190: Navigating The Changing Insurance Reimbursement Landscape

I know this question is on a lot of people's minds on how to take on insurance reimbursement. And it's one thing to kind of complain about it and talk about it philosophically. It's another thing to have somebody say, we have a plan. Hi, I'm Emmett Scott and just like you, I've had my ups and downs in the dental industry, but times are changing. The DEO has built a map of how to succeed in one of the most challenging industries to navigate. On this show we talk to dental industry leaders, solve problems and get you the answers you need to face these challenging and thrive. Welcome to DEO's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Now let's get started. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of DEO Grow Secrets. I'm your fearless host, Emmett Scott and today I'm here with Nick Noda, who's the account executive at Clear. Nick, great to have you here. We're going to take on some pretty big topics which the big one is everything changing in the insurance reimbursement landscape, which I know, you know, post Covid, I think we all kind of locked arms, worked together. What do we need to do to take on this, you know, new world, new industry, increasing inflation on rates and it feels a little bit at times that the insurance players decided not to join us as a team. Know if you're seeing that in everything you're doing. But like, yeah, dental industries, all locked arms and then there's the insurance companies, like not helping out here. So.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, first off, Emma, thank you for having me. Really awesome to sort of share some information with your audience today. And yeah, you know, it's funny, back in 2019, so right before COVID our CEO here, clear Dave Monahan, he actually put out an article where he sort of coined it the Reimbursement the Insurance Reimbursement crisis. Right. He sort of describes this, this reimbursement model as essentially being in a slow downward spiral for years.

Right.

And kind of like what you were saying. He really contends that dental insurance has ultimately become very one sided to the point where now the whole model, it's really designed around the needs of the insurance companies, not necessarily the patients or the actual providers. Right. So at the time of that article, I think he stated and he found Data that around $75 billion is spent on dental insurance every year. But of that $75 billion, only about 60% of it actually goes to dental care. Right. When you then add on the fact that out of pocket maximums for patients have remained the same for 70 years. Dave actually puts it, I think best, you know, it's pretty easy to see who the real benefactor of the dental insurance ecosystem actually is. And then you know, when you sort of flash forward to today, I think that the simplest way to describe sort of the reimbursement dilemma, it's really that insurance reimbursements are simply not keeping up with the increasing expenses of running a practice. Right. At best they're flat, at worst they're going down. I actually saw some data back in September from the ADA that about one third of dentists reported lowering reimbursements. So again, expenses going up, reimbursement is going down. I don't think there's like a clear trigger event to really necessitate the reevaluation of, of like what a practices coverage landscape is and what can we do to, to really operate more efficiently.

Yeah, you know, I've got six kids and post Covid, several of them teenagers, 20 year olds, etc. And I watched one as he went to Home Depot and you know, every couple months they were giving him a raise. He's a great kid, but he didn't deserve a raise in another dollar and another dollar. And they were just responding to the retail environment.

Right.

Of course, I'm also having to now give my team raises to match all of this. Home Depot gets to walk over and go, you know what the price of wood is now? X amount instead of Y amount. Right? Boom, boom, boom. I look at a dental practice and I'm like, wait, I can't increase that rate because I'm locked in on the insurance side. So all I'm getting is just a squeezing margin. They're just moving up revenue and then matching it so they get to keep their margins. Right. And this is something that we've always said dentistry was very recession proof. We've never really talked about inflation proof. And I think as we step back, we go, we're going to have to get a lot more creative on some of these solutions. This isn't just going to work to go, yeah, keep giving raises over here, but not have revenue increase over there. And I think as people stay with their PPOs, they're asking themselves, do I stay or do I go out of network? And if I go out, like what's my solutions, is there a hybrid to this, etc. I mean what as you're working with different clients, potential clients, you know, what are you seeing as kind of the impact on the industry of some of these ppo? Reimbursements.

Yeah, yeah, no, and you bring up a great point. And like oftentimes especially maybe like a newer practice or a newer group, they might just look at these PPOs as a marketing expense. Right. Like I'm gonna give up.

That's right, that's what it is, it's marketing.

