dental outsourcing companies out there, but we also have grown into consulting. And we have grown into training. And it’s it’s almost exactly like you’re saying, sometimes they know the problems with the collections, but they don’t know what the problem is. And as of yet, there is still not been a client that I’ve taken on as a billing client that didn’t need some kind of training, even in their office, even if they outsource. And so those are those are things that go hand in hand. And so we have we, we’ve kind of developed into, we can teach you how, or we can do it for you or both. And we kind of do it that way. There are some practices that really just need some tightening up in their systems. And then there are some practices that don’t have enough people to get the job done. And that’s where we would come in with the outsourcing. We’re seeing more of that now that with the pandemic, that staffing issues have, have really turned a lot of people upside down. And so outsourcing has become an option. Now learning how to implement outsourcing is a whole lesson in itself. But yeah, that that’s kind of how we evolved. We started out with I was an office manager. And I started realizing that I either had to be a biller or an office manager every day, I couldn’t do both. And I talked to lots of office managers, they all had that issue, like I’m either going to be the biller today, or I’m going to run the practice today. And the thing with insurance in dentistry is that we’ve been working harder to get paid the same amount. We’re not getting paid more, but it’s more work now to get the same amount of money. So the doctor, when I, when I first tried to solve that problem, the doctor wasn’t willing to add to the payroll, because our collections weren’t going to increase, I was just going to keep them going. And that’s when we started to kind of look at it. That’s when I started looking at other ways to solve the problem. And I discovered outsourcing was a thing. And I was like, Hey, I could do that. And that’s how we like, oh, man, I could do that. I’ll do that. And so that’s how we started.

Jordan Smith  

As easy as that. Right, Sheri? So tell us a little bit more about your background. So you ran a practice for a little bit, right? Well, yeah,

Sheri Jolly  

I actually started in dentistry in the in the 90s, in the mid 90s. And I’ve kind of I worked at the front desk, that that that office and that office, we didn’t even use computers, we were using a paper schedule. And we had yellow ledger cards that we hand recorded the the totals and the payments on. And then I went to being a chairside assistant for many years, I moved on I did I did go to hygiene school, but I switched into business school. And I became a practice manager. And I managed in a corporate setting. And I managed in a private office setting. And I realized that this issue is the same. This issue is misunderstood by owners practice owners, because it’s not what it used to be. And it’s also what’s leading to burnout. Along the way, I also you know, I got a college degree in business, I became a fraud examiner, because I’ve run into insurance fraud, the more that I dig into specifically billing issues, I’ve run into fraud and, and all types of things. So I’ve done those things as well. But yeah, it just, once somebody’s got my name, I mean, there’s a couple of accounting firms that, you know, every, every January, I get at least three calls from one firm, we’re like, you got to talk to Dr. So and so about their accounts receivable. So that’s kind of how, that’s how we started.

Jordan Smith  

Well, I love I love what you said just a second ago. And I know that most of the audience that are listening are typically broken up into into two camps kind of, you know, providers that own their own practice or are thinking about running their own practice or in that transition period. Or those office administrators, office managers, you know, slash CEOs. I mean, that’s basically the hat that a lot of a lot of those listeners are wearing is their, their, you know, whether they have the title or not, they’re kind of, you know, either in the CEO or CEO type of role. So I love what you said, which, you know, you got to pick your days you can either be a biller or actually spend time running and growing the practice but not both most of the time, right?

Sheri Jolly  

Absolutely. The billing turns into a full time. It will let the practice I was in it was big enough. We had enough hygienists and doctors working that it could have, I could I could have done it full time. And even spreading the pieces out. I mean, I’ve learned that there are distinct phases of billing that if you get phase one wrong, you’re going to spend way too much time in phase two, and things like that. But you still running the practice and billing are two different things. As you’re running the practice, you’re doing the HR, you’re making sure the patients are happy, you’re, you know, you’re making sure that the flow is happening, you’re making sure the order arrived, and the lab cases are there. And there’s so much to do there and just keeping the staff going. And the doctor. I mean, I always like to say that the doctor when I was a chairside, Assistant, the doctor would sit down, put their hand out and didn’t even have to say what they needed. I knew what it was there. And I put it in his hand. Yeah, you know, but you can’t do all of those things. And also talk on the phone to an insurance company and say, absolutely you do have it. Here’s the tracking number. Don’t tell me you don’t have it. And not it’s because you got to be the Bulldog sometimes. And you can’t change gears from being the Bulldog a lot of times to then going Hi, how are you doing? Welcome to our practice. So that’s another reason why the biller has to kind of be separated out.

