152: Innovation in Patient Financing: What DSO Leaders Need to Know

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of DSO Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott, and I'm so excited about this next podcast. This is a webinar idea and we are turning it into a podcast. You know, so much of what we have in front of us is a new challenge with inflation and recession soon looming. And what it's brought my mind to is everything we thought was maybe an innovation is now becoming a requirement. Everything we thought might be a good idea someday is becoming critical today. So in this webinar, you're going to hear from some of the leadership at Circumstances Sunbit, as well as some of their clients around what they're doing to help revolutionize dentistry by simplifying the patient experience around payment plans. And I'm going to continue to do some interviews with these innovative firms trying to figure this out. Excited for your feedback, as always, please come over to our Facebook page at DSO Secrets. Give comments, questions there. But until next time, keep smiling and I hope you enjoy this. Excited to be with you all and excited to be here with our guests. So I'm going to start off by just giving you top level titles, a little bit of bio, but I really want to get into the meat of things quickly. So first we have Jay Letwat, Vice president of Dental Sunbit. And Jay oversees the adoption of Sunbits Buy Now, Pay later technology in the dental vertical. And I'm excited to dig in on doing that because especially in today's environment. So we're going to talk a lot about that. And we've got two individuals who are running groups, DSOs. First is Kevin Bajat, CEO and owner of Sahara Dental Group in Las Vegas. Man, I'm from Henderson, I should be able to say Sahara and Kevin and his wife owned and operated six dental practices in Las Vegas and currently own two large more than nine operatories dental practices that employ 30 people, including six dentists. So talking about big groups, excited to discuss that. And then Andrew Sipes, who's senior vice president of Marquis Dental Partners. And Andrew is VP of Operations at Marquis Dental Partners, 60 Plus Unit, DSO headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. So thank you all for being on here. You know, speaking of like unprecedented times, we are now trying to be as creative as possible to deal with inflation. And apparently as of today, we are also in a recession. If you count recessions as having two down quarters, if you count recessions as having a slow job market, then it's not a recession. So that's what we as business owners are, are trying to deal with. I don't know if you saw like Apple's gross profits down, but their sales are up. So they're trying to figure out, you know, that and so forth. So with that being said, I'd love to start off just talking through financing solutions and how is that going to. To solve what we're all dealing with today and what are you all seeing, you know, in that? So, Jay, maybe starting off with you, like, what got you into Sunbit? And what problem would you say Sunbits trying to solve in the marketplace?

Sure. Thank you for having me. I meant, you know, you do great work with the obviously and just happy to be here. In terms of why I got into Sunbit, I mean, I've been in Sunbit almost from, from day one, about five and a half years. The story that was told to me by, by the CEO and another founder was really a disruption story. And I think from grade school I like to disrupt things. Probably not ideal in some circumstances in the classroom, but the idea is that it was a company that I felt that would challenge the norms of patient financing. That was a big reason why I joined. Plus the technology crew that we had, or we currently have as well, is pretty stellar. That's really the reason why I joined. But I think what we're trying to do, I think at a high level when you break it down, is we are trying to serve as many patients as humanly possible. And I say that and making a bold statement, we want to serve 5 million patients over the next three years. Historically, patient financing, there hasn't been any innovation. And I'd love to get obviously Andrew and Kevin's take on this as well. But basically what you see in the market are recycled solutions from 30 years ago that are basically the same thing. What you see today. I mean, I have one of our, one of our co founders walks around literally everywhere he goes with a paper credit card application. And if you look at the questions on that Credit card application. Are you married versus single? What's your income? Do you rent versus own? This, this is an application from like 1968. I am not joking. These are the exact same questions that are being asked even today. So what we want to do is streamline the process, use technology and machine learning to approve a lot more people in a way in which is not done today because banks are banks and they're not really in the business of helping the average person. And that's really what we're trying to do as a company.

So, Kevin, let's start with you. What got you interested in trying to solve the financing solution? Because I think that's kind of the first mindset is sometimes I've talked to dentists and groups and they just weren't even trying to solve it. It's like, well, I've got X solution. And if they can't qualify for that, then, oh, well, and then we move on. Obviously you're, and you're on mute, but obviously you're trying to be a little more creative than that. So curious your thoughts?