Exactly. But as you mentioned, it's like those expenses are consistently moving in the wrong direction as compared to adapting to the times inflations, things like that. So you know, one thing that we do a lot of clear is we look deep into the practices actual coverage landscape. Right. And basically what we see is in a lot of cases, like the coverage options that you offer patients, it's really the foundation of, of a practice, Right. The options, they determine who might be inclined to come to the practice, to what extent they accept care, and then of course, how much does a practice as a business receiving for the work that they're performing. Actually just saw some data, I think it was from the Department of Health and Human services that around 75% of patients utilize dental insurance. Right. And then when we actually look at the data that we've pulled, we actually see that patients who do have coverage, they, they behave much differently. Right. Where patients with coverage, they typically visit and accept treatment about two to three times more than somebod without coverage. Right. So when we recognize the significance of actually, you know, having a, an efficient practice coverage landscape, what we commonly see is that a lot of the times, you know, these practices, they just have a weak foundation and you know, their coverage landscape, it's overall unfavorable. And I'll give you two reasons why we commonly see this to be the case. Number one, of course, they blindly participate in PPOs that are unprofitable and difficult to manage. Right. These are the plans where you're writing off 50, 60, maybe even 70% of UCRS. I know at a certain point you might even be losing money on certain procedures just because of time spent in overhead. So obviously, huge issue, again, something you really want to look deep into practices, they often leave uninsured patients uncovered, which really misses a tremendous opportunity to again increase visitation, treatment acceptance, production from these patients. And again, going back to the data that we've pulled from our partner practices, we do see that uncovered patients, they're really only visiting the dentist about once every other year, again compared to a covered patient who's visiting maybe two, three times per year. So when it comes to your cash patients, again, huge opportunity to shift their behavior, have them more engaged with your business, and you Know, drive a more positive impact on the revenue side, which is, of course, a huge focus bar. Is that clear?

That's interesting. So you're kind of analyzing both sides, both of, okay, if they're insured, then you're probably getting some frequency, but the reimbursement could be really poor. If they're uninsured, you may feel like, better about your reimbursement, but your frequency is dropping off or even the number of patients coming in, you know, could be an issue. Right. So, because I know that's a big thing that a lot of these dental practices are brainstorming as, you know, what. What is the risk of just dropping the insurers? And definitely have groups within DEO. You know, we have 250 organizations all sharing. We've got WhatsApp group groups that we're checking on and so forth. And so people will brainstorm. All right, you've dropped all your insurances. What worked, what didn't? And sometimes it's like, here's what I did. It was brilliant. And other people are like, it fell apart. It's a disaster. You know, so, yeah, what do you see happen as patients for dental practices, you know, as. As they drop the PPOs? What is the impact on patient flow?

Yeah, great question. You know, before I get there, I guess I think I want to quickly mention, like, two implications of sort of just staying, like, maintaining the status quo, sort of staying the way things are. Right. Because when you think about.

It'll get better later. Let's just.

Exactly, exactly. And that may have worked, but of course, it's a different economic climate. Again, when you think about staffing challenges, you know, increasing prices by essentially remaining in network with like a quote, unquote bad ppo, the dental practice is oftentimes moving in the wrong direction versus actually remaining stagnant. Right. And really what it comes down to is by taking certain steps, we can actually completely reverse that course. But of course it's not going to happen overnight. And, you know, the second thing that I just kind of want to mention is actually the clinical implications in regard to, like, continuing to fight this uphill battle. You know, I hear it all the time from the dentist I speak to because of this reimbursement crisis, they're constantly packing their schedules so tight to try and get ahead of these poor collection rates, which at a certain point, it becomes more about quantity over, you know, quality, which just obviously doesn't work when you think about health care service and mental health.

Right. I mean, we're working intimately with these Owners and as you coach them, I mean, when you really get under the surface, like there's a mental health thing of like being that overwhelmed and so forth, and it doesn't open the door to be able to add associates and really grow the business when it's just go, go, go, go, go. I mean, have time to build a good culture and things like that. Yeah, good call out.