Jordan Smith  

Yeah, no, that’s a great point. And, you know, I know in our business from the general consulting and marketing work that I prob does, you know, it’s, it’s so often you run into a practice that they’re, they’re busy, but they’re not making any money, right, and they want to grow the practice, but you talk to their staff, and they’re already maxed out, the doctors already maxed out, you know, so it’s, it’s talk about that a little bit. And, and, and kind of what is for the listeners out there that are listening to this that are already nodding their head and saying, yep, we’re there. You know, kind of kind of talk about what that scenario looks like. And, and if you are one of those practices that are busy, and you’re not making money, kind of kind of what is, what does that transition look like?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, one of the issues is that they kind of get stuck in, they kind of get stuck in the insurance runs them. So that that’s part of it is that insurances running them and stuff. Even even if you are a PPO, heavy practice, even if you take Medicaid, there are doctors who get stuck with insurance running them, and they don’t end up collecting, they don’t treat the patient anymore, they treat the insurance. So that’s one thing that I always work on is that the insurance doesn’t have to run the doctor or the practice. The other thing is, almost every time I’ve gone into a practice that has an accounts receivable problem I have usually the main biller is usually overwhelmed and on the you know, at the point of like going to quit, they’re usually their job is way harder than it needs to be. And a lot of that has to do with nobody ever taught them what their software that the doctors paying good money for, can actually do. And I’ve also seen them pay for extra things that they don’t need, because their software does it, they just didn’t know their software did it. And so they’ll pay for an additional $50 a month service and then another additional $50 a month service. And then before they know it, they’re paying an extra $400 a month for something that the software that they had already does. So there’s that I call that gadget overload. There’s so many times that there’s 20 ways to get something done. And everybody at your front desk does it differently. So I take it back down to when I’m consulting to simplify. Find out what your software does invest in that training, know how to do it. And you’ll find out that you don’t need a notebook full of handwritten and scribbles to keep track as a billing. But I’ve gotten behind office manager after office manager after office manager where I can’t find anything I need in the software. And I’ve opened the drawer and find the magic drawer full of notes. And I have to get that in there. So and most of the time that I usually am saying to the doctor, well, when they were doing their job, they did a good job. It’s just the job was bigger than they could get done. And that that has happened many times when accounts receivable gets upside down, particularly when it comes to insurance. Usually the job is bigger than one person. And they don’t want to pay for one person. Just like I said earlier, the doctor I worked for was like Well, I’m not going to get paid more like Well, you’re gonna start getting paid less if I do the job. But the point is that it’s more work. And so you have to figure out you have to pivot and figure out ways to streamline ways to automate and the software’s are coming. They’re they’re starting to rise up. They’re not all the way there yet. The insurance companies do not make it easy to get the information. It’s a good 30 minutes before you see the patient on the phone to get up A full breakdown. There’s only a handful of companies where you can get everything online and everyone else you can get some of it online part of it online. But you could spend 30 minutes sometimes getting all the information to explain to a patient what their coverages and what their cost is going to be. Now, in dentistry, we can and we should estimate a patient’s cost when they’re there, tell them what their treatments going to cost and not send them a bill later. If you’ve know anything about the statistics in bankruptcy, you know that health care bills are the number one reason the number one type of bill that people file bankruptcy on. And when a patient leaves your office with completed dentistry, there is no reason for them to pay you that you will get paid when they need to clean up their credit to get a loan. But you’re not getting paid before the guy that shuts off their cell phone or repossesses their car, or turns off their lights. So if you don’t get that agreement made upfront, or if you work really hard at sales and talk people into things they can’t afford, you’re just giving stuff away for free. So there’s a fine line there, too. You can’t just be sales, heavy and low down payment and things like that, you really do have to streamline it, simplify it and be very strong. And what I would like to say is unwavering in your policies. Too often they’re they waver Well, for this patient, we do that for that patient, we do know, the policies the same, the bill is the same for everyone. Now, I am the person who works in the billing, I am the person who works in the accounting software, I also have the fraud examiner certificate. So I want it to be as clean and as black and white as possible. And that’s what I’m going to tell you but I mean, it saves your your hide, it’s it’s kind of like the same principle as an HR policy where you don’t have you don’t cross certain lines with your staff, even though you might have known them forever. And the day that you do is the day that no matter how long you’ve known them, no matter how much you love them. That’s the day that it comes back to bite you. And the same thing happens with these financial policies. The day that you waver is the day that you get bit.

Jordan Smith  

No, I love that concept, you know that that also helps alleviate that, that kind of that tribal knowledge that somebody might have that if they disappear or they quit or they get fed up, or, you know, these days where they get sick, and they’re out sick for two weeks. That’s not that’s not an unfathomable thing with with everything that’s going on. Right that you’re not just kind of lost and sunk. there’s a there’s a policy in place. So you can plug somebody back in that position. So