Sure. If you ask any front office person, they'll tell you the biggest hurdle is financing. But leaving that aside, going back a few years, we used to, we've hired different coaches over the years and, and the obvious things they used to ask us to, to ask the patient was if financing wasn't the problem, would you go for this treatment? I'm sure you've heard this. So obviously this was a hurdle that we needed to sort of overcome. And this, we looked at different options. In fact, we interviewed, I think about a year and a half, two years ago, we interviewed probably six or seven different companies and looked at what they were offering both to us as providers and to the consumers, and narrowed it down to a couple of providers. And obviously some bit is one where we had a lot of good success. The other thing that I think is important, or certainly for our business was important, was you guys. As deo, what you teach is systemization because, you know, for a business to be, you know, productive, efficient, profitable, scalable and durable, it must be systems driven rather than people's driven. And the systems that, you know, some bit in particular have in place make life very, very easy for us to do this, where a lot of the objection that you would get from the patient are dealt with before they even actually come into the office. So that was what was attractive to us.

And that's why you mentioned a couple of things on statistics. I'll just throw them out there. And I know we repeat these a lot. But over half of individuals in America don't get dental care on a consistent basis. So we're saying that like we could double the entire industry if we could figure that out. The, the other piece is that ADA has looked and said, number one constraint is cost. Now I always argue that cost is really relative to the perceived value. So we could say that part of the problem is we're doing a bad job on value creation. But we'd also say that cost is now perceived as monthly cost, not total cost. Right. When I think about buying a big purchase, which I would put dental and frankly an iPhone into that, we're all asking ourselves, well, what's the monthly amount? Well, what can I roll this tent to? You know, we're not really saying, yeah, I want to buy an iPhone for $1,500. We're saying it's 39.99amonth. So that's where our mindset is. And there's definitely been a disconnect. So, you know, I think sometimes people run out when they hear like cost is a problem, okay, how do I lower my fees? But I think what we really need to do is how do we make this consumable to the consumer? Right. So that's a lot of what. Now, Andrew, you started to, to look into this and to measure it even. But I'm curious. And so we'll get to that. You're measuring the results of kind of not using it, using it, which I think everybody would be interested in. But what was your, you know, desire to say, okay, I want to, I want to get this problem solved. You've got 60 plus locations, there's a lot of problems to solve. Why this one?

Absolutely. Well, fundamentally, the dentists are in the business of treating patients. So if we all identify as business people in any problem, we sit around and go, we're not getting the desired result. Why? Well, once we identify that that's the reason, number one reason is financial related, well then it would behoove us not to go out and try to solve that with a vengeance. And so this was as a demand coming from our dentists and by being an organization as we are where we are, dentist led where they are patient centric, by not following in their request would have led us down a path of hypocritical nature. So instead we drive it head on. And we started to research and to educate the different ways that you can go about solving the financial problem. And we evaluated four different models. The third party waterfall, making our own in House waterfall, an in house financing option or subscription option like a capitation model or finally one lender that could branch out and can go cover the spectrum of the patients that walk into our office. And so we came at it from a need first and then we threw at the problem and tested it with what if we solved it in different ways and then we ended with unanimous decisions that sunbed and it's strategy, it's technology that happens to be in the dental space is something we wanted to leverage.

So can you walk through those different options? Because I think it's worth kind of mapping those out if I'm, if I'm trying to solve this financing solution because a lot of us have gone through your, you know, different areas. So what was number one that you tried to sell?

A third party Waterfall.

Okay, so let's call that out what it is. So when you're using the term waterfall, you're saying that from a financial perspective, it's a series of income streams coming in by using the third party.

Yes.

And furthermore, we want to go aggregate a group of financing options and we want to start with the highest to qualify for. Oh, you're not, you, you got denied. Let's go to the next best option. Let's go to the next best option and you can create your own. The experience of the patient is unique. Applications per denial, if you would. So if I did deny it on the first time, I got to fill out a whole new application by a whole new company and go through the whole new skinning process over, you know,

even if you don't do like a huge waterfall, even if you do like a two step waterfall, like hey, they get approved or we just do it in house, you know, recourse. What I found is the frontline employees hate it because they know that some percentage aren't going to get approved. And like you would think they would just say, instead of saying you didn't get approved, they'd say you're approved and then we'll just move you over to this one. Right, but they don't do that. And so they're like, you didn't get approved, you didn't get approved, you don't get approved. And what I found is then team members are like, I'm not doing this. Yeah, I ran them through and they didn't get it. You know, they just stopped doing it. So, okay, so that was, that was number one. Did you ever try that one, Kevin, where you had like, hey, here's three different options. You can. Or were you smart enough to just skip over that one.