Yeah. Yeah. 100 provider satisfaction. I mean, especially again, when you speak directly with the dentist themselves, I mean, you can just feel how this pressure is affecting not just the providers, but also the admin teams, everybody involved. So. And you know, sort of going back to your question about the patients, of course that's the number one concern when you even first consider potentially moving away from a ppo. And honestly, it's really a shame because oftentimes the patients on these poor performing PPO plans, they're sort of like the innocent bystanders, right? They're caught between the insurance companies and these terrible reimbursement rates and the practices and the providers who are just trying to grow and expand their business while also delivering exceptional patient care. It's not their fault by any means, right? So sort of moving away from like the, the doom and gloom part of everything, when we actually start to like look at or consider a practice or a group moving away from certain PPOs, there really is a lot working in our favor and a lot to be optimistic about, right? Number one, sort of going back to the clinical implications. You know, dental care is not a commodity and that patient provider relationship is obviously core to a successful operation. So, you know, while a practice discovers landscape might be the foundation of the practice, a loyal patient base is going to be its greatest asset, right? So when a patient is suddenly no longer in network at the practice that they've been going to for 15 years, you know, many will find that it just makes the most sense to stick around, maintain that relationship that they've built and simply adapt to the changes, right? Now, on the flip side, there will inevitably be a percentage of patients that are probably more loyal to their insurance policy than they are to the practice and they might leave. Right, that's, that's just going to happen. But honestly, that's okay because on the other side of a transition away from some of these poor performing PPOs, it's better collections efficiency, right? Where you're actually receiving fair and reasonable compensation for the work that's being performed. So I really think when it comes to, you know, the fear or the prospect of losing patients or patients leaving the Practice, it really comes down to a practice has much more control over the retention of these patients than they actually might think. And, you know, let me ask you this. What do you think is the first per. Or the first thing that a patient will do when they find out that their practice is going out of network with their ppo?

What do I think the first thing? Oh, that's a good question. They might ask, so what is your reimbursement without me being in.

Right, you hit the nail, the head there. You're going to ask a million questions, right?

Because I'm thinking, I don't want to pick up the phone and call a bunch of other people and then build a new relationship and determine if they're good care or not. Like, yeah, like, okay, what's this really gonna cost me?

Exactly why are you dropping it? Like, why should I stay now that I'm out of network? Is maybe he's my current coverage even the best for me, given my clinical needs. Right. All those questions are going to be thrown at you the minute that they find that out. So I think a big part of sort of maximizing your control over how many patients, by the way, it wasn't

like my dental Insurance was covering 100% of everything anyway. So, like, when I was getting big treatment, you know, I was out of pocket something every time. So in today's world, I think everyone's pretty sophisticated to know, like, okay, if you're going out, like one. There might be part of me that thinks too, like, wow, this is a really good provider. If he can kind of, you know, get out of the. So, like, do I want to leave a good provider? No, you know, like, yeah. So there's a lot of things that. I think that. That's a good question because I think initially I would have said, oh, I would. I would think patient. Oh, I just call around and find who else is on my insurance. Like, no, no, that's too much work to work with my current provider.

Right, right. And again, you know, listen, practices are obviously in different stages of the ownership journey or whatever it may be, but especially if you consider that's been going to the same providers for five years there, you just can't undervalue that relationship. Right. And I think, again, it's something that might get lost in sort of the shuffle here when you. When you have that fear of losing patients. So really, what, you know, especially as we work with these groups and these practices that have goals of moving away from PPOs, what we find to be like, a huge part of maximizing control over how many people stay, how many patient leaves. It all comes down to really your communication strategy. Right. Patients are going to ask questions, you better have answers. So, you know, you want to again explain why is this necessary for the practice? You have that relationship there. There's going to be a lot of understanding on why we need to take these steps. What are the implications for the patients? Right. What are your next steps? And I think probably the most important piece that you want to communicate is what are you, what are your options now that we are taking these steps? All for good reasons. Right. You know, kind of a spoiler alert. On the clear side, of course, the membership plan is a fantastic alternative, but I'm sure we'll get there. And, you know, in addition to really having all these answers prepared, I think another important piece is really allocating the proper amount of time to design, initiate, and then execute on your drop PPO strategy. You know, again, it's not something that's going to happen overnight. One piece of advice that I saw the one time, I don't know where it was, but it was actually to have or try your best to have like that first touch point that first when the patient learns that they're going to be out of network, actually come directly from one of their clinical providers. Right. Not necessarily like a letter that they receive, I think, you know, we definitely recommend having a formal letter with all this important information laid out. But again, you want to make sure that you have enough time so that your providers can explain this face to face again, articulate those important points. Why is this important for us? What are we doing with you to make it work? And then of course, you know, supplement that with a more formal letter sort of as you get closer to that actual drop date.

