126: Best Practices for Collecting All Your Accounts Receivable (AR)

Welcome to DSO Secrets. I know what it's like to be an entrepreneur in the dental industry. I've had my ups and downs just like you. There's so much opportunity to be excited about, but so few resources to get answers. From here on DSO Secrets, we get you those answers so you can change the lives you're meant to bless and achieve your personal success.

When I was working as an associate right out of school, I never imagined I could own these many practices with this amount of support. So thank you.

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You have this natural talent, this unique ability. Happy day to you and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I am Ken Kaufman, your host today and before I introduce my guest, I want to tell you how excited I am about the upcoming fall DEO Summit. The content is going to be amazing, the speakers are going to be amazing and I'm not biased, even though I am, I am speaking. Nathan, Chitty and I are looking forward to doing a great, a great one hour session on talking about how to use the P and L to leverage doubling your dental practices. Really excited about that and everything else about the summit. And I am really excited about our guest today. I want to introduce you to Kimberly. She's with the Bella AR and she is going to be at the DEO Summit. So let me give a quick chat, just a quick intro. Kimberly is currently the sales and customer manager for Abella AR. She's been there since 2019. She is inside and outside of everything going on inside the company, leading integrations, helping make sure the customers are getting everything that they need and has over time developed this great expertise in helping dental practices and specifically DSOs to collect their outstanding ARs. So they've got, for example, some of the things they do, they have texting features to get people to pay. And I know some of the large groups you're working with like MB2, NADG kids, dental print kids, dental brands and obviously you're going to be at the DEO next week. And Kimberly, we're just super excited to have you on the show.

Thanks Ken. I'm excited to be here.

Awesome. So I want to jump in and get started. I always ask my guests this question to get started. What led you into this DSO industry and what in the world are you still doing here?

Well, I love dentistry. I actually come from a medical sales background and I was telling people someone today actually that dentistry is just such a welcoming industry and I love the networking aspect of the DSO space and just meeting new people and Seeing, like, the development that, you know, is going on right now. And honestly, like, I'm. I love the brand that, that I represent. And we have a really, you know, I'm proud to stand behind that and just, you know, talk to, to more people out there about what we're doing.

Outstanding. Now, again, I want to make sure that everybody knows this because if they want to follow up and ask questions and they're coming out to the summit. So you're going to be there live, is that right?

I am. I'm going to be there Thursday, Friday and Saturday. So definitely will be attending the event the full time.

Awesome. So. So if there's anything in today's podcast episodes you have questions on, you can stop by and visit with Kimberly or whoever else from their organization is there, and you can get your questions answered. And they can even, you know, demo how they apply some of these best tips and tricks for collecting outstanding AR. Is there anyone else? Is Dr. Baird gonna make it this time?

Yeah, Dr. Baird is actually speaking. He has some speaking engagements there at the meeting. So he's gonna talk a little bit about where our company's going and kind of what's happening in our space. And I think Stephen in Contrera, he's gonna be there with me in the booth. And I believe he's here on the Facebook Live and he might be putting a direct link to book a time to just come and like, talk to us. If you kind of want to have like a private conversation and demo, we will make that time available for you.

That's outstanding. I have so much respect for Dr. Baird and for him founding this company. And I know because he used to be a great chairside provider and had built up a great dental practice. And then he's become an entrepreneur and developed platforms and services that dental practices can benefit from. So you're attached to a great organization and again, just grateful to have you here. So let's jump into some questions. Let's start out with this. You have the opportunity to see a lot of different DSOs and dental groups, and you've probably seen just about every flavor here on the DSO Secrets podcast. We like to talk about how if you've seen one dso, you've only seen one dso, because everybody's got their own different way to do things. What would be just right, right off the top? What would you say are some of the tips and tricks that you see that people are employing effectively successfully collect this accounts receivable that, you know, it's kind of an awkward thing where You've built a relationship with a patient, but now you've got to be a little firm and make sure you're sending invoices and collecting on those things. Walk us through some of the tips and tricks you see that are being employed and the most effectively and are creating the best outcomes.