Sheri Jolly  

yeah

Jordan Smith  

that’s it, right? Yeah. So, so that’s kind of what a, you know, a practice looks like if they’re, if they’re busy, but they’re not making enough money. Tell us tell us kind of what your most successful clients look like? Or what are some traits that whenever you walk into a practice or for listeners out there? What are what are some, what are some traits where you say, Manny, you might not be 100% there, but you’re on the right path, you know?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, I can say that my most successful clients, even in a PPO, heavy practice, have 40% of their collections happens over the counter. Okay. So that’s, that’s the, that’s one thing that I can know, a minimum of 40% of what they collect every month, is collected at the time of service. So that’s pretty darn important. The other thing is that their treatment coordinators, and their their staff is not afraid to not be 100%. Right. So I see a lot of people who, because they don’t have, you know, I said before that insurance doesn’t make it easy for you to get the information. And it is an estimate, but I’ve seen more than one person try to explain treatment and then go well, I think maybe I’m not sure. And then the patient goes well, then I think maybe I’m not going to pay till you know. And the problem is the dentistry is completed before we know. And so then then it’s not a priority to that patient anymore. And I don’t think that everybody is out to just rip you off. But I do think that it becomes the bottom of the priority list. There’s no interest, there’s no late fees. There’s it’s like Nah, I’m a little short, I’ll pay this Oh, I’ll pay it in February when I’m done paying for Christmas. Like those those things are real in dentistry. Just like the September slump when everybody goes back to school, like the dentist is the last place they’re going. So every like everybody’s slow in September. So it’s the same type of thing. So my successful offices have a have people who can talk to the patients about This is what your insurance has shared with us, this is what our cost is, we’re going to take this part, and if it’s different, we’ll settle up. They, when they send out statements, their statements are $50 or less, because they’re pretty darn close, which means they maintain their databases, they maintain their fee schedules. And they have a very strong eligibility protocol. Which means that they know before the patient walks in, what their insurance is, and what it covers. And if they don’t, that patient is a cash patient.

Jordan Smith  

I love that. No, and I like what you mentioned earlier, too, which is, you know, build failure into your system. Because it’s, it’s, it’s gonna happen, make sure your people are also okay, knowing that, you know, they might not have all the answers, like right away?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, you have to, you have to get rid of that expectation that you’re gonna have the answers, you’re working with an insurance company whose job is to not give you the answer. And so we what I have learned and experienced in my doing, what I do now, is that I have met a whole lot of very highly skilled self taught geniuses when it comes to insurance. But they – they’re, they’re like the equivalent of hackers, you know, remember, back back in the 90s, when the kids at home, were using their computers, and they learned how to do stuff faster than they were teaching it in school. We’ve got a little, little subgroup of dental front desk, people who are hacks that way. But it’s because they’ve been on the phone they’ve called they’ve asked, they’ve pressed all the buttons on the dial menu to see what it takes you to I mean, done. I’ve even you can even get in some of those Facebook groups and ask for the magic MetLife number, and you will get a phone number to a person in the United States. There’s a magic MetLife number.

Jordan Smith  

credible? Well, that’s one that’s that’s awesome. But two that’s we talk about typically, whenever there’s an issue more often not it’s a symptom of a larger problem. Yeah. So the fact that, you know, a lot of these people that you’re talking about are, they’re they’re self taught, because they have to if they want to get anything done in the amount of time that they need to get anything done. And I know we’ve had a quick conversation about this, which is kind of that lack of universal formal training for this type of stuff, right?

Sheri Jolly  

Yes, absolutely. There, there is a huge lack of it. There’s I’ve looked at I’ve looked at billing and coding courses. And every time you find a billing and coding course, it is Ford, medical, and even gets specified out medical, this medical that the outpatient inpatient anesthesia, you can get very specific and medical billing and coding. But in when it comes to dental billing, there’s not there’s just not a lot of education, a lot of formal training, and most front desk, people are self taught, which is really great when you’ve got the genius who can figure it out. But it’s not great when you have the person who’s just okay. And there was like, well, I tried it. I mean, I’ve come behind unintentional fraud cases where they didn’t intend to commit fraud, but they kind of got tired of, they got tired of messing with it. And they’re like, I’ll just do it this way. Because I know I’ll get paid that way. And then you find out Oh, guess what, you can’t build everything under one doctor, when there’s three doctors in your practice, you have to Bill under each doctor that did the service. But instead, you know, an insurance company comes back later and goes, I don’t understand how one doctor can do this many procedures in one day, and you get audited. And it’s because well, I knew we could get paid under that doctor. So I just build it under that doctor. And, you know, those types of things that you have to have. They didn’t know they were wrong. They were solving a problem. And that happens a lot.

Jordan Smith  

Oh, my gosh, well, that’s a that’s a huge, huge deal. So while we’re talking about kind of accountability, and, and and on that part of the conversation, tell me a little bit about from your experience, kind of how involved are most of the doctors in the business? You know, like they’re there. Oh, you know, we’re in front of patients, and they’re upselling stuff, and but how how, how were your most successful clients? How involved are those doctors actually in the business side of things?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, they’re involved in the bank account balance, okay. Usually, they’re involved and they know there’s a problem when the balance when there’s something funky with the balance or they can’t pay the bills. They usually don’t know until then unless patients are complaining. And then a lot of times the patients are complaining because they have a bill not because so a lot of times they’re very disconnected. My favorite experience with that, just that I remember so vividly is I went to an office and they gave me a grocery bag full of explanations of benefits, that they hadn’t entered into their system. They stopped. They had a million dollars in claims outstanding. But no, the office manager was overwhelmed as she was taking the checks off and taking them to the bank, they were all getting deposited just not entered into the system. So, so the money was in the bank, but the software didn’t say that they had that kind of money. But the other thing is, when I talk to the doctor, he goes, Well, the front desk is this just this Mystery Land? I don’t know anything about it. And he and I, there’s so many doctors that are that way the front desk is just this Mystery Land. Yeah, and I don’t know anything about it. And that’s kind of a huge factor in burnout. It’s also a huge factor in embezzlement.

