218: Insurance Verification Solutions Every Dental Entrepreneur Needs to Know

In this modern world where dental offices still have to make phone calls, stay on hold, get some other person on the line, and manually enter the information. If you tell anybody you know from the Silicon Valley that this problem exists in dentistry today, they're going to be like, that's just not possible. But that's where we are.

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 need to face these challenging times 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 podcast. I'm your fearless host, EMT Scott, and today I have Vivek Kinra, CEO of Verific, on here today. And that's a mouthful, but an awesome mouthful. I'm really excited to dig in because I'll just jump right into it, Vivek. We're all struggling with this increase in labor cost. I mean, we're trying to hit a 20% margin. And at DEO, you know, we have 270 groups, entrepreneurs, doing collectively $3 billion. So we kind of know what's going on in the marketplace. And I can tell you that the pre Covid versus post Covid labor market world is super intense in trying to figure out how do I get back to that benchmark of 20% profitability at my practice level. And of course, just to clarify for everyone, that's 20% profitability if you were paying yourself as an associate, if you're a single doctor, owner or across your platform. And one of the biggest issues is around labor costs. Another big issue is around collections, just generally and the collections process. And you've been in this for a while. You've kind of been ahead of your time solving these problems. Of course, all of us have been doing them very manually. But I'd love to just tell our listeners a little bit of your background just so they understand how long you've been working on this. Because you had a company even before Verific that was around that you ended up selling to Bingco. So can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yeah, sure. So by degree and everything, I'm a computer engineer. I spent my life writing software, and my wife is a dentist, started a dental practice. And I remember my last corporate position. I was A VP of Mobile Application Development. I was just super bored. But when you open a dental office, it's like your own business, right? And I just found myself in these corporate rooms, you know, kind of under the table slacking the employees. And my, my heart and my mind was all at the dental office, right. So I ended up taking a three month sabbatical. I remember I actually attended one of the midwinter courses, got super fired up, sent my wife a text message saying hey, I think I'm gonna quit my job and let's just make this, make this practice. And she was like very, very nervous because at that point of time it was just a startup, wasn't doing that well. And here I am talking about quitting my job while my wife was pregnant. But it fel. Kind of just, you know, went right into it, took a three month sabbatical and just never went back. And as I was just kind of running the practice, you know, you just see so many issues. And this is back in like 2017 where the Facebook groups and the, and the, you know, conversations around running it as a pure business weren't there. Right. Like it was, it was get, it was starting, right. So you know, I just went headfirst and then saw plenty and plenty of issues with insurance. And one of the first things I did was just restructure some of the insur contracts for us because we were getting paid from insurances so poorly and it was very different. Insurance A pays us, I remember 664 bucks for a crown and insurance B pays us 1100 bucks for a crown, et cetera. And then offices around us that were just friends of ours that were getting all these varied rates so kind of went down that rabbit hole and realized that there's a whole big industry and there's mechanism to negotiate and restructure your contracts, did that and made a very, very big dent in our office. In fact, when I used to run PPO profits in my webinars I used to show, you know, March of or 2017 versus March of 2018 with the same provider mix. It was just life changing for us. And so eventually we started a company in October of 2018 called PPO Profits. And I thought at that time I'm just going to be like, continue to run the practice but have a side business and make some extra money. And before I knew it, it just from day one, just massive demand. And when the company was eventually acquired In October of 2023, about 20 days shy, 20 days shy of five years, it had 70 people working in the company full time. And you know, it had, we had worked with about 2,700 dentists, went into billing, wrote us, you know, had some software for in office memberships. And I just, you know, I was just totally like, you know, overwhelmed with the demand. And there was not a single day from the day that I started the company to the time when the company was acquired that we weren't behind the eight ball when it comes to demand. We just carried like a four month wait list for the most part during that as well.

You know, can I just say something that's super validating by the way of. For, you know, a lot of our members at deo. Being in industry is the only industry they've ever been in. And one of the things I try to help them understand is like this is complex, right? Like for those of us who've been in lots of different industries, when we come into this, we realize how many different moving parts there truly are in healthcare and especially a retail healthcare environment and how many systems and tools are not built to do this. So, you know, if you're a dentist owner out there and you're like, man, this feels really hard. One, I'd say get in with DEO because you'll be with other entrepreneurs who are solving these problems. But number two, give yourself a little bit of grace because this is one of the more difficult entrepreneurship journeys. Very worth it. Great return. But there is a lot of pieces that need individuals like you, Vivek, who are, you know, we call you our innovation partners because as dental practices and dental groups we can't solve for all these different pieces. Right. And so I love that you're digging deep. It sounds like on the insurance negotiations where you started and then now tell me where you've gone with Verific because it sounds like you're now solving for the collections piece starting at the beginning.