Sure. I mean, it's crazy. You know, we all kind of know that the just paying any sort of bill these days is online, so why not make it more convenient for your patients to do the same thing? You know, statements are kind of the thing of the past. And we've kind of learned along the way that if you just make it easy and convenient for people to pay and give them some options, which I think is another trick, is that you're not just going after them and giving them an easy access to set up a payment to pay their bill, but you're giving, you know, some sort of payment terms to them. I always tell DSOs, even allow two to three months, even if it's not like a huge wide range of payments, get them to take the initiative to set up that payment. Because some payment is better than no payment right out of the gate. And, you know, everything is kind of centered around payment plans these days. You can buy shoes on payment plans, clothes on payment plans. So, you know, even though we want our money fast, you know, only providing one sort of option to patients we kind of feel is a thing of the past. And if you just make it easier for them to pay, you know, they want to do the right thing and take that initiative.

We live in the age of convenience, and we have big companies like Amazon and other things like that that have started to train us and our consumers. Right. The patients that are coming into dental practices, they're used to having things easy. And so if all of a sudden interacting with their dental practice and making a payment is difficult, we've removed the convenience and the chances of getting paid go down the more difficult and the more barriers they have. And to the degree you say, hey, let's take your payments, spread it out over three months, well, that means you're going to get a third of it today, and you got a good shot at the other 2/3, but you were getting none of it before.

Exactly.

And we always have to come back and remember that. Right?

Yeah. Or, you know, you have a $200 balance. It's like, you know, do you pay it right now, or can you not pay it and get nothing? So if you give them a couple options, you know, no one likes to have discussions about Money or call their dental practice and say, hey, are you willing to work with me? You know, over a couple months, if you can just provide that up front to them, they feel more comfortable and they feel more, you know, loyal to practice because they already see that you're willing to kind of give them a couple options and they don't even need to talk to anybody, which is, of course, the best way to go about things.

The absolute worst thing in the world is to have to pick up the phone and call somebody these days, or even worse, answer a call from a number that you don't know exactly. The texting and the online chatting and all of those pieces are so, so critical. So it sounds like you're seeing a trend where more and more technology is being deployed to collect AR to create this patient convenience. Any, anything else stick out to you that you see practices successfully doing?

Yeah, I mean, I think Abella is one of our biggest success stories is that we've collected over 20 million in over 90 AR during AR cleanups for DSOs. So, you know, even AR that is, you know, almost deemed uncollectible, we have gone out and collected it just, you know, during, you know, a trial period that we've done for groups or a short period of time that we've just worked that over 90, you know, let, let us take it and let us help you collect on that. Because, you know, one of the success stories is for North American Dental Group, we've collected, gosh, you know, I want to say close to $4 million on just over 90. So. And that was, that was dating back to 2015, 16, where, you know, that was just sitting on the book. So again, I think patients ultimately want to do the right thing. You just got to help them get there.

Yeah, that's a great point. And those are dollars that were hard earned, meaning a provider was there and assistants were present and technology and equipment was used and supplies and obviously the expertise of all the staff. There's such an investment that's made to create that great, safe, compliant patient experience, and you've earned the right to collect the appropriate fees. And to the degree you haven't like that, that's $4 million of hard earned work that hadn't been earned yet because it hadn't been collected. So that's a great, great point.

Acquisitions is like such a big thing in the DSO space, obviously. So depending on your organization, if you're acquiring a practice that has AR that's a complete disaster, you're able to integrate and just identify all those balances and pick up right where you need to to start collecting. So it's almost like we're helping you audit those accounts to go after that money.

Right. And then, and then there's some quick wins because we know in acquisitions, a lot of any type of merger or merger integration, the seller is going to take their cash out when they leave. And sometimes they even lay claim to some of the ar. And so to the degree you can be collecting on things that fall outside the agreement, you're going to be replenishing that cash up and that acquisition target much faster. You're not having to put cash in from your other operating companies. And if I sound like I'm speaking from experience, I may or may not be. No, mostly I am speaking from experience on that. But it's true there can be a cash crunch post acquisition because of the way that the working capital is distributed. So. Okay, cool. So I want to jump now to let's talk about what Abella is. What is a Bella ar? Give us some framework around that. And then we're going to jump in and ask some specific questions that I know our listeners will have. And then again, if you're listening in, feel free to jump into the chat and throw it in there. Or if not, remember the DEO fall summit. Kimberly and team will be there to answer any questions as well. So go ahead, tell us about what Abella AR is.