Jordan Smith  

Yeah, I was fixing embezzlement and all the stuff, you’re talking about fraud getting taken advantage of. So in your opinion, because you’ve been doing this for a long time and helped out a ton of practices, kind of right, the ship? How involved should they be? Because, you know, if I’m a, if I’m a doctor, listen to this. I’m saying, well, I’ve already got so much on my plate. I’m a business owner, I’m a doctor, I’m a, I’m a counselor, I’m the HR person for so how involved should they be?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, they should be involved in knowing key performance indicators. Now, the difference between the business staff and the clinical staff from the dentist’s standpoint, is the dentist actually does clinical work. So he can evaluate the clinical people while he’s working with them. And, and he is also actually participated in what they’ve done before what they do, he’s done that before, or I say he it, it could be she. So they have a working knowledge of that person’s job, where they don’t really have a working knowledge of the job of the front desk. So that’s why I like to lay out I created some training courses simply because I I feel like there’s a lot of people out there that can can benefit from that. But there’s some key indicators. Like I said, if you’re producing a certain amount of money every month, and you’re not getting 40% of that collected at the time of service, there’s something wrong there. And there, that’s a specific issue. You know, you said in the beginning, like, Don’t look at the look at the overall thing. But I know that if it’s if the over the counter collections is less than 40%. And it’s a PPO practice, then there’s something wrong with the presentation, and the estimation of the patient payment. And I know that if your insurance claims are over 60 days, if you have more than two weeks worth of production over 30 days, then there’s something wrong in your claim submission process, because most claims get paid in in 30 days or less. So if you’ve got more than two weeks worth of production over 30, then that’s not that’s not great. And if you’ve got a lot of production, if you don’t just have little stragglers a secondary insurance claims over 60 days, then then you really do have an issue. And most of the times those issues are related to what happened before the patient arrived. How much information did we have before the patient arrived? Did they even give us the right insurance because that’s another thing that in the last few years, the people at the front have figured out in dental insurance plans have quit issuing physical cards, they issue virtual cards, where the patient has to go create a login, download a little piece of paper printed out, guess what, they don’t do it. And they don’t think about their insurance except for the day that they sign up for it and 10 minutes before they get in the car to come to your office. And they don’t know what their insurance is. So part of my eligibility training is just here’s the first question you ask the patient is, is this through your employment? And that will tell you number one where you can look number two, who the subscriber is and because they’ll say no, it’s through my spouse. Okay, so now you need to know the patient information and the spouse’s information. So these are these are things that we kind of go over, I think a doctor should I think a doctor should know that those key performance indicators happen. I don’t know that a doctor unless you’re a small startup practice, which I’ve seen a lot where the doctor does that kind of stuff. In a small startup practice, I could see a doctor being that hands on, but most of the time, they should just be able to see these numbers don’t match this. According to this timeline. These numbers don’t match here. And then you know where to focus on that and then you get dive deeper into let’s watch how they’re explaining treatment plans. Or maybe honestly, the most effective way to explain a treatment plan is for the doctor to explain it. If you always get a better result when the doctor presents it, but what that means is your software has to actually be set up to the fact where you enter the tree. I plan on the estimate spits out in real time. And once again, you got to know your software, and you got to know how to set that up.

Jordan Smith  

I love that I mean, the idea of the, you know, looking at the key performance indicators the same way you would, you would look at and evaluate the just the health of an overall individual, you know, during those regular checkups, you should do that on a regular basis with with your practice. So this this concept of having some dashboards where you don’t, even if you don’t as the the provider, even if you don’t know exactly how the thing gets done, at least being a look at it, to know if you guys need to take a step back and kind of reevaluate it. So you mentioned some kind of great key performance indicators that should be on a dashboard. Are there are there any others they should look at? And second part to that question is, how often should they be reviewing this as a doctor?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, one of the things that I it blows my mind is they will not check their bank account against their software. So one of the first questions when a doctor says to me, I have, you know, $100,000 in outstanding claims, all of a sudden, it’s usually when somebody has left, all of a sudden, I have $100,000 and outstanding claims. My first question is, did you get paid $100,000 less in that same timeframe? Usually, the answer’s no, usually, usually, that just means those claims are not posted, the payments aren’t posted. But that’s the first thing. I was like, Did you get paid less? Has your collections gone down? The other thing I always ask is, does your collection report match your bank account? They never check that? Well, I won’t say they never check that. But they don’t check that and a lot of times, if you just don’t throw with us, CPA that specifies and dentistry, you it won’t get checked. And so I always I always encourage you guys to get a dental accountant who specialized in in dentistry, because they do check those types of things. But that’s the number one thing that they shouldn’t be checking. And I say check it every week. But definitely not every not less than once a month. So the the other thing is they should never have the person, they should protect themselves by making sure that the person collecting the money and posting their payments is not the same person paying their bills and balancing their checkbook,

Jordan Smith  

Which I’m sure you see a ton. Right.