Yeah, for sure. And this started about two, three years ago as well. I was for about two years running Verific and PPO profits at the same time, which is one of the reasons why I ended had to, I wanted to sell PPO profits as well. Because you know, this, it's just really, really difficult to run two fast growing companies at the same time. I mean, I'm not Elon Musk. Right. Like, so it just was somewhat stressful. Right. And so with Verific it was the second problem, which is, you know, and it still exists, which is insurance verifications. Right. And in this modern world, general officers still have to make phone calls. Stay on hold, get some other person on the line and manually enter the information. It's kind of like if you tell anybody from the Silicon Valley that this problem exists in dentistry today, they're going to be like, that's just not possible. But that's where we are. And so about three years ago, in about late 2021, or. Sorry, it was a 2022, actually, 21, late 2021, I just had this idea about. And I don't think I was the only person who had this idea. Maybe multiple people had it, we just executed it, which is that every single office right now is calling on these plans and putting this information in their practice management software, whether it's open, dental, dentrix, et cetera. Right. Why isn't there like a national master database? So we decided that we could just crowdsource this information. And then because the plan information remains constant throughout the year, and all the employees of that particular plan have the same exact benefits. Right. And so if he could just crowdsource or create a master database, it would be super beneficial because everyone doesn't have to keep making the same phone calls over and over again. So back in 2021 raised some money to create this platform, which is what we released out of beta last year. Right. And then it's. It's somewhat magical where and what this software does, it's a combination of multiple things, but it's. It's what I would call it's magic. Things that it does are a, it has the ability to standardize the data, and most importantly, it has the ability to create this like, massive crowdsourced database. And as of last year, late last year, we had about 107,000 unique plans in the system. But I know I'm getting too technically detailed.

It's really awesome. Can I just back up? Because I think for those who aren't software engineers and maybe even Silicon Valley, the part that people don't understand is there's no standard language and there's no association that is forcing standardization amongst the insurance companies. And so I've watched many companies go down this path and not be able to solve it. It's really interesting how you are solving it, because what they found was had there been like a standard language and a standard set of data and an API that each insurance company needed to create, then this probably would have been solved a long time ago. But because the insurance companies don't see this as a core issue for them, you know, and the inefficiency might even benefit them slightly, they wouldn't Say that, but we would. Then they've never sat down and said, hey, let's all structure our data the same way. Let's provide APIs for these software companies and let's just pump this information in directly so that people don't have to call us, we don't have to have a call center, et cetera. Maybe they just can't get along. I don't know. But they've all decided that they're going to do it a different way. And so it's been almost impossible for anyone to solve it. What you're saying is. Yeah, but now in today's world, you could crowdsource the information even if you don't have a direct pipe in.

Right, Right. For the plan information that is correct. For the patient information, which the way I describe it is, people call it eligibility, but it's more than that. It's if the patient is activ. Not how much insurance and deductible is remaining for that patient. And history. Right, yeah, those three things. Obviously, we can't crowdsource it because it changes all the time. It's for different patients. So we still rely on the insurance carriers to provide that. But the big chunk of the plan information is what we've been able to crowdsource. And you're absolutely right. And I think for anybody that is listening. Right. I have gotten so deep into the weeds of some of this where it's, you know, some of the big clearinghouse companies, like, I meet with them on a weekly basis to give them information about some of this stuff. And I may be overstating this. You know, I could be totally. But as an entrepreneur, I'm also not like, you know, more on the business side, per se. I'm like, really, you know, sleeves rolled up and deep into the weeds, understanding the problem at a very, very minute level. I enjoy that. And I'm not sure if you know how many people there are in this country who understand at such a nuanced level. Because when I look at the data structure, when I look at what's coming out, it's far more complex than even people recognize. It's so weirdly nuanced. I tell people a very good example, MetLife, one of the best portals out there, one of the best clearinghouse companies out there for us to put the data. But when I tell this to dental offices, sometimes people are like, that can be. Which is that MetLife, even on their portal, if you go to meddental.com portal will provide you history for the patient. Like you can look at their dates of service, but it does not provide you history for SRPs, for sealants, for fillings of crowns. That information, if you want to know if the patient had an SRP done, a deep cleaning, you have no other option but to make a phone call. There is no other option, right? You can't RPA it, which is like scraping the websites, because it doesn't exist. You can go to the portals. The clearinghouse isn't providing it. So it's at that level. And if you can think about how these kind of things manifest themselves, you would have a patient come to a dental office, the front office goes to meddental.com and sees, oh, this patient six months ago had a comp exam done, a full mouth X ray done, and that's it. Did not get an SRP done. And the doctor says, oh, you know what, I think you need a SRP gets. The SRP gets declined, right? Because that date and SRP was also done. But MetLife doesn't tell you that electronically.