Yeah, in a nutshell, Abella is a patient ar scalable solution software for multi level and single practice organizations where we integrate with your practice management system and we start communicating to patients about an outstanding balance that's free of insurance claims. We've already done the legwork there. Should just send them a text message. Everything's customized for the organization or down to the single practice so the patient knows exactly who it's coming from. They don't need to download an app. It's a seamless process to just be prompted through the process to just set up their payment so they don't have to take any extra steps, which I feel is a big advantage because other companies out there, you have to like create a login or you have to do all these extra steps just to pay your bill. You don't have to do that with Abella. It prompts you along the way. They set up payment. Once we collect payment, we write back to your dental software. I will say a lot of our DSOs who have like a central team just prefer to post those payments. But that's just something that, you know, maybe that's we discussed that. And based on your needs, you know, you can determine what works best. But we follow up regularly through our processes. Like once they're in Abella and they're being communicated to, your team doesn't have to worry about who's paid and who hasn't paid. Abella knows that we're just going to continue to remind that patient to set up their payment. And if they miss a payment or their card, you know, falls off track and they need to update that information, Abella is again going to start communicating directly to the patient so that the team doesn't have to worry about those things.

So how much of the solution you're bringing to the table, how much of it is this tech enabled convenience solution versus how much of it is people behind the scenes that are functioning or making phone calls or sending texts or doing all of that?

Everything is automated. We don't have a team of people that make phone calls. Once we've integrated with your dental software, automate as much as you want. We can even automate the front end process to start trickling the patient AR into Abella. So your team doesn't even have to do that unless it's something that you want to assign to them. It's kind of split across the board for our DSOs. Some give the control to the office or the regional managers. Some just say, you know what, once that money's due, we want to go after it. So, you know, we can do that, but we just want to make sure your team as most efficient as possible and increase your collections.

All right, so some great things there that you said. The one I want to pull out is. So it seems like the way that an organization would have your organization come and help. It's primarily driven by an integration into the dental practice software. So walk us through first of all, maybe mention some of the different dental practice softwares that you integrate with or that you've successfully integrated with and then walk us through a timeline of from day one to say, hey Kimberly, we really want to deploy your solution. How much time does it take and what's the effort to drive that integration of the data?

Sure. So the integration process is super easy. Of course we work with the major platforms that are out there. Dentrix, Eaglesoft, Open Dental, we're seeing a lot on Denicon now, things of that nature. We can integrate there. And then as far as integration options, we can go that route and integrate directly with your practice management system or kind of the path that we're now taking with our DSOs is that we'll work directly with your BI team or your IT to just provide us what we need on a daily basis and then our processes will be integrated and just start working accordingly. So we have some options as far as like what your bandwidth is within your organization and maybe what the needs are outstanding.

So one of the big complaints about the dental industry is that there aren't a lot of enterprise level solutions. Meaning if I'm a DSO owner and I have 10 practices, there isn't a nice, easy, clean, enterprise level solution that lets me look and see everything. I'm logging in and out of different portals and I'm doing all these different things to manage this. Can you walk me through what are you guys doing at an enterprise level to try to make it easier for DSOs to support the dental practices properly?

Oh my gosh. Of course. So we definitely will do that. We can give different access points to different corporate level type positions where you can see all locations that are enrolled and then we can trickle it down by region down to the individual office. If you want to give different access points for our corporate teams, we usually send out a daily or weekly dashboard email. So they don't even need to log into Abella to get the insight that they're looking for as far as tracking what's been collected, how quickly it's being collected, how many notifications have someone received to opt into their payment. I mean, I feel like our reporting and our metrics are just so robust on an enterprise level that we've built out some impressive things to just give you insight to your AR that you've never even maybe known that you wanted to know. So awesome.

Okay, so here's another question. And again, just because I think the listeners as they're hearing, okay, it's technology, it integrates those things in order for us to all think about, okay, I want to see how this would fit inside of my business. If you could think of a case study, and I'd like to have you mention one, that they've been a customer of yours for, let's say at least a year and talk about the integration. And it seems like there's some immediate wins, or not immediate, but pretty immediate wins with, hey, there's some older stuff that you start to contact. You can get that going and then walk us through the integration to some immediate wins to the process and then, you know, a year down the road, what is the value that the customers are your, that this customer is finding. Can you maybe walk us through an example like that?