Sheri Jolly  

I see that. The other thing that if you doctors love bonus systems, I hate them. I hate them because I they’re a system that can be worked. And I have seen people work those systems, too. I have seen one staff member where they knew they weren’t going to hit their bonus that month, but they could hit it next month. So they took all the checks and put them in a drawer and waited to post them and deposit until the next month so they could hit the bonus next month. they manipulate the numbers that way. There’s that kind of stuff. Now, there are lots of consultants out there that say bonus I’m in but I believe that bonuses and here’s where I’m an outsider, I believe that bonuses encourage manipulation of numbers encourages manipulation of the patient. Like I like I said earlier, you don’t need to work hard at selling things people don’t need number one. Americans love sugar. And we will never run out of teeth to fix as long as Pepsi sponsors the Super Bowl. And, and we have obesity is our biggest health problem, we will never run out of decay to fix. We don’t have to sell that kind of hard sell. But a lot of people are numbers driven and you will see that slippery slope happen it’ll happen at the front desk, it’ll happen with associate dentists were super aggressive treatment doesn’t need to happen because you can make a really good living on bread and butter dentistry. Your whole life and and you’ll see you if you’re looking at doctors at retirement age, the ones that are not burnt out and ready to just leave the ones who are happy. They were the bread and butter dentistry doctors, they were the ones who fixed what was wrong and told the patient what we can do for you. And we’ll be here when you want to pay for it. And they’re they’re also not the ones who didn’t ask for payment either. They did get paid. They were straightforward. And they were they’re usually straight shooters. They’re like this is what it costs. Come to me when you’re ready.

Jordan Smith  

Yeah, no, that’s a that’s a great point. I mean, back in the day, you’re right. I mean, they just ran a tight ship. There wasn’t Invisalign or teeth whitening or The sleep apnea stuff that they could sell, there wasn’t all these ancillary services, they just had to run a tight ship and fix teeth that were broken. Right?

Sheri Jolly  

They did. And what has changed our industry is insurance. And we spend so much time running around and then insurance runs us. And then we, we make decisions based on what insurance covers. And so one of the things that I like to tell you is treat the patients need. And remember that the insurance is not going to be changed by you, it’s going to be changed by the people who buy insurance. So that means you need to educate the buyers of those plans. Open enrollment is coming up, every single front desk person is going to get at least two calls in the next couple of months about what plan should I buy, you need to tell them what a downgrade call clauses you need to tell them what a waiting period is, you need to tell them the things that you get yelled at by the patients for that is their insurance problem. And the other thing is, if you’re in network with their plan, your magic phrase is your insurance company has determined your cost is this. I love

Jordan Smith  

that concept. Don’t let the insurance companies run your practice. Now to the extent that that some of the listeners out there I know are shaking their head and saying yeah, oh, yeah. You know, exactly like they’re in that kind of doom spiral that you’re talking about. So I think this is a great transition and talk about how you integrate into their practice, procedurally. So let’s start off by just talking about for the listeners out there, who’s your ideal customer, if there’s somebody listening, that’s that they’ve been nodding their head for the past 30 minutes, listening to the things you’re saying? What type of folks do you like working with? Well,

Sheri Jolly  

if you’re if you’re going to be our customer for outsourcing, billing, we are usually we’re usually that extra person, that extra body that you need. So usually you have a tight ship, usually you have, you have somebody who’s great with your patience. And they’re either they’re usually spending so much time talking to their patients, they’re not getting the rest of the stuff done. And it’s that unpleasant pile that keeps growing will take the unpleasant pile because it doesn’t require patient conversation. It just requires, you know, a lot of computer work and some insurance calls. That’s that’s where we like to be we like to be that extra body that you didn’t have to hire. So we do it that when it comes to outsourcing, we also honestly, we began an eligibility service because it made my billers more efficient. My billers were chasing their tails trying to get the right information. And I was like, You know what, if we had just checked the eligibility for this practice two days before, then my biller would be done faster. So we actually that was one of those it created a need. So we do that too, because of people not having time to spend that time on the phone to get eligibility. So the ideal doctor is the doctor who has a good system, but doesn’t have enough people to get the get the job done. So we pick up in those spots. We also have another where it’s the smaller Doc’s, the startups who maybe can’t afford that really experienced treatment coordinator. And so that those people usually get our training. They they usually learn our training, they usually learn our systems, we usually help them set up their software and use it effectively. And there’s, you know, there’s one software that I just, I’ll just tell you, again, your software, but the rest of them, I just say you use it the way it’s supposed to be used. So

Jordan Smith  

That’s funny. So you can help with outsourced billing. I also do a lot of training, specifically for treatment coordinators, any other services that you guys offer that would help kind of fill in some of those gaps that we talked about.