It's just so mental, really. Fascinating. Okay, there's a couple things here. Number one, you said scraping the website. For those who don't know, one of the ways that you can create software that gets data is you can create, let's call it a bot that goes in, logs in as you, and then it looks at all the website, grabs all the information, then provides that as a database. But if the information's not there, it can't scrape that. Right? So if it's somehow hidden or just frankly isn't available, even if it's kind of 10 clicks down, the bot can still find it. But if it's just not there, then that's fascinating. And then you hit on the most important part to me, where the ROI of all this comes in when I'm working with someone or One of our 15 coaches is working with an individual and they're helping them get their collection rate higher, right? So they think their collection rate, great. Then we have them run a few reports and they're like, nevermind, I need some help. One of the things you start to realize is part of the denial started all the way back on verification, right? So they're worried about their billing team, which probably is good, and what they need to be doing. But frankly, in the example you just gave, there's nothing a billing team can do to get that approved. There's no appeal process for something that's going to get denied for frequency or other things like this. So the verification is the groundwork for one more Efficiency in the practice. Because not only did I not collect this, but it means the doctor did the work, they spent time on those things. There was a conversation with the patient, the patient thought that, you know, they were getting value or they didn't need to pay for it. All those things. Are you going to go back to the patient, say, never mind this, you know, you now have to pay for something. I told you, you weren't. That was included. Like there's so much inefficiency that happens through bad verification. You know, it's not just like a. Kind of nice to have. So. All right, so one question I do have is, so why do you say MetLife's one of the best? Is like even as bad as that is, that's still one of the best.

That's right. That I tell people that when you're trying to get this data electronically across the 230 main pairs, this smattering of smaller ones too, but 230 main pairs, you're going to get 0 to 70% of the information. And 0% is like a sun life that doesn't have a clearinghouse connection. They just added that right now. But that's the example I used to give Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois. If you use the clearinghouse, which is called edi, is the data that they have, which is like a very poor standard. And there's no, like we discussed, there's no law that says how much data and what structure do you have to provide. Right. So the only thing that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, which is a conglomerate, a part of a conglomerate called DNOA Dental Networks of America includes Texas, New Mexico, et cetera. Only thing it provides is if the patient is active or not. That's it. It does not tell you how much insurance is remaining. It has zero plan data. So you don't know what the annual maximum is. Right. The only thing you get is if the patient is active or not. So that to me is okay, what about Delta?

Everybody's going to want to know where's Delta?

And Delta is the perfect example of why nobody has moved on from this system. Because I have a very, very in depth knowledge about Delta for a variety of reasons because different Deltas have a lot of interest in this space, in this or tech space, like they want to invest in it and all that stuff. Right. So the. There are 39 different delta dentals. Right. So when we.

Because they're state insurance laws and they have to create it based on the insurance laws of those states.

Right, right, right. So In Delta Dental and Association, similar to Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is a license. So you have different insurance companies that buy that license and they operate in that state. Delta Dental is also like a franchise. Yeah, kind of. Yeah, exactly right. Which means Delta Dental of Illinois is a totally different company from Delta Dental of Indiana. And they have nothing in common between each other. There's zero.

Really.