So, I mean, where the dentist could be involved is maybe if you're like, okay, we're planning this over the next six months as patients come in, hey, just so you know, here's what we're doing. We're creating a better solution. I like to what you're saying, just kind of zooming out here. Sometimes we think very like binary, like, should I keep insurance or should I drop it? And I think what you're saying is think a little more strategic, which is, yes, you should drop it potentially, or create other solutions on top of it and build those out. But create a plan that includes a communication strategy for the patient.

Absolutely.

Don't take this lightly. Don't wing it. Don't wait till you're to a point where you're like, this doesn't work anymore. Just drop them all, you know, or whatever else, right? Really work with someone to build out a strategic plan just like you would or should have done when you built your business. And you're like, okay, what's my plan for getting patients in? What do I want to do? Just like that, you're going to want to build out a strategic creative solution here. And again, I think, you know, punchline, right, is you could work with someone like, clear. You can work within the DEO here with others who are doing this. But it's not just like drop it or keep it. You know, there's some really great steps I. Let me ask you. Just, you know, generally when you see someone start to say, okay, I do want to move forward with being, I don't know, start pruning the tree. Maybe not cut it down, right, but like start pruning it. What are, what are smart next steps to think about? I mean, let's talk about the world you're in. Like subscription plans. How can those discount plans, et cetera, how can those support this strategy?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So there's you know, there's sort of two distinct use cases, or I'll mention two distinct use cases for like a subscription style coverage plan. And like, the really cool thing is you can actually reap the benefits of both, sort of depending on where you are in the PPO journey. So I mean, kind of going back to the initial question there, like you

said, PPOs to create a membership plan, right? Like I can just stack this on top because maybe I'm, I'm listening and I'm going, yeah, I've got PPOs, but I just want more patients generally and I actually want to focus on the ones who aren't insured or, you know, that kind of thing. Or I want to kind of test the waters, build this up and then drop. Right. So anyway, just putting that out there,

I mean, absolutely, we, we always recommend prior to even, you know, considering announcing this to patients, you probably want this type of plan in place so that we can ramp your staff up, get everybody comfortable with the type of messaging, really just make this already a part of your practice before again, we take that a little bit more of a significant step of moving away from these insurances. And yeah, no, you bring up a fantastic point because honestly, a simple step to actually help rectify the situation of poor reimbursements actually doesn't necessarily involve dropping them. Because when you implement an actual subscription style coverage option in your practice, this is sort of like your first use case, that would be for like your traditional uninsured, cash paying patient. Right. And I think I mentioned before, like from all the data that we've looked at in terms of patient behavior, always tells the same story. Cash patients, they aren't engaged with their dental health, you know, and two main reasons for that are uncertainty surrounding cost and then also a lack of structure and coverage. Right? So essentially by offering your own in house coverage for these patients, you're able to overcome both of those barriers. And we do see a complete shift in the behavior patterns of a patient. It's sort of like, you know, the cliche analogy here is sort of like the Amazon prime or the Costco effect, right? Because you know, you're paying, you're prepaying for certain benefits, you know, you feel like you have a stake in the game, you want to get your money's worth. It's really that simple. And when it comes down to patients who don't have insurance, you know, it's really a no brainer. Because now, again, by providing that structure, but by providing that really affordable, simple, transparent way of receiving their care, it's something that we all know we should, that we should be doing. And we do typically see, again, like those 2 to 3x increases across the board in terms of visitation, case acceptance, and overall revenue back to the practice. So again, that's number one.

Yeah. This is brilliant, Nick, because we just said you need a strategic plan. Here's step one of the strategic plan, right? And I, I love the multiple birds. This kills with one stone, which is. All right, I've got a patient base that's not engaged. They're not even covered under insurance, so I don't even have to worry about dropping their insurance. How can I just get them more engaged? Number two. Okay, now I could kind of work on designing what covering a patient would look like, right? So now I'm working with someone like clear, and I'm like actually engage in the process. It's not just theoretical. Three, I'm training my team on having these conversations. So by the time we get to dropping an insurer, my team's already kind of used to this conversation, right? They're like, oh, you don't have coverage. It's not really a big deal. We have a solution for you because I've been doing it with these other people who don't have coverage, right? And I would guess I'm jumping ahead. But now if I'm gonna step my toe in the water, why wouldn't I drop an Insurer, that's not really a big deal or high impact on my business as far as volume. But the reimbursement sucks, right? So I could even just start beta testing some of this stuff so early on. So people who are like, I wanna do it, but I'm so scared. I think you just laid out like, well, that doesn't sound that scary. That just sounds like upside, no downside.