Yeah. So I'LL just use a single practice as a. As a example, because they had such an amazing collection rate of old AR that they just simply was a mess. But within the first week of implementation of Abella, they collected over $33,000 of patients that just went in to pay their bill and set up payment. And from the team's perspective, all they needed to do is just submit those people into Abella. Like, they didn't need to do any other work. They just wanted to get those people in so that we could start communicating to them. And then we automate and scale everything else on our end. And then they were able to just go in and see. They were able to track things, like I've kind of already mentioned, like how quickly patients are paying. We wrote back all those payments to their dental software. I mean, the process itself is so simple that where you're going to create the most value is you want to collect on whatever you can out of the gate, whether it be over 90 or, you know, more current balances. Most of the time, what we see is when you first turn on a Bella in your office, you're going to get more people calling to pay you over the phone because they're not used to the process. Maybe they don't know why all of a sudden it's being switched to an online option. They just want to call and make that payment over the phone, and that's fine. But what we found is as you use Abella for a longer period of time, it kind of flips the script where you've gone from collecting about 30 to 60% in your office to now collecting around 60% long term, just through Abella, because you're kind of defying the expectation how bills are paid in your organization and in your practice, where people, once they know the process and they're aware of this is how they pay their bill, they love it. They just, you know, out of the gate. They might have not been in the office in the last couple years, and they want to know why all of a sudden they're getting a text message and just want to talk to somebody. But like I said, that'll eventually go away.

Yeah, that makes sense. Paying that point of sale is so painful now. Right. And where there are still lingering concerns of COVID and exchanging cards and. Or cash and, you know, those sorts of things. That online. Online piece is so critical.

And if I could touch on that for just a second, you know, you brought up a good point with point of sale and just, you know, having less interaction with your patients you know, as they leave the office. That is another option that you can utilize within our platform where if you want to use Abella for other recurring payments that are maybe unrelated to a patient AR balance, whether it be for ortho or like a pre treatment balance, or there's even some offices that have come to us and say, hey, I have patients that left their wallet at home. Can I send them a text while they're still in the office so that they can pay? You can still do those things and utilize the platform for, you know, other use cases, if that's something that you want to do. And most of our customers do like that aspect of the platform as well, that's great.

Could you talk us through the integration process? So from day one to integration is done, and let's use the example of a DSO that, let's say 10 or 12 locations, they're all on the same software, practice management software, but they have different instances again, because we just, there aren't a lot of great enterprise levels. So say they've got 12 instances of open dental or of Dentrix or something like that. Walk us through start to finish. How long does that process take and what type of technology expertise do the customers need to have?

Well, what we would request and suggest In a like 10 to 12 location group is us have a call with your CTO or your development team within the organization so that we can just provide you the templates that we need to go in and retrieve your ar. And as quickly as that's established, it doesn't really matter what platform or version of the platform that you're using, because we're going in to retrieve those, those two files that we need from an integration standpoint at a, at a certain time each day. And that's all we need. So, you know, once we have those on a daily basis, we'll start working your arm right away.

Outstanding. Okay, we're to the fun part of the episode where we go to the lightning round. Everybody who is interviewed on the podcast gets these seven fun questions. And the great thing about this is for those that are listening in and who are going to set up an appointment to come and visit, or who are going to stop by and visit, try to remember one of these and then, and drop this on Kimberly and then she'll know that you found her through the, through this episode. It'll be fun. All right, so tell us something that you're currently working on that you're excited about.

So we are definitely expanding our team and I'm really excited about that. It's something that we've worked towards and we're hiring, you know, team members and our growth has been good. So I'm proud of that, that we're being able to work on that. And just, you know, we're trying to connect with as many DSO leaders in the space that we can. That's kind of where our focus is the last part of the year and we want to take it into 2022 on a good note.

So that's awesome. And what are you the most proud of in your life?

Well, I have to say that my 5 year old daughter has to be the top of that list for sure. But the other thing, like, you know, dentistry related would be that, you know, our company was acquired by the one of the largest venture capitalist groups back in May out of Silicon Valley. And I feel like Abella was one of the big proponents as to what made that happen. So I'm very proud of that.

That's great. Your favorite sports team.