No, we went through all of that and did and failed miserably.

And.

And you're exactly right.

Well, you get a little trickle. It's not really a waterfall. It's more like a spit on a couple of them.

Right, exactly. That's exactly right. And as you correctly point, after a while the front office, they start determining who the patient is before or how they're going to pay before they even come and talk to you. And then you're so right about that.

Emmett came in, his hair and his beard were a little messy, his shirt wasn't clean. So we're just not going to see if he has the money to do this.

Yeah, his Internet connection sucked. So he's.

Yeah, exactly. That's right. You can't pay his Internet bill. So it's clearly can't pay this.

Right?

Yeah, it's fun.

It's funny. One, one thing I'll mention is similar to what, what Kevin has said about kind of this pre selection before we get involved in a lot of offices they will actually ask the patient, how's your credit? Is it good, is it bad? Which I've clearly is discriminatory and illegal. You shouldn't be asking these questions. So if it's good, what will put you here if it's not so good? Well, you'll be in this here. But I think what's interesting about the waterfalls is that it's kind of a tacit acknowledgment that you don't have a solution for most people that you have kind of a. It's kind of like that Flex seal guy and those infomercials like. And you're just kind of plugging holes. But it's not a real systematic, comprehensive.

Exactly. You've got pieces. Yeah. All right, Andrew, what was, what was number two option that you had to

make their own version of that internal.

Okay, so what would that look like?

The. That would look. So the first one, there are companies like there are companies out there that you can go to one company and they will have you apply one time. And they've solved what the pain points we just described. The second solution is what we just described the traditional. We go out and sign our own unique contracts, we aggregate them together and we've created our own. If you're denied with A, go to B. If you're denied with B, go to C. And we're offering A and B and C. The third one is the in house subscription capitation model that everyone, or not everyone, that we can have our unique brand for we can have our own unique name, our own unique rules, have to still be compliant and non discriminatory. But then we become our own financing house and then our chasing. And so there were other pros and other cons and we just chose. That was actually the one we ran with the furthest in our testing environment, but we also chose to rule that one out as well.

What was the. What was the issues you were running into?

Say again please.

What was the issues you were running into? What was the concerns you were running into?

And what is our core competency? We are a dentist office, we are not a finance institution. So we are not as rigorous in the appropriate elements in order to do that. Well, whether that be tracking it, that'd be following up on it. And, or when you go to recapitalize and you're venture capitalist, how are they going to look at the fact that you're carrying all this AR in your books from a model that you are self financing the patient? Are you in that model or are you in the. Are there people that do that better than you? And so we chose to let the experts play in their arena and we do what we do best, our core competencies.

Well, what I find oftentimes happens is people who come up with this idea will give it to the billing team who's doing revenue cycle management. But what we don't realize is the billing they're doing has nothing to do with collection. I mean, it's. It's just different. Right. It's insurance company based. It might have some patient copay, but it's nothing like some kind of payment plan. And can you adjust this payment plan and, and those kind of elements? Right. Kevin, any other thoughts on that?

It's a re. Well, we tried it. It's. But it's a really good way to, you know, excuse the expression pacification off, you know, and, and break that relationship. As, as Andrew said, our core competency is treating patients to start getting involved with billing. And it's a whole new area of headache and underwriting. There's just nightmare. So we quickly nip them in the book. Quickly.

Well, there's, there's PCI rules too. I've seen dentists who have like, I have all the patients credit cards right here. It's like, hey, you just entered a whole new regulatory realm, right. To get sued over. You thought Phi was bad. Try pci. You know, so all these different components too. All right, so those options and then number four was. So Jay, kind of walk us through Just so we have reference and I can push on it a little bit. What tactically would be a Sunbit solution when they say that, what does that mean? Sure.

It means one patient financing solution that covers every patient with a FICO score of 500 or greater. Our technology approves between 85 to 87% of all patients that walk in the door. You know that 8.5 out of 10 people that walk in the office are going to be able to accept treatment that day. We do it via a technology process, via an iPad, the 22nd process in which we scan a driver's license. There's no pen and paper, there is no hard credit check ever. Again, very unique. Again, we're relying on our technology and machine learning to kind of. There's a lot of stuff happening in the back end that the patient doesn't see and the office doesn't see. From a data perspective, technology perspective, but it's super streamlined. For the front office of 20 seconds, you get approved, you see three to six different payment terms. You can quickly go through within a minute or two the transaction and then you can say yes to treatment immediately. Get in the chair. There's no waiting period. So it's a very much mechanized process that reduces friction for the front office because again, it's super quick. No hard credit check. And for the patient, that big reason why patients don't apply is for, for any financing is because they're afraid of that hard credit check. They don't. People are pretty knowledgeable. They don't necessarily know what, what does a hard credit check entails, but they just know it's bad. So they just kind of stay away from. In the front office. Is also afraid to kind of offer it. So we kind of eliminated that friction point.