Yeah, exactly. Right. And it all comes down to, again, another cliche, but it's so applicable here. It's like, it's, we need to work smarter, not harder. And that's what this all comes down to, taking steps in a direction that gets us closer to working smarter. And just like you said, I mean, we don't necessarily have to make any steps to actually drop these plans. Just implement the, the dental membership plan. Really focus on, you know, whatever percentage it is of your practice that are uninsured patients. And just by, you know, and of course, there is also the strategic component of sort of getting your team bought in. Frankly, that's the number one indicator of success that we see with one of our partner practices. It's how, how comfortable are the teams are, how do they understand the value? And again, really like, kind of like you leaned on, what are they hearing from patients. Right. You know, the people that are presenting these treatments, the people at the front desk, they just want to make the patient happy. And what we do typically see with these membership plans is because the patient's forming better health habits because they have a really simple way of just, you know, hey, I'm going to pay a monthly fee. It's a, it's just like insurance, but again, in some cases better given, no out of pocket maximums. We typically see really strong patient reception, which lead, which leads to really strong staff reception, which leads to a higher inclination of the staff actually positioning this as an option, which again, lends to overall success of the membership plan. So again, yeah, really, I think step one in the process would be, let's take a look at what we can do with, with essentially the existing opportunity of the patients you have now. And then we can sort of ramp that up and start to think about a little bit more of a bigger step away from some of these poor collections.

Okay, I'm going to pivot a little bit. But we have what's called the OPS assessment. So we'll go through and using constraint theory, help people really identify where their core issue is. Sometimes what people think is the core issue, like, I need more patience tomorrow is not really the Core issue. So give you an example. I just met with a member today, multiple locations. So these numbers are going to be big because they have, you know, a lot of volume. But I told them, listen, you're spending a lot on marketing, but actually, like right now, you don't have any room in your schedule. You need to drop your marketing costs down, which seems like not what most people would think of on our constraint analysis. And you need to just work on answering the phones here, here and here. Anyway, fun thing is he dropped his marketing costs. He's now saving about $600,000 and revenue is up by $3 million. Right. So getting things in the right order sometimes can make a big difference versus just like pushing on the gas. When you think about a busy dental practice, how can a membership plan layer in? Well, with a busy dental practice.

Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. And, you know, I think this sort of leans into the second, you know, big use case of these membership plans, which is frankly, and it ties directly back to having a strategy for moving away from these PPOs. It's actually leveraging the membership plan as an alternative for patients who will be out of network but might not necessarily want to deal with, you know, upfront payments or however the new claims process might look, depending on how you handle, like fee for service patients, things like that. Right. And the really cool thing here is we sort of touched on a little bit. Oftentimes the membership plan, it's a perfectly suitable alternative due to the fact that when they enroll, they're still entitled to their hygiene, their preventative care, and they're still getting discounted rates on those more comprehensive procedures. So, you know, again, when it comes back to, to break the news that a practice is making certain changes, again, all for good reason, the membership plan alternative, it really serves as just another way of ultimately conveying the message like, hey, we're doing everything that we can to make this work for everyone. And, you know, we have, we've worked with a number of groups, got a couple case studies up on our website of, again, doing exactly that. Right. Sort of gradually Moving away from PPOs, leveraging this membership plan as an alternative. And when you start to tie in that, that deep patient provider relationship, they've seen great success as far as patient reception of the membership plan option as a direct alternative to insurance. Right. Of course, it's case by case, but when you think about, like the broader goals here, it's a really, really effective of going about it. And, you know, I think this is

actually where would I Get those case studies. What's your website? Just.

Yeah, so clear.com and you know, two. Two groups that come to mind. One is a group called Catalucia Dental Group and another is Carl's. They both, again, really, really leveraged clear as a way to reduce PPO dependence. Catalushi Specifically, I think they went from like 14 to 4 or something like that as far as PPR participation.

And spell clear for us because it is spelled a little.

Oh, of course, yeah.