Sheri Jolly  

We just I mean, I know that our training also helps people who used to work as a chair side who want to move up to the front and learn insurance, we have a lot of luck just learning how insurance works course. I have a I have one of my newest students and my online courses was a doctor who hired a person who was great with customer service and never worked in dental before. And so he was taking my how insurance what insurance does and how it works course and the you know, the top five reasons claims don’t get paid. And this is you know, that kind of thing. So that’s that those are the people who usually use the training and then occasionally, I get the client who just needs the massive cleanup project. And we’ll do those on a short term, a short term basis.

Jordan Smith  

No, I love that. So you know, just kind of recap. listeners out there if you’re a doctor that that needs help with billing or just want like an extra set of eyes. It sounds like, you know, Sheri and her team can help. You need training for any level of staff, you know, I would say, start start here, right? If it’s not something that you can do, or if you’re somebody that works in the practice that, that, you know, that wants any of those things reach out to, and I love the fact that you’re doing some training for people that want to move up and advance their careers. One of our, one of our other guests that we’ve had on the on the pod here is the CEO of a, of a healthcare practice. And he said, the way I started is I just did every job, I just did every job that I could write, I answered the phones, I took the trash out, I did everything but but you know, being a nurse I have done so that I would have a little bit of knowledge about every every so that eventually I could get to the spot where he was now which is running a practice with about 12, you know, provider owners in it. So I

Sheri Jolly  

well, and and to be honest, there was also a just like the eligibility service was a selfish reason to make my billers more efficient. The training course was also a selfish reason. When I hire billers with 10 or 15 years experience, that doesn’t mean they have the skill level. It doesn’t have any bearing on their skill level because they’re self taught. So that’s why I started these training courses as well. Because even my billers, I need to make sure they have a right a certain skill level.

Jordan Smith  

No, I love that. And just like you said earlier to, for dental specific, there’s just there’s not, there’s not a kind of a one stop shop for this formal training that you need to be able to do the things that you’re talking about. So that’s a, that’s a great point. So let’s, let’s again, talk to the listeners out there. Maybe they’re listening. They like everything that you’ve had to say so far, what? procedurally? And I know it depends how, how are you integrating into their practice, specifically?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, for most doctors, they don’t have web based software. So they have a server base, which means that they they need a computer that we can log into, and we remote into that computer. And we work it as if we were sitting there. So there’s a lot of communication by email, mostly, it’s email, and some phone calls back and forth about insurance plans and things like that. But we just log into your system, the information that we find we put into your system, the notes that we make, we go into your system, we send the claims from you. So we’re like I said, we’re the virtual person, an extra person in your office, your virtual team member. So that’s usually the biggest obstacle is getting logged in to that computer. It’s the it setup part is usually the biggest obstacle. And then occasionally, you have to redistribute duties. Most of the time, you’re relieving somebody of something. But I would say that it’s very key to make sure that when you relieve somebody of duties that you don’t do it as a you’re not doing a good job. And so I’m giving the job to someone else. I have in the past had a couple of doctors hire me to scare their staff straight. And I was like, yeah, guess Guess who’s not going to help me get the information I need from this patient now that they think that if they don’t, if they help me, they’re going to lose their job. You know, so don’t ever use an a consultant or an outsourcing company to discipline your

Jordan Smith  

That’s, yeah, that’s a great point that I don’t think we’ve talked about on the podcast before. You know, we always talk about engaging your team. And I want to, I want to transition over to that, because I think that that leads in, really, but yeah, if if you’re hiring a consultant or somebody from the outside to come in and scare your staff straight, well, you need to take a step back and figure out what type of organization you want to you want to run, you know, well,