So that's just to clarify is this, does a soft credit check ensure that they won't have some kind of deduction for having it checked?

Correct. So what happens is a soft inquiry is just basically something that doesn't impact your specific score. There is a marking on your credit file that just says you got a soft inquiry. Very similar to like, you know, a credit card inquiry that you get in the mail, but it has no impact on your credit. And then even if they decide to take the loan, we still don't do a hard check, which is very, very unique.

That is unique.

And again, it's because we're a technology company, not really a finance company. Obviously we're lending money. Great. But these other companies are finance companies trying to be technology companies. And that's really why they need to get that additional information that essentially we're able to deduce from the same basic information that we both get upfront in the process.

Kevin, do you have any thoughts on like, how long have you had some bid in and like what's kind of been the results?

So I think our first transaction was October 2nd of last year. And what we saw was, you know, comparing to the other players for the period to the end of June, some bit. We grew our third party financing but just under 29%. So that's how much as a whole we grew that area. But compared to the others, these guys just washed the floor with them. And I'm not just saying because Jay is here, we completely, I think 80%

of just so I can hold on to that. So 29% increase in total financing.

In total third party financing.

Yeah. Do you see that as a. What percent do you think of that was like they wouldn't have done the treatment otherwise.

Probably all of all that additional 30%.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Because where, I mean, our offices are kind of in blue collar work areas, you know, B2C1 type people and could we kind of know our patients. And we looked at historical. And then I did this on purpose before coming and we looked at historical data and it's just under 29. We have an increase over this period of people taking up financing where they didn't before. Because we looked at the rejection rates as well and compared to the other players, it was a huge, huge increase on them.

So. So you think part of it is. So is this. What happens with this is they start getting more approval because you said the approval rate's better. That means the treatment coordinator gets more confidence. Because we kind of talked about one of the problems is the treatment coordinators start going. I just don't, I don't want to deliver the bad news.

Exactly. But also, but also the way the process works, when the treatment coordinate is ready before the patient arrives, because they know they've been, you know, or how much they've been approved for. And that's a huge advantage.

Oh, because you can pre do this.

Yeah, yeah.

They're not just doing it there in real time.

No, no. So the way we do it, and I'm sure everybody else does it the same way, once a patient comes or makes it, makes an appointment, when we send the confirmation of the appointment, we usually ask because we don't want to assume people cannot pay for it. So. But we usually ask, you know, would you be interested in talking to our financing Company, we just send the link. It's a hard, it's a soft hit on your credit.

It's.

They have great rates and so on, so that helps. So when we send the link as part of the text when the patient arrives, they've already been kind of pre approved so it makes life a lot easier. So a treatment coordinates going sort of, you know, fully tails up and ready to go.

Do you know the pre approval amount?

I think you do, yes, you do. They will tell us exactly as you're

doing, as the doctors doing the treatment plan. Doctor does. Treatment plan comes over to treatment coordination. They can correlate and whether like all right, can we do the whole treatment plan today? Do we need to break it up into phases? All of that stuff is somewhat available with all the data.

Yeah. And you can go back and try and increase if needs be.

Okay.

Usually they give you the top line, but we have tried and have had success in increasing that. The terms change slightly, but we've had success there.

Andrew, what have you noticed as far as implementation? You know, as capability has it was your some percentage. Have you tracked that yet or.

We have tracked what percent of our visit apply, what percent of those that applied got approved and of the approvals which percent converted if you would or actually ended in a loan written. And what we're finding is our biggest opportunity is to offer it on the front end more universally because it is. Once we get through that this is a good thing for the patient, it is an enabler for the patient. And we are not used car salesmen or salesmen at all. In fact, we are just enablers connecting you between problem and solution and using this as a tool that we pulled out of the arsenal and introduced. When we get through that, we put it off on the shelf and now we say, well, if it's a number one need, why are we prejudging who we're offering it to and who we're not? So we're, we have a huge opportunity to raise that initial percentage up from single digits into something much, much higher like Kevin is doing.