K-L-E-E-R Kel K-L-E-E dash R dot com. You can go on there, look at some of these case studies, which frankly, you can kind of steal what the strategy was. It's like, okay, how did they do it? In fact, I'm guessing, Nick, if somebody called you and said, all right, tell me how they did it, that's stuff you can share. Because it's just kind of strategically how to roll this out. We're all in the same boat here. It's like, how do we provide the patient a better solution? I would also think with a busy dental practice, I think of revenue as two parts. It's volume times reimbursement. Right. So if volume's not my issue, which by the way, that was kind of the scenario I just talked about, then really what I want to do is start bringing up reimbursement. You know, I mean, you look at Apple and Apple goes, hey, we can get customers. We have an amazing product. We just need to move price up and continue to expand our margin here, right? Home Depot's like, hey, we're pretty good at this. Let's just charge more and more for wood. So.

Right, right.

I think sometimes we forget probably because we've been in the insurance game so long, that, oh yeah, we like, we should build out a platform where we can get better reimbursements. And it just feels like we only have two options. I think what you're layering in is there is a third option, right. We can bridge the gap here between being just a pure cash paid patient or being fully embedded in the PPO world. That's where these membership plans.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, I think again, when you start to think about actually dropping PPOs, leveraging the membership plan as an alternative, this is where it starts to get really interesting in terms of optimizing your coverage landscape and just improving efficiency of your day to day operations. Sort of similar to the example you gave from the folks this morning. Because, I mean, it's absolutely no secret that These dentists are collecting 40, 50% of UCRs with PPOs. Right. With Clear's approach to these membership plans, because the practice actually controls pricing. While we're providing, you know, data driven recommendations, using UCR fees as a benchmark, we see Clear patients collect at, you know, 70, 80% of UCRS. Right. Again, you take it on a sure patient, you bring on to a Clear membership plan. We're generating like 150, 200% more collection. So that's huge. But when you actually compare a clear patient versus a PPO patient, we're also generating 30 to 40% more collections than a PPO patient. Right. So again, you put it all together. If we're doing a good job designing these plans in a way that is essentially profitable, the Clear patients that walk through your door, they end up being the most profitable, the most efficient patients that you see. Right? So, you know, again, depending on where you are with the whole thing, let's say by chance, you're in a pretty good position with your PPO contracts and you just want to improve cash patient engagement, massive opportunity there. Again, 2 to 3x across the board in patient metrics. If you want to move away from certain PPOs and you want to use Clear as an alternative, again, you're also making steps in the right direction there with May, 30, 40% more, more collections as well. So really what it comes down to, again, all these challenges that we know exist compressing margins, you know, staffing challenges. The bigger the membership plan, patient base that you can build, it really means the more efficient revenue operations are, the more efficient your revenue operations are, means the more time for your clinical teams to focus on actually delivering care.

So one of the things we teach Nick and DEO is organizing your financials a specific way. So your cost of services, you know, are booked together and your variable costs. I want to translate some of what you just said for some of our members who have done that. So think about this. If revenue moves up 30%, so let's say you did a hundred thousand, now you did 130,000. That 30,000 has to pay doctors and maybe some supplies, right? So let's call that 40% of that. The rest of it, 60 cents on every dollar is going to drop right to your bottom line. It's not going to pay more rent, it doesn't have to pay more for staff, et cetera. An increase like that, I'm going to have, you know, I'm 30,000, I'm going to have about 20,000 of it. Just go right into my pocket that month. It's a pretty amazing return. Right. So leveraging reimbursement rates is not the same, frankly of even like opening another practice or do it's better than that because it's just you don't have additional overhead. You know, your dentists still want to get paid because they're doing more or they're getting more. But at the end of the day that just helps with retention of clinicians though. I mean it's just such a win win. Last little bit here, I'll give you an opportunity to give us a comparison. So let's say someone goes, okay, I get it. I can't just like drop insurance, go to cash. I'd like to have a better strategy. I get the membership plans would be a good solution. How am I going to judge? Because like clear is not the only membership solution in the universe. Right. So what I, I mean, what questions should I be asking? How should I even think about the pros and cons? Are they all the same or are there differences here and what makes that difference?

