What is Dental A/R Collection Automation?

Video Transcript:

Welcome to a Pearly product overview: A/R Collection Automation - turn your accounts receivable into automated receivables.

Before we dig into the product, let me tell you a little bit about Pearly. We create win-win solutions for dental practices and their patients. Our company is on a mission to empower dental practices to deliver a superior way that their patients can access and pay for care, and we do that with our suite of three products.

Today we're talking about our A/R Collection Automation product. Evolve your collections process with the A/R assistant for your dental practice.

Accounts receivable collection is always a pain point for practices. You see your A/R continue to add up, write off collections at the end of each year, and your staff hates making calls.

While there's a segment of the patient base that never intends to pay, that's a small number. Most of the time, patients aren't paying reliably and quickly because your process is inefficient. It also is expensive.

Do you know how much it costs your practice to collect $100 or $500? Well, it's more than you think.

Typically the first step is to mail a paper statement. Mailing statements are expensive costing between $5 and $10 a statement. Now, people today don't open their mail as often and opening a bill, writing a check, or navigating through a complex online payment portal does not make it seamless for patients to pay your practice.

After that fails, your team may make a call. Calling is also expensive. If you think about the hourly rate that you're paying a team member to make a call, it can add up quick. Also, while there's many amazing team members that make collections calls an art form, most hate making them and sometimes it can present your practice in a really bad light.

Especially in the days of online reviews and fast word of mouth referrals, having a negative collections experience can really impact your practice.

Aging accounts receivable can add up fast for your practice. SikkaSoft in 2017, reported that the average 90 days past due is $47,000 for a practice. Your practice may be higher, it may be lower, but this number doesn't even include those past due balances that are 31 to 89 days. So A/R is big and it can really make or break your practice's cashflow and therefore your business.

Now, how can we change this? Well, first off, patients expect an easy and private way to complete their payment and your team is busy and the current inefficient process of mailing statements and making phone calls as soon as a patient is late isn't the best approach. And that's why we created our A/R Collection Automation product.

We like to call it the A/R assistant for your dental practice where once a patient is past due, our product gets to work automatically, and collects payment from the patient. We sit between when a patient's late and before your office needs to take action. That's the beauty of our seamless, easy product.

Let's dig into how it works.

The first step is that we integrate with your practice management system. This is such a unique feature because it means that you're not entering data. So as soon as a patient has a past due invoice in your practice management system, it automatically goes to Pearly and that patient is enrolled in what we call a collection flow.

What is a collection flow?

Well, a collection flow, you can think about it like a an activity stream or a scheduled process, like marketing automation. But as soon as that patient's past due, they receive a text and an email to take action so they can complete payment on their phone, or on their computer, seamlessly.

And it's persistent.

So if the patient has not completed payment or let's say they come into the office and pay online, you can pause them or stop the collection flow. But the key is that it keeps going while your practice is totally hands off and doesn't have to do anything.

Once the patient receives the messages, several messages, in many cases, they're friendly, they're personalized, and they encourage action. The patient can pay from any device. They can pay right on their phone, they can view the invoice, or if they already have a payment method saved, all they need to do is click okay.

Now we also provide patients the option to pay over time in five easy Installments. This is completely optional and at the discretion of your practice, but what this does is for those hard to collect invoices, it just gives the patient the option to get started, to start making payments in five interest-free installments. This is not necessarily a substitute for your third-party or in house financing, but perfect for balances of $250 to $1,000, where you just want to offer the flexibility for your patients to pay. You completely set the rules so you can automate if this is given to all patients or just patients that have a certain number of days past due or bill sizes, so you set the rules.

Finally, once payment is completed by the patient, they complete it on their phone, on their desktop through a beautiful branded payment portal for your practice, Pearly processes the charge and automatically deposits those funds into your practice's bank account.

We give you a beautiful and intuitive dashboard so you can see all the outstanding invoices, what's being collected, and how our automated process is performing for you.

In short, A/R Collection Automation removes the hassle of following up on past due balances for your practice, and turns those accounts receivable into automated receivables.

After a patient finishes a collections flow, typically over the period of 30 to 60 days, if they still have not paid, we will notify you when a call's needed. Sometimes that human touch is required for complete transparency, but the huge benefit with our product is that your team has to make 60%+ fewer calls.

Now why is that?

Well, patients pay more reliably with Pearly. Because our system sends friendly and persistent outreach when and where it counts, your practice is not likely making a call on Saturday, but our system will send the Saturday morning reminder.

We also offer the most convenient way for patients to pay, right on their phone, and we connect with them through the preferred channels, texts and email. The reminders are friendly and we're providing patients with an installment option so they can kickstart their payment with you.

Practices see enormous benefits with our A/R collection automation product. They can evolve their process and accelerate their cash flow and reduce cost.

Key benefits include no data entry because of our practice management integration, we integrate with the vast majority of systems and you can reach out to us to confirm that we work with yours. Your staff is making fewer phone calls. We talked about the cost reduction, reducing that cost to collect, but I'll also say that a huge side benefit is that your staff will thank you for giving them a tool that makes their job easier.

How can you collect more A/R? Our product delivers. Practices that are successfully automating their accounts receivable process can collect 30% or more A/R that normally they just have to throw away. Cost reduction, we talked about fewer phone calls, fewer statements, improving your staff efficiency. That leads to a dramatic decrease in the cost to collect.

So would your practice benefit from better cash flow and less cost?

If so, get started with our Accounts Receivable Collection Automation product today.

Our pricing is simple, transparent and there's no extra or additional hidden fees, you always know what you pay. You can head on over to PearlyPlan.com/Pricing to see our latest pricing and get started right away.

If you want to dig in more to why practices choose Pearly, head on over to PearlyPlan.com/Why-Pearly and see why many forward thinking practices are building loyalty, growing recurring revenue, boosting their profitability and improving their A/R collection rate while reducing cost. All of our products work together to deliver a better patient experience, because at the end of the day Pearly is about making that relationship between your practice and your patients better.

You may have questions, and if you want a personal tour, book a demo with us and we'll get a product expert on a screen share to walk you through the software and answer any questions that you have.

Our team also works hard to produce actionable content and resources that give different advice and expert opinions on how you can grow your practice. From articles, webinars, and videos, take a look at our Academy and start growing your practice today.

Thank you for joining this brief product video on our A/R Collection Automation product, and we look forward to working with you!

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If you have any questions or would like to speak with a Pearly RCM specialist about our software solution, please click here to schedule a live walk-through of our platform and services.