Yeah. Except what they have agreed on across them is to utilize this standard called edi, which is basically the protocol for healthcare providers that came out in the 80s or 90s that provide stuff like claim information, era eligibility and benefits. And sometimes, you know, people that are a little deeper into this technically will say something like 270, 271 data. That's basically this EDI protocol. Protocol 270 is the request protocol 271 is their response back. Right. That some of these companies adhere to. The problem is that within those 39 delta dentals, they communicate back and forth via EDI. What that means is that's the reason why you don't always just have to go to Delta Dental of California to fetch the information. You could go to a different Delta Dental and still get that information. You could go to Delta Dental Toolkits, ins, et cetera.

It sounds good. That sounds positive so far.

That sounds somewhat positive. But there's breaks in the process. Like one very, very weird break, I'll give you. This is where things start to fall apart, which is that if we go to. If you take a look at a patient that has Delta Dental of New Mexico, that patient may have a plan with the group number, which is really the big identifier of the plan, that may say something like 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, dash 00001. Okay. And that 00001 is a subgroup. And it's very important. If you go to Delta Dental of New Mexico and you look at the group, it'll say that. But if you go to DDIC or Delta dental toolkits, that dash 00001 will be wiped out. So it'll just say 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, which is actually a totally different group number because that particular group will have multiple. So if you think about, like, how do you standardize the data for a dental office? What? A dental office can make the mistake. So the dental office gets a patient, goes to the dental toolkits, puts in the patient and says, oh, this Group number is 23456. Right. Puts it into the practice management software. You have a second patient that's coming in. Also the group number starts with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And they're like, oh, I don't need to do any breakdown of benefits here because I already have it in my system. I'll just select it. But it was a totally different plan. Right.

That dash and extension numbers. You know what this makes me realize too, is just each practice, you know, let's say your buddy is like, oh, I don't have any problems with this. And then somebody else, well, your pay, your insurance mix could determine how hard your verification process is. Right?

Oh, 100.

Yeah. So if you're like, I think you said, was it Sun Life or one of these others? You know, if you had for some reason you were in a small region that that was your primary, then your verification's 10 times harder than the guy who's got a mix. And so understanding the complexity of your verification for each insurance could help you understand what kind of resources you need for your front desk or for a technology like this. Right.

100%. And we help with that when we're talking to the dental officers too. And this is exactly what I let people know when they say, okay, what do I need? I'm like, some. How successful the software is going to be is also dependent on your payer makes insurance mix. Right. But coming back to this problem, if you now think about what should happen, is an API level where you can just. There's a standardizer standardization of data and there's an API. Well, right now, 39 different delta dentals have to coordinate this process to achieve it at the same time. Because currently they communicate via edi. So if they need to create a totally different separation, you have 39 different companies with each of their own independent goals, their CEOs, their boards, their finances, et cetera, that have to come together to say, yes, we need to achieve this. And there's no, there's no. From a business level, there's no incentive either. Right. Like there's no CEO of Delta Dental that's saying, well, we are going to make more money by approving more claims by providing more data. I mean, right, like, right, right, right.

Yeah, there's actually, that's where there's actually a friction or a conflict of interest here is simplicity may drive down their labor cost as far as somebody having to do the verification, but it would increase the utilization. And so no, but, but nobody's sitting around actually trying to figure that out either.

Yeah, I think they might have honestly figured it out because right now, if you think about it, when we make a call to UnitedHealthcare or MetLife or Dent and Dental. Those calls go to Philippines. Right. These centers are all. There's a. There's a city called Shoot, kind of blank, like Makita or something like that and blanking out. But that's. Where are these big buildings where all these data centers for some of these big insurances. I think from their perspective, the cost of a person that's, you know, more lower labor cost is actually lower than actually having to pay out these. Paying out these claims.

So the inefficiency at a lower outsourced labor cost is kind of the magic for them, even if it's painful for us.

I think so.

Not bad for the patient.

There's a little of cynicism there, but I think that's probably what's driving it. Right. But that does make it. And I think what should happen is like an act of Congress. Right. And my end goal with all of this stuff is to be like this, you know, right now. Veritic is not that huge and stuff like that, but it's this little company, in my view, that is doing all the right things because we have built out the standard, we have standardized the data. Like, we can help these payers to say, hey, UnitedHealthcare, this is the way. Take our AI layer that takes whatever you're sending. You don't have to rewrite the whole thing. And we can convert it into this standard that all of you guys can use. And I hope that we get enough traction where we are now, the big boys in this space that have built the right solution for the industry where we go to the ada, and ADA is in Chicago, which is where I live. For me to say, hey, all the dentists use your ADA claim form today. The payers understand it. The dental offices understand it. I think it's time for the ADA eligibility and benefits form. Right. And here it is. Should be your number one agenda item. We have already built it. Let's advocate it to get all the different pairs on our system. Right?