Sheri Jolly  

and unfortunately for a lot of these doctors, they find out the problem is you almost always at the top and the doctor is the one who has to do most of the training. But I do know as a consultant, I have had somebody quit the day or show up just like I walked in said hi and they quit. I have had more than one staff that I took the first three days in their office just convincing them that I wasn’t there to fire everyone that I was, you know, every question I asked I had to ask very gently I had to, you know that kind of stuff because I’m there to get information. I remember one staff, they were all very worried. And I sat there and I looked at one of their biggest problems was they had one credit card terminal for three workstations. So they were always waiting in line to run a credit card. And I just was like, This is insane. fix that and you you won’t have This issue anymore. It’s like, it’s a credit card terminal, it says, and then then they, their scanner didn’t work. And I told the doctor, I said, I’m going to take your scanner out in the parking lot and run over it with my rental car. If you don’t get this fixed now, I said that the reason they’re behind on what they’re doing is because the equipment doesn’t work in this office. And they’re like, well, he’s we’ve been telling them that we’ve been telling them that I was like, Well, I’m here to tell him that too. But the point is that that’s what consultants are there for consultants are there to I love it when it’s something easy, like get some more credit card get get an easier way to process a credit card. I love it. When it’s something like, did you know that your software will do this, and this task that you’re spending 10 minutes on can take two minutes, if you do it this way. And that kind of stuff. I love those types of things. And I love at the end of my time with the staff, they’re like, Oh, my gosh, I can do my job. Like I’ve empowered them to do their job. But occasionally, engaging the team really does. I mean, it really does start at the top. And I’ll get a doctor every now and then who really just wants me to make them listen. And I’m like, No, you. The problem is you don’t listen, and you don’t lead. And so then your real training is leadership here. You need leadership training. So I mean, that’s my opinion, though. But yeah, I think that that’s one of the biggest misconceptions with outsourcing is that we’re here to, we’re here to fill in the gaps, and we’re here to relieve the pressure. But it’s not because people are bad at their job. It’s because we took people who never were trained, and told them to do this job that is really the life or death of a business. And this financial life or death of a business. And we don’t even spend any time at all teaching them what they’re supposed to do. They just have to figure it out.

Jordan Smith  

Yeah, I mean, more often than not, the issues are not an inefficiency with your people. It’s the inefficiency with the processes. Yeah. So I love that concept. So what what team members are typically critical to you being successful in a practice?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, usually the the intake team member, the person who gets the initial information is critical to me, that person, if I don’t get the right information, if I don’t get the right, I can’t build, we can’t build our insurance. So that’s number one. Number two, the the whole front desk is critical to us. But number two would be the person who’s explaining treatment and bills to the patient. And honestly, if that team members success is whether or not the clinical staff that works with them, because if I have seen enough times where the clinical staff is like, okay, we did the dentistry and then that person has to go back and interrupt the next clinical process to get the information they need to talk to the patient. So the handoff, that handoff is critical from the clinical to the treatment coordinator, that treatment needed to be entered in the room and ready to pop up so that the treatment coordinator can now explain the process of the treatment and the payment and all of that kind of stuff. But they’re not sitting there entering it while the patient waits. So but that is something that’s a huge disconnect, when the front and the back don’t work together. That handoff costs every office a lot of money always does. So that’s very critical as well. So those two people are the people we talk to the most about, because we’re usually we’re searching information, that type of thing, then occasionally it’s the doctor themselves, when we have an actual clinical issue that we are kind of going back and forth to the insurance company on where we have to be like, hey, I need I need clinical words here. I need you to tell me a clinical explanation. But that really those are the ones.

Jordan Smith  

Yeah, that’s perfect. So for listeners out there, what what advice would you get them if they’re listening to this, and they want to bring this up to their team or their other business partner or their boss, the doctor like what what are some suggestions you would tell them to get buy in from the rest of the team members that they need someone like you?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, the first thing you can do is just kind of point out. One of the biggest things that you can show is like if we lose somebody, our practice falls apart. You should never be in a situation where if one person gets sick, goes goes on vacation or anything like that the practice falls apart. There should never be anybody who it’s an emergency if they take a day off. It should never be anybody in your practice like that. And if there is it’s not, I mean, the only time it should be when the doctor can’t come to work when the doctor can’t come to work then we can’t see patients but At least not not restored of patience, we can see hygiene patients, but but the point is there really shouldn’t be anybody else on your staff like that. And if there is, then you have an imbalance and you’re just you’re flirting with fire there. So there’s that. The other thing is if you have a team member, if you’re a doctor, and your team member says, I need you to hire more people, listen to them. Now, the they might say you need to hire two people, three people. But if you’re constantly asking, why am I doing this, and you’re constantly hearing, I don’t have time, your staff has already told you that they need help. And it may be a combination of outsourcing and streamlining processes. And it may not be and if you are afraid of your staff, then you also need the help. Because then you if you’re afraid, you want to set you want improvement, but you’re afraid to talk to your staff about it, guess what, then, then you definitely need to make different changes and introducing outsourcing right away is not the is not the answer.

Jordan Smith  

No, that’s a that’s a great point. I love what you said earlier too, about listening to your people. Right? Yeah, I mean, they’re not they they you know, most more often than not, they’re not coming to you willy nilly saying that they need help, right? It takes a lot for any individual be vulnerable in a workspace. So if they come to you and say, you know, they, they they need an extra body or we need to reevaluate this. I mean to take that seriously.

Sheri Jolly  

And also, if you have to sit down and do their job for a day. I mean, just do it for do it from morning till lunchtime. Yeah. And tell me if you I have one doctor that I work very closely with a good friend of mine, Dr. Pascoe, she, she goes, when you start talking about insurance, my eyes glaze over, I don’t even want to know anymore. And I’m like, I’m like, Yeah, I saw the glaze. But that’s kind of what you just figure out. Like, when you realize how many phone calls how many times the phone’s ringing, plus, they have to talk to somebody at the same time. And you want them to concentrate on that you just pull out the EOB? Can you read it? Yeah. Just just see what you can figure out yourself. Because your your doctors, your smart people. So find out how you’ve got How are they set up for success? And if they’re not, if you can’t succeed at it, then maybe we need to change the process.