However, it's a little bit harder on scale to do that quickly. So with 60 locations, probably some of the data you're able to see is, you know, if it's anything like ours is some execute really well, really fast. Because if the technology's good, then the humans and the change management becomes the real issue. Right. So it's like how fast can I get my team to adopt this and utilize it? So you probably have best practices and those just not implementing well. Right. That's just reality.

Yeah. And we have to keep that in mind when we do any sort of analysis later to continue to affirm. Let's look at best in class, what are the results that they're getting and almost using that as motivation for those that aren't that are underutilizing to say you're leaving opportunity on the table and if you use this tool you'll get results that look like these offices.

Have you been able to do any measurements on some of the metrics we have?

Being a larger DSO numbers is how we drive the business.

Yeah.

So we've looked at about nine different KPIs that we know are indicators to our ability to succeed in the marketplace. For example, production per visit, production per doctor day, same day starts, unscheduled treatment plans, things of this nature. When we look at those nine we have found the following correlation, six of them, high correlation between top Sunbit using users and favorable outcomes on those nine key performance indicators. Six of them, two marginal marginal correlation and then one of them is not correlated. And we are still investigating as to why the one is not.

So talk through the six because that's, I mean if, if you're just looking as a whole, that's high correlation statistically. So what is exactly right? What's the six that it's very correlated with?

So we have seen high correlation between production for Dr. Day production for visit, treatment plan acceptance, total production overall same day starts and a decrease in unscheduled treatment plans.

Oh, interest. So I mean those are all pretty powerful ones to see a correlation. So when we say correlation, to be clear, we're saying you're looking at a practice and you're saying how much are they using Sunbit? And then they're saying did it uptick these metrics and is there a correlation? So if they're using a ton and it's not moving the needle. Okay, they're using it a ton and they're doing better than the other practices on six of them. And those sound like all pretty high level revenue producing metrics. Like also ones that frankly the doctor would be excited about. Like I've already had in my chair, I've already done the treatment plan. Can you guys get it done where they could actually do the treatment?

Right? Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And so when we found that we are using that as.

Oh, did he freeze? It wasn't me this time, Andrew. You just froze there, but I think you're back.

Okay, to double click for a moment. What we found is those we took the top 10 Sunbit using offices and we said for those nine KPIs the result they got in that specific KPI same period last year. Same period or the trailing 30 days or 90 days prior to going live with Sunbit. We looked at it both ways and that's when we're saying it's those that are high usage of sun bit, strong correlation and improvement in those six key performance indicators. Got it.

Okay, I've got some questions that have come in here so I'm looking at these, some of these you might have answered but what's the max amount approval? These are just going to be a bunch of random tactical questions I can

tell you but I can answer that. Emmett, it's $20,000.

What is the minimum amount approval?

$60.

That's awesome. You guys finance 60 bucks and I

look, I see the transactions every day. There are many, many sub $100 transactions. So and that's great with us. We look at things. If it's 60 it's great. 500, it's great. If it's 15,000 it's great too because we know someone at that sub 100 or sub 200 level. There's needs there.

Clear needs.

Yeah, for sure.

That's awesome. What is the, what's the typical terms?

So we go, we go up to 72 months.

Wow.

So for, for the larger dollar amounts, you know 15, 20,000.

Not on the $60 ones but yeah, correct.

$60 ones be a bit hard pressed to do 72 months.

80 cents. Yeah, there you go.

But, but on average, you know it's, I would say it's about 18 months on average give or take.

Okay. On the sub, I mean the shortest ones would be your sub 100 types. What are those typically?

Is that those are typically like 6, 12, 18.

Oh really? Okay great. I thought it might even be shorter than that, like two months. Let's see you mentioned kind of the credit, so lots of questions around like what's the experience like for those with lower income or with bad credit or things like that? They have to have a driver's license. Right. Any other thing that they need. So if they say I don't have a driver's license they have then that's not going to work. But any, they have to have a credit score if they know their credit score and it's below what did you say five something.

So they need, they need a driver's license and a debit card but that's basically all, all you need obviously phone number, email address. That's basically what you need.

If someone has an in house solution that they've been using and they don't and they want that as a backdrop for the sub 500 can they do that?

Absolutely.

If it's. We need to be primary. If there's someone that we decline it does happen, you know 12, 13% of the time. If they wanted to take the declines more power to them.

Okay,

what kind of training for office employees? So you know as much as you'd be.