Yeah, yeah. Let's talk through a case study. Okay. Because right now I'm guessing that several of our listeners are forwarding this to their office manager, OPS or RCM team. And like, okay, how can we use this to, you know, increase efficiency for the team? And the office manager is listening to this and saying, okay, how would I actually implement this? What would it look like? So walk us through kind of what your best customers are doing and what kind of ROI they're getting by implementing verific in their offices.

Yeah. So there are Two aspects for Verific. Right. And people who know Verific have also heard this term called Verismart. And I think it'll be a good opportunity for me to explain the distinctions. Right. Verific is the name of the company. And when we first started we was a purely outsourced company, which means you outsource the verifications to us. We've got a big labor pool overseas as well. Where. And we've got, you know, centers in two different countries.

You've got the Philippine friends sitting next to the insurance Philippine friends and they just chat with each other.

You're, you're, you're actually not that far off because.

So awesome.

The people that we hire used to be the guys and girls that used to provide the data for MetLife in UnitedHealthcare on the other.

So they know the questions to ask. They know they can say no, no, no, go here and get that information. Information, yeah, it's awesome, right?

So we started that way and then we basically said, all right, let's just build this AI system that can take the information from the clearinghouse, standardize it, gets all the patient data that we get and for all the plan data, let's just manually feed it into a master database that we can utilize. Right. And so this software that we built, which was in beta early last year, came out of beta late around middle of last year is called Very Smart. So we have now released a subscription based Very Smart software that a dental office can sign up for. And then it currently integrates with Open Dental Dentrix and Eaglesoft. So it'll pull all your schedule for all the patients that have dental insurance. Select many day you want and you can verify everything. And it'll run its AI verification which is first going to the clearinghouse, fetching it, standardizing it, going into our standard database, master database and bringing that. And what is really cool about this is that as part of your onboarding through this, through the various Very Smart, you actually design your breakdown form online. So you will say, I want to know about nightguards. I want to know if it's covered only for bruxism or if it's only within X months of osteosurgery. I want to know about IV sedation, et cetera.

So kind of within your standard of care procedure mix. So you're not trying to grab a bunch of information that's not going to be super helpful. You can say, hey, this is usually what I'm going to treatment plan. This is where I feel comfortable. This is our standard of care at our practices. You pull that information so it feels very customized around what you're going to treatment plan. It's awesome. And right now the software is starting to what, replace that outsourcing solution or do you have both available?

Both available and for. Until we probably hit critical mass. Right. It will need to use both. And I think the software you'll have to use, you know, you know, regardless, because we still have to fetch the data from the clearinghouse that is the patient specific information. Right. We can't get around that by storing that data, you know, into our database. So at this point, what we saw last year is that it was almost somewhat discouraging for us from a business standpoint, which is our outsourced invoices. So from a workflow standpoint, the way it works is, you know, you log into Buyersmart, you can run this verifications, you know, across in inventory. It basically then compares it of all the data we were able to get against your customized breakdown. And it'll give you a number, It'll say six missing fields. Right. Like literally you can click on it and it'll tell you the six pieces of information that you wanted we could not figure out.

Okay, and do I still. And then I just, I'd have to call in and finish that off.

There's multiple, you know, workflows. You can just import it as is because you don't need everything for all the patients. Gotcha. Right. And so you can just say, yeah, I'm not really doing a deep cleaning on this patient. I really do. I need to know, can I do all four quads of SRP on the same day or I don't even have the time to do all four quads of SRP on the same day. You couldn't find it. Let's not bother making a phone call for that.

Got it.

Or the second thing is the dental office can do it themselves. Like a lot of DSO groups and stuff like that have their centralized billing teams. So we just train those teams to say you don't need to worry about anything else. Now you just need to collect these six things, put it in our verismart system, because now you're helping all of verismart populate those six fields for that particular plan. Right. Or the third option is which is hit outsource and for a fee we will call on your behalf and do it for you. Right. So all those three things work, which

if I'm a smaller practice, I probably just want to outsource it to get the Arbitrage on labor because you know, my office manager sitting on the phone is probably more expensive than just having you go solve that for me. And yeah, it's so really what I'm looking at if I'm a practice owner is I'm looking at the cost of labor for my team to be doing this or we're not doing it. And so what is the cost of the collections percentage that I'm not getting because of this? What is the cost of the labor for me as a clinician or my associates that they're doing things that aren't getting paid on? And so if there's enough arbitrage there and difference, then it's super valuable. And what do you typically see? Like give me a case study of somebody, single practice, multi practice, give me a couple case studies that say this, you know, here's the investment they made, here's the return that they saw.