Jordan Smith  

I love that listeners. All right, I’m gonna challenge everybody that’s listening to this right now, especially if you’re a doctor, build some time in your calendar to do that in the next few weeks. Because I think, I think no matter what good better otherwise, I think that’s a great tip. And I think that’ll give you a lot of a lot of information just about what that individual goes through and kind of putting yourself in their shoes a little bit, too. So I love that. Well. Alright, Jerry, this is what we call the final round, I typically ask one question that we haven’t gotten to yet. And typically, we turn, turn kind of the spotlight on you and ask you to be a little bit introspective a little bit. So okay, I know we always talk about there are no silver bullets, right? Everybody’s looking for a silver bullet for success. And it’s not out there. Right. It’s there’s lots of lead bullets, but no silver bullet. Right. Yeah. So thinking about kind of your success, what’s what’s kind of one magic reset button, as a business owner that if you could go back in time, you would hit whether it’s implementing something earlier, whether it’s a book you read, or whether it’s a relationship that you’ve what what is one thing if you could go back, that that you would change, knowing the impact that it has on your business today?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, as a business owner, and an employer of women, women, my age women, I know women that I relate to my first five employees were all my close friends, Guess how well that worked out. So one of the things that I learned after a while was not to take the bumps personally. Hmm. And that business is business. Now, that didn’t mean I became a heartless you know, person, and then I was just some ruthless business person. But I remember one time I, I was crying to my mom, because I was, and I was like, This is going wrong, and this is going wrong, and nobody wants to do a good job and everyone nobody cares. And I just write paychecks to everybody. I mean, it was one of those rants. And she goes that sounds very personal. You sound like you’re taking every time someone doesn’t want to work in your job or someone that that it’s against you, Sheri she goes if the job didn’t fit them, the job didn’t fit them. And and then there were other issues in just learning Building. I tried some contractors that didn’t work, that kind of thing I, I was not afraid to fail, and I did fail. And but what I learned is that failure is not a personal thing. It is I tried it and it didn’t work. And I’m going to try the next thing. And if you take every disappointment and bump personally, you’ll never succeed, you’ll get overwhelmed, you’ll get depressed and you won’t make it.

Jordan Smith  

Hmm. I love that. That’s a that’s a great tip for any business owner out there. So well, Sheri, this has been a pleasure. I know there’s tons of information. I’ve got a whole page full of notes and things that I I wrote down. tell folks out there they’re listening to this, how,if they’re interested in you, or the company or you know, whether it’s, it’s it’s potentially working with you or not, how can they get more information about you, and dental support essentials?

Sheri Jolly  

Well, they can go to my website, DSE practice.com, they can find me on LinkedIn, I’m under Sheri Jolly there, you can find us on Dental Support Essentials on Facebook. And you can find me on Facebook, but I’m Sheri Miller Jolly on Facebook,

Jordan Smith  

Sheri Miller Jolly, we’ll make sure to include all those links in the show notes. So check those out. If you haven’t already, subscribe and share this specific podcast with somebody you know, if you’re listening to this, you know, share it with one of your other practice manager friends, or a doctor that you met at a conference, or share this with one person because there’s so many good nuggets of information that Sheri talked about that I think if you just take one of the 30 things she listed, and implement them today, you’re gonna see real life change in your practice. So do do me a favor. And if you’ve gotten to this point in the podcast, go ahead and copy and share this over to somebody and Sheri, like I said, well include all those show notes. And I look forward to talking to you more, personally. So thank you so much. We appreciate this.

Sheri Jolly  

Well, thank you for having me. It was great to be here.

Jordan Smith  

Alright everybody, Sheri Jolly with Dental Support Essentials. What’s up everybody? Well, a real treat for us. Hopefully, a big treat for you guys. And I know that Sheri’s message and what her and her organization does. I know that there’s at least a handful of you guys that just felt that Sheri was talking directly to you with some of the things that she was saying. So reach out to her if you have any questions, I would not hesitate to poke Sheri and her team over at dental support essentials. They do great work. We recommend them to everybody that we work with as well. So as always, like subscribe comment, we’d love to hear from you guys, if there’s guests that you types of guests that you would like to see love to be able to hear about that. Again, we do this for you guys. And a lot of the times it’s it’s it’s the listeners out there, it’s it’s you guys that are that are on the other end of the phone or the earbuds or the headphone or the computer screen that are giving us the best insights and giving us direction on on who and what you want to hear about next. So again, Sheri Jolly with Dental Support Essentials, reach out to them today. They’re great folks. And and like I always say a conversation is free. You’re willing to talk to anybody about their issues and and see if it’s a right fit from there. All right. We appreciate it. And until next time, Peace Peeps. Thank you guys.