I'll. I'll give that one to either Andrew or Kevin. Yeah, a lot better than I can.

Kevin, you or Andrew. Oh, you have to come off mute. Kevin.

Andrew, you take that you clearly it

has been one of the strengths of Sundance and here's why. When we there's a pre activation call took about 15, 20 minutes from our office leader office manager's time to understand concept a quick demo. Then there was an in person trainer that came on site almost like a mini account rep and they walked through, they brought breakfast. So it was an engaging and an exciting and they had little gimmick. Not gimmick but little things to hand out to keep engagement and then it walked you through from start to finish. Why Sunbit? Why they're different. How it helps the patient. Oh yes. And here's a 20 second on how you actually use Sundance. It is that quick to learn how to use it. There isn't a learning curve to this. There isn't paperwork to this. There isn't a long application process to this. So there's not this glass wall or glass ceiling between comfort and ability to apply it in your day to day.

How did you integrate the. How did you integrate the email out to the patients that link?

I I was going to say this is what this, you know I mentioned about system. Yeah. I'm a great believer of systemization. This is why it's so easy. You just once you, once you show systemization is great but you need tools to be able to manage that process, change that process, watch people do it and actually until it becomes a habit and it's become a habit because it's not very difficult. You copy a link, stick it into. We use SWELL for patient communication. It's a very simple process. You just copy the link, stick in the text and off it goes to every new patient that you. That you made an appointment for. And the same with email. And this is. It makes life very, very easy and it becomes as I said a system. Everyone knows when the first thing in the morning in the morning how old Everyone, once that's over, they look at who's got approval from some bed and they're all ready to go. It's just very simple.

You said when the patient comes in, you can see that they've already gotten approved. So is it a unique link for every patient?

They get, they get emails. You get an email per patient, say, okay, so and so got approved. Then you open the email and you can just take it from there to see how much. And so on it's again, it's self explanatory. The good thing is, you know, on, on our end, when a patient applies, it alerts us, you know that, hey, so and so applied from your office. Here is, here it is. And this is what they got.

How does it work on scale, Andrew? Because do you have to. Do you log in to each location or are you able to see this on an enterprise level?

You can see it on an enterprise level, but each location is their own.

You can segment them out. Yeah, okay, awesome. So if you want to centralize. I guess that's my point. If you want to centralize some of the conversations or whatnot, you could do that as well.

Yeah, we do. We have centralized communication platforms that we've used in marketing. Black. Yeah, Tools like I think you mentioned one,

does Sunbit connect to practice management software or what does it connect to or does it need to. How do you guys think about that?

Sure, I can take that one. So we're, we have an integration team and we're working on integrating with key partners such as Weave. As a partner. Just the press release just came out on that yesterday. Also simplify as well. The idea is that every, we want to use our APIs in every customer communication platform so that really, you know, the financing piece of things shouldn't be at the end, you know, when you're about to pay. It should be kind of throughout the patient's journey. So every point along that way we will be integrated with various solutions that take care of very specific issues related to that journey.

Got it. What about like. And I'm not real knowledgeable on this, but on the practice management software side, you know, you've got the treatment plan there, you got to book this, etc. How does that work? I don't know.

Sure. So how we do it today is basically as part of the iPad. When you close out the transaction, basically you put in the patient number, the chart number, the patient's last name, and then when we send the reports to you or you look on the portal and you see this Data in real time. Usually the accounting folks can then kind of slice and dice the information, do the reconciling on a daily basis. We are working on integrating into, you know, various. Various platforms.

Got it. So, Kevin, do you have someone that then just goes through and then just inputs these into the practice management software?

Yes, we do. And then they print it and we use Eaglesoft and uses Smart Doc they uploaded on the patient's chart. That's exactly what as Jay described.

Andrew, what about you? Same thing.

Yeah.

Which practice management software are you using?

Ten of them.

Okay. Conversation for a different call.

Huh?

You got a lot of your energy there.

We should have a. That should be a whole new topic.

So each one of them then is inputting these in. I mean, just like any other third party solution approval. And you almost treat it like. Yeah, like an EOB that you got the money in and then you just post it to the chart.

Yep. And then we have a centralized reconciliation process from a monthly report that is sent at the enterprise level.

Okay, how fast is the approval denial process? You got to fill out the.

You would have just gotten one just

by asking that question. I would have already. It was like that fast?

Yes. It's less than 10 seconds.

Really?

The. The app, the application process, Emmett. Is about 20 seconds. The actual decision. Once you press the button, it's a millisecond.