Yeah, I mean honestly, my wife's dental practice is probably a perfect use case for some of this stuff as well. We're in a big metropolitan like Chicago, right. And so what we used to see is just very, very high cost of the people in the front desk. And legitimately out of the, it's a solar doctor office at that time, if you have two people at the front, one person's half a job is just insurance verifications. This is true numbers. Right. So the hard cost for a practice would be about 2,500 for a small practice. And that also is error prone. Right. So our collections used to be like 94 something percent in the way that truly legitimately the way that practices solve this problem is by not thinking about it. Right. Like any office you go to and you take a look at their ar, you'll see a massive AR and you'll see plenty of claims that were denied and it's just like not worth it or because of so many other things that are happening, people just kind of leave it as is. So we have over the last two years been running at over 99% collections. And I track my numbers really, really well to make sure what our. Right. What are NVR, you know, and you

know, so I mean, 5%, let's say 5% movement is the potential here, right. For for most single practices, a million dollars, that's $50,000, two million dollar practice, that's $100,000 of additional income plus just frankly the lack of wasted time, lack of treatment coordination and costs. So then you got the back end labor efficiency as well. And are they calling and all of these Other pieces. And so, you know, $2 million of, of revenue. There's probably a six figure return, if not more.

And just from the like it, our average invoice per dental office right now is about 698 bucks. Right. That includes, you know, the outsourcing and all that stuff.

So I like investing 700 bucks and getting 10,000 back. I just feel like that's a good return, you know. So, yeah, something like that would be amazing.

And there are so many intangible benefits. Right. Because not everything gets calculated in dollars because you've got not as upset patients in the time slot of just dealing with a problem. Often of a claim not getting paid because something wasn't verified properly, having to explain it, having to deal with it. Sometimes the doctor has to get involved. Like in any business. I look at all these weird slop times. Are you spending the time improving and building the business or are you dealing with problems?

I'm also seeing in today's market that that tedious work drives turnover. Right. So people aren't interested in doing that. It's hard to hire someone that you want to be super friendly at your front desk and coordinate with patients and so forth and then ask them to sit on a phone for four hours a day doing a bunch of minutiae. And so then they're wondering, like, how do I find the right person? So then they find someone who will sit there and just do the minutia. But then the patient interaction's really poor. Right. So you have to divide this out and then you can increase the retention at your practice level too, which is huge.

Yeah. And that's why I always tell people that, you know, there's so many benefits. Just that not having to block your lines and having, you know, someone on the phone doing it. There's just take it, take it, you know, away and there's still going to be issues because some of these are largely unsolvable problems. Right. Like, and so, and that kind of goes into.

But I'm just trying to solve, if I can solve, yeah, 80, 90% of this lift. I mean that's absolutely huge. Then how does it work? Like tactically? So let's say I'm an open dental and you know, I've got the schedule for the week. Am I like looking at everybody for the week? Am I looking at tomorrow? Am I looking three days out? Like what's best practices here? Typically?

Yeah. Next, next up to maximum one week in advance. Right. It's, it's, yeah, that allows me for

my confirmations and if you know, there's any expectations that I need to drive, etc. And then frankly, like if there's scheduling that needs to happen and filling in gaps and so forth. Yeah, a week's a great time period.

And if there are practices in open dental, there's one thing, one magical thing that Verismart does is truly as soon as I show it to people online, it's like instant signup. Verismart, to my knowledge, is the only company that takes every single code, the benefit percentage, frequency limitations, age limitations, whatever we have the ability to put in. It actually gets put in the actual individual fields, not a breakdown document that gets just, it's the actual data that gets populated which makes the treatment plans instantly accurate. Right.

Oh, interesting. So is it like at the procedure level versus just the general patient level or what does that mean? Is it at the treatment plan level versus just as a general concept, all of it.