Yeah, that's, it's a fantastic question, of course. And you know, specifically when I think about like the, the DEO audience, you know, I think about folks who are tenacious, obviously entrepreneurial and they have goals of growth, expansion, maybe even selling. Right. And I mean, I'm sure, you know, to be able to achieve these goals, you know, at the rate that, that a lot of folks want to, you often need to lean on third party support in, you know, various areas of the business. Now when you typically think about a membership plan company, often you think about like a platform to log in. You know, we're going to automate tasks, you're going to make your management a little bit simple. That's kind of where it stops. But really a clear. And we sort of covered a lot of this today. Like our overall vision is well beyond just providing a software where typically our best partnerships are those with groups and practices who really recognize the importance of strategic support and you know, they value data and analytics to uncover that deeper opportunity. So on the technology side, a big piece of this is actually our ability to integrate with the practices pms, you know, this a sort of stream further streamlines and automates the administrative piece, reduces manual labor. But then it also provides key visibility into patient behavior metrics as well as your PPO coverage landscape. Right. So on the patient behavior side, sort of some of the things that I talked about today, what's the differences between your insured patient visitation and revenue against your uninsured against your clear. That's something that we're actually working on building into our platform because again, that type of visibility into where you know, what patients might, I want to sort of start focusing on driving. That's extremely important. Then the second, which is so unbelievably applicable in this situation is again, what does my PPO coverage landscape look like? So we have something that we can currently do it on sort of like a one off basis. We're actually working on again building it into the platform, but we call it our optimizer report. And it basically lays out total production by individual ppo. And underneath that it'll show you of that production. How much are you collecting? Right. So again, typically when I look at these, the PPOs are somewhere between like, you know, 40 and 60% clear. Patients are somewhere around 70. But especially as you really, really start to think about moving away from some of these PPOs, that type of visibility is absolutely invaluable because we don't want to drop the, you know, number one highest producing PPO, like 70% of your production. We don't want, we don't want that to just drop off the cliff. But as we sort of look down the, the coverage landscape, you might have a couple, couple smaller ones that are still really poor. Three reimbursements, like hey, let's start there. So again, as we start to consider making this, this big step, having that type of visibility, that is so key. And then again as you sort of layer on top of the technology, it's really the strategic support, the long term partnership that we like to form, that's what I would say truly separates us from really anybody else out there in the market.

Yeah, it's awesome. Well, here's what I encourage people to do. It doesn't cost anything to like reach out to you. Start looking at what designing a plan might look like. Talk through some questions, share what your strategy is. I mean this is what you do all day. So if you're that dentist who are like, man, I'm thinking about this, you're also operating in a box of complete ignorance. You know, you just have never done it before. Versus reaching out to someone like Nick and his team, now they can start saying, hey, here's some case studies, here's some things to watch for. Here's an area, you know, here's an area people mess up. Here's an area where you're going to crush it if you do these things. So just getting that advice, even if you didn't execute tomorrow would be super Helpful. So if somebody just wanted to reach out, start that conversation. Nick, what's the best way you gave the website? Maybe give that again and then maybe your email and stuff?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, you know, again, you can request more information directly from our website. You can reach me directly. My email is nick and I c k@clear k l e e r.com and of course on LinkedIn, if that's more familiar with you. But yeah, again, you know, me, me, at this point in my role at Clear, I do work with, like, the groups and the DSOs, but we have a ton of. A ton of team members that focus exclusively on independent practices as well. You know, those that do have aspirations of maybe becoming an emerging group. It's. This is something that can be beneficial pretty much across the board if you are participating with insurance. And it's something where, again, by taking that. That small step of, of just understanding, like, what is my opportunity and what are some small steps that I can take today to put myself in a better position tomorrow? We hear it all the time and we're happy to at least, you know, initiate that process with, with folks.

Nick, thank you very much. I know this question is on a lot of people's minds on how to take on insurance reimbursement. And it's one thing to kind of complain about it and talk about it philosophically. It's another thing to have somebody say, we have a plan. Let's start executing on that plan. So really appreciate you being on today. Hey, if you enjoyed what we're talking about here in the summit coming up in June, we will be live with individuals like Nick and with many of our great coaches talking through more and more strategies on how do we grow, how do we scale, how do we take care of our teams, etc. So love to have you there. Always. Welcome to join us on our Facebook page at DEO Growth Secrets. And until next time, keep smiling. Thank you for listening to deo's Growth Secrets podcast for dental organizations. Continue the conversation on our Facebook group and meet other dental leaders. Get questions answered and the strategies you need to succeed. Plus, we have some free resources for you right there on the Facebook page. Remember, you're not alone. Let's do this together. Join DEO's Growth Secrets Group on Facebook. And until next time, keep smiling.