Wow. So when you say 20 seconds, is that because I'm just scanning my. My ID card in and so basically

you have an iPad. I won't.

Here we go.

Have the iPad. You basically scan the driver's license.

Yeah. Okay.

Once you scan the driver's license automatically, that information is on the next screen.

So.

So the front office staff doesn't have to type stuff in. Then basically you type in your phone number, your email, click and you get the approval.

So literally, like phone number emails, the only like hand input phone number email.

And the address is taken directly from the state ID or the driver's license.

And then when do I give you my atm? You said there's like an ATM card component.

Yeah, the debit card come. Comes later once they've been approved, once you've decided how you're going to, you know which. Which term you're going to choose. The debit card is kind of the form of payment because we're an installment loan, not a credit card. So each. There's an auto debit coming from your checking account every month. So it's also healthier for the patient. They don't have to lick a stamp and Figure out, you know, when they have to pay for making payment.

Just an auto withdrawal. Exactly.

Exactly.

Right.

So they need to have a bank account, need to have a driver's license. I think we've, we've gone through that. Let's see. I think you nailed. What questions have I not asked? I think we've talked about. There's some questions around. How are you better than this or that? I think we've kind of hit on the different solutions. Any other questions you all think that you asked or you were curious about that I haven't asked. Andrew, you have some.

Yeah, I'll share one more nugget. One of our concerns with the aggregator in my mind is kind of like a general contractor, conceptually. I could go higher on my subs or I can hire a gc. And typically there's a cost for the gc. You would think there would be an incremental cost. Sun bit compared to competitors. And what we have found is, we have found that our patients are getting about a percent on average, better 100 basis points rate, interest rate from Sunbit than they were from any of their other competitors, number one. Number two, we are getting charged the same or better 1%. Better. Let me say differently. On an average basis, we are the same. But if you apples to apples, the same patient, we have a lower merchant fee with Sundit than we did with our competitors as well.

Andrew, there's a question from Facebook for you is are you doing any kind of incentive for staff to offer this? And I guess, honestly, Kevin, you could answer that too.

Actually, I think this is one probably for Jay to answer. I'm not sure. Yeah, because there is something I'm sure Jay was going to talk about. I was actually going to continue with what Andrew was saying, if you don't mind. And Jay, you can take. Look, we use a terminology with, you know, mugging or grannies. And as I told you when we interviewed five or six different companies, what was attractive about these guys was we're not here to just to rip people off. I think I mentioned to you that there was a company who wanted to charge us 220 bucks a month just for this scanner to, to take payment. The whole thing was. Whereas these guys, what we find is we have as one part of our, you know, our rules is, you know, you have to be 100 legal, ethical and moral. You know, it's, it's hard. You know, how do you. Who is moral? So we say, okay, if you. To staff, to doctors, would you offer this to your mother and and this is how. That's our kind of, you know, very simplistic metric for this. And. And most of our staff agree that this would be something that offer their own mother. So. Yeah, that's. I agree.

It's a good measurement. Yeah.

Because not your mother in law.

I feel like I'm ripped off paying $39 a month for my iPhone. Right. I mean, sure, if it's just built in there. I think to your point, if it's built in and it seems spare, but if. Yeah, to your point, also, as if somebody's having you pay 220 bucks just for the scanner, that. That doesn't work.

But I'll let Jay talk about incentivization, because that's a good point.

Yeah, we're starting to get a bunch of questions then, so. All right, start hitting on them.

Well, I'll tell you what, Andrew, should I defer you on the incentives? I'm happy for you to talk about it.

Go for it.

Okay, so. So at Sunbit, we have an appreciation program for all the front office team members. So they earn points every time they do part of the regular job, which is hopefully trying to get more patients to say yes. So every time there's an application, every time there's actually a loan consummated, they get points. They can then trade in those points for gift cards, Venmo, etc. So it's something that we fully fund, and it's something that, quite frankly, the front office staffs love it. And again, they're doing this anyway as a side note. As a side note, I mean, these front office team members, they're working so hard and in many cases, very much underappreciated. So this is something. I think it's really part of our mission to help the team members who essentially are helping Sunbit.

Right.

And also obviously helping patients first and foremost. So that's. That's a program that we've rolled out.

That's awesome.

Nine months ago, and it's been very, very successful.