This is like a, this is a difficult question for me to answer because I have some, you know, in depth stories about this. But on a short list, I'm going to say the Yankees and the Cleveland Browns and I'll tell you why. My grandfather played for the Cleveland Browns way back in the day. He was their first wide receiver, like on the team. So they're kind of like near and dear to my heart. And then after his football career, he went to go work for George Steinbrenner and the New York Yankees. So, you know, I have to be a Yankees fan. I know that gets a lot of

pushback, but that's a polarizing team.

Yes, it is. Yeah. But I will always, you know, be a Yankees fan in that capacity.

So that's awesome. I've had a chance to go to Yankee Stadium a few times in my life and just nothing like that. Experience is incredible.

Favorite hobby golf and equestrian, horse riding. So I might not come off as somebody that would enjoy playing golf, but I love the sport and it's something I feel like, like, you know, I've kind of grown to love in the last probably eight, eight years or so.

Good for you. All right. Your favorite app on your phone.

I hate to say it, but it's Instagram. I feel like it's just, just a fun place to go and just kind of poke around and see. And I'm a big foodie, so I love finding, you know, different restaurants in my area of Dallas, Texas to see, you know, where we can go find good food. So, so very Nice.

And I always ask this question for the nerdy side of us. Your favorite spreadsheet function.

This is a terrible question for me because I am not like a spreadsheet person, but I'm going to keep it really simple. I like to just search for things like in the box to try and pull out the information that I need. And then if it's a large data set, I like the control features where you can move around the spreadsheet, you know, pretty easily. I'm not a huge Excel whiz or anything like that, but.

But you're. You're a consumer of all things Excel, whatever it delivers to you, right?

That is correct.

Awesome.

Cool.

So it's been great to have you on the show again. I want to take a second, go ahead and tell our listeners how they can connect with you at the upcoming event and if there's any other ways they can reach out.

Yeah, absolutely. So our booth is very close to the meeting space, so you should be able to find us us very easily. We're right out the main doors. You can email me at K Mulkay. So it's K as in Kimberly Mulkay. M U L K a y@bellaar.com and like I said, I think my colleague Steven's in the chat putting a direct link where you can set up a time to come and meet with us and talk to us privately at the event. And we'd love for you to just stop by and say hi as well.

Perfect. That's great. And then is there any parting advice? If you think about you, most of the listeners on this show, to the show and most of the people that will be attending this fall summit are emerging budding group practices. Maybe not fully DSOs yet, but they're taking the steps to go down that road. Can you maybe could you share some parting advice to them as they think about trying to be successful? And you have this purview where you're perched up and you've seen a lot of DSOs and you've seen a lot of ways to do different things. Is there any parting advice for these emerging groups about how they can grow and be successful?

Yeah, I think whatever you can do to scale out of the gate and just redefine, like the expectation of how patients pay your organization, I think the more successful you are in the long run because you're not trying to establish that later on when it's a mess or it's too late type of thing. If you just implement something so easy right out of the gate you know, everybody kind of wins and your patients are going to appreciate that. And another thing that I forgot to mention as well is that we offer DSOs, you know, a 30, 60 day free trial depending on the size of your organization. So I think that should be something that maybe drives you to come talk to us because you can implement this and test it out for free in your organization and we can clean up whatever we need to from the start or however you want to utilize that trial period. To me, you know, you've got nothing to lose. And if you can just make it easier for patients to pay and provide that convenience factor, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Great. All right, Kimberly, can't thank you enough for being on the show.

Thank you. Yes, thanks, Ken. I'll see you next week.

Yeah, absolutely. And just to wrap up a few of the few of the key takeaways here is if you haven't signed up for the DEO Fall Summit, make sure to do that. I think they're actually just about out of tickets. I think the event's almost sold out and it's going to be here in a couple of weeks. Make sure to get involved in that. And the other thing is some takeaways from what Kimberly taught us today. We do so much work to acquire new patients, to bring them in and give them a great experience, to deliver amazing treatment to them. Well, first to deliver an amazing comprehensive diagnosis and then to help them receive all of that treatment. We do all this work in the process and then sometimes we neglect this last part which is actually getting paid or actually collecting the money, especially from the patients because that can be hard or create awkward conversations. So some of my you just brought some great insights and some great thoughts about how to shore up this part of the business, which is going to obviously help shore up all the rest of the business. So many, many thanks to you, Kimberly and everyone else for joining today. This is a wrap on all things collecting your AR with Kimberly Mulcah of Abella AR Happy day.

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