Right. Because it's, you know, first is all the plan benefits, right. As well as all the patient stuff like history and everything and how much insurance is remaining. Right. And once you have those two things, when you treatment plan, at least in open dental, right, it will auto calculate your patient portion if you've got all the right data there.

Interesting, interesting. So my conversation with the patient up front can be pretty specific.

Very specific and simple enough. Like, you know, in open dental there's a patient column saying, here it is now one. Just as a, as a tip that I give to anybody that's listening that's, you know, doing some of these treatment presentations, et cetera. I have found that a lot of the folks that are doing these treatment presentations will just say, well, and this is an estimate and they feel it's good enough. It's not like this, this. Right. And people that train for treatment presentation will also say, make sure you say this is an estimate. And they say it, but it's just not nearly enough because the patient still doesn't fully comprehend it. And in our office, one thing that we have done is to like take it above a few notches where we're not just showing the patient portion, we're showing the total contracted fees like we're in a network office. So we'll say that this is our fee. But, but you get a discounted fee for being in network. And if you take a look at this number, whatever it is, like 1736, please note, for all the things that we're doing today, that's what we need to collect. Now, it's not when you present your insurance Card. It's not a credit card. We're unable to just run it. We're just kind of going on good faith and know that your insurance company will do everything possible to mislead us, to do things that will not get covered and blame us. Right. This is very standard operating procedure for insurance companies. Please know we're just a dental office that is trying to do this thing. We're in network and we're taking a discounted fee. Right. And you just need to be understanding of that and be prepared to pay all the way up to the 1736amount and not just what you're saying. Now, we will fight like anything for you, but if it comes down to it, please note, if you're not prepared to pay all the way up to this thing, I'd rather not you do this treatment than blame us in the future. Fair. And that is, to me, the line that needs to be said to patients for them to say, okay, that, that gives you more, stronger confidence. But anyways, just a sidetrack.

Yeah, yeah, cool. Yeah, some scripting there that people might want to think about for treatment coordination as they get something like this in place. All right, so if someone wanted to reach out or, you know, they wanted their office manager or team members to reach out and say, yes, want to get this off our plate, we think there's higher and better uses for our team than sitting on the phone getting this done. How do they reach out to you and, you know, get some kind of demo for their office?

The simplest way is to go on our website, which is just verific. Biz. Which is biz. The word verific is just the word terrific with a V. Right, right. And as soon as you go there, you'll basically be presented with watch demo. Click on it and you will see Monday through Friday, many times available for you. Select one and at this point in time, I'll be the one that'll do the demo for you

to talk to the man himself. So that's V E R R I F I C V E R R I F I C dot com. And then I went to your website. Really straightforward. I love the sign behind you, by the way, that our listeners can't see. Friends don't let friends spend hours verifying insurance. That's fabulous. I really appreciate this. Vivek, is there anything else that you kind of want to close out with as people are thinking about getting this return on investment?

Yeah, absolutely. The one thing that I would say is like, and this is my message to all the offices and all the office managers, et cetera. Right. Like, I think it's now 20, 25, where cars drive themselves, etc. It is no longer. I think the insurance companies are not doing what we want them to do. The vendors are trying really, really hard to solve this problem for you. Right? And hopefully during this thing, you got a flavor of how complex and nuanced this problem is. Help us solve this problem. And the best way to do it is, if you think about it, the more users that get on our platform, the better and better. And the more data that we get. And the better data we get because it's all crowdsourced. And so right now, we have a few hundred offices, and we were able to put together 107,000 plans, unique plans in the system. The moment we get close to 1,000 plans, I think we will have all the data for the plan information that you can need. So join us. And the one thing that you get as part of the software is that you are able to do what's called a plan search. You don't even need a patient. You could type in the employer, and it'll give you all the benefits that Virusmart has. So that's my message.

Awesome. No, I really appreciate you solving this. This is why at deo, we call you our innovation partners, because, frankly, there's so many different pieces here that have to be solved in dentistry, we don't have the time or the means to solve all of them. So I'm really grateful for you, Vivek, and your capability and your programming skills and everything else to try to solve this, especially as labor costs continue to move up and collections become more critical and there is a misalignment, there is a conflict of interest between insurance and providers. And so anyone like you that's helping kind of weaponize our side is super appreciative. So thank you so much. If you're interested in learning more about Verific, go to their website, Verific Biz. 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.