Well, I mean, I think all of us have dreamed of, like, putting different point systems together and different ways to incentivize and so forth. So that's awesome. You guys just do it, and then we don't have to manage that. Are there any plans to increase the funding limit to over 20,000 at some point? I'm sure that's asked by someone who's doing, like, all in four. Some kind of.

Yeah, you know, it's something we always. We always look at. I mean, five years ago, when I Started. True story. The highest loan that we ever gave was 1500. Right now we're at 20,000. So you know, we're, we base it on technology, we base it on learnings. So I, I think in the future it will go up. When and how much I don't know at this point, but it's likely to go up.

All right, awesome. We talked about incentivizing. How have you done, when you say systemize sunbit into your practice steps. And Kevin, this one was kind of directed to you, but what, what does that systemization, I guess look like?

Well, as I said, everybody knows as kind of part of the making an appointment. The schedulers know when the calls come in. One of the questions you ask is, would you be interested in third party finance? Because we, we initially what we used when you send confirmation text, we just used to send the link and we got one or two people who got slightly offended by this. If we actually had a man on the phone, he was rather upset about this. So we just asked this. And it's part of, everybody's in as part of we train new people, ask would they be interested? They're great company to work with. So we send a link. And so that as soon as an appointment is confirmed, that goes with it. And then in the, in the front office, the team get emails and they all know as soon as you get your emails, you look, you check, make sure all those things are ready. So when the patient comes in, everything that the patient needs to do to, you know, the 32nd it takes is ready. So that's how it does, how it works.

And it's great for, for same day kind of treatment, maybe where that someone walked in or whatnot. You could just ask the same question and then say, hey, fill in the site pen.

Exactly.

There's another question. As interest rates rise, do you see it more challenging to finance patients? How do you think that'll impact patient financing?

So I'll address the interest rate. But I think what's interesting is kind of this inflationary environment. We see it in the data. There's more and more people that are asking for financing, that need the financing. But obviously, you know, Kevin and Andrew can clearly talk about that a lot better than I can. But in terms of interest rate environment, I mean, clearly it's something we monitor, but you know, it's a dynamic sort of model that we use. But basically the rates and the offers that we, we do right now are essentially the same as what they were three, four, six months ago. In fact, during COVID like May and June and July of 2020, we still had 85, 86, 87% approval rating. That's something we're very, very proud of. While others kind of said, okay, we're not going to take the risk. We're going to just decline. Everyone, we decided not to do that. And it's paid off well because folks tend to. To like paying back for products that they deem value. And I think that's the big thing that we've learned over the past several years.

It's awesome. Any other closing thoughts? These have been great questions. Thank you, everybody, for the questions you've asked on Facebook, here on the live webinar. Others have just fed right into me, so I appreciate it. You know, this is crazy times where I think at the end of the day, our job is to take care of customers and figure out how to move these friction points out of the way. And I guess the good and bad news is that dentistry has a huge opportunity that they've never fully solved, and now we're starting to solve it, and that is how do we create financing solutions for the products and services that we provide? And if we do that, then hopefully at some point, when ADA does their survey, they say, no, cost is not the issue right now. They want something else. They want better quality here or faster service there, something like that. But cost being the issue, again, good and bad news is, like, we could solve that. That's something that absolutely should be solved. Andrew, anything you want to say in closing here?

No. I appreciate the opportunity to share our real experience.

Yeah. Andrew and Kevin both thank you for being on, because it's nice to see on a tactical basis the implementation and the thoughtfulness that you guys went through. All the train wrecks we tried first, you know, so. Anything else, Kevin, you want to say?

No. Thank you for having me on. It was great. Thank you.

Yeah, appreciate it. And, Jay, thank you so much. Last words.

Thank you, Emmett, for. For hosting. You do a great job. And of course, Andrew and Kevin are valued partners, and just, I love the open and honest dialogue. That's, I think, what the listeners want to hear and. And see.

Yeah, I appreciate DEO coordinating and kind of curating this level of information for the industry because it definitely, you know, you're out there on an island. It's nice to be able to see. Okay, here's the pieces that are really kind of rising to the top for best practices. So thank you, DEO for that, Jay. I will put out there. If anybody wants to dig deeper into this you know maybe have an initial call see if they're a right fit for this. What's the best way to contact you?

Best way is to go on sunbit.com dental or you can send me an email and I'll make sure we take care of you quickly. J a yun bit.com pretty simple and we're here to serve and we'll get back to you quickly and happy to help any way we can.

Hey thank you all so much for being on this evening and providing this resource and the feedback. So I appreciate it.

Foreign.

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