Is your production optimum for your services? Is your TC setting your fees and financial agreements correctly? Are your contracts accurately set up on your computer and followed up? Is your financial coordinator a part of your financial agreement control? Are your miscellaneous charges getting posted? If not, maybe this pearl can help.
In the complex world of orthodontic charging, billing, collections and expenses many clients find themselves asking, “Where’s the money?” Sometimes it seems that charges (production) is too low, or that collections are not keeping up with production, or that the net seems much lower than it should be. Typically, this can be resolved with a few calculations, but sometimes there are many complicating factors. It is the purpose of this three-part pearl to better understand “where the money is”.
PRODUCTION: The factors that cause a decrease in production, other than fewer starts, are in order of probability:
1) A large increase in fee courtesies/deals to get them started
2) A sudden drop in Ph-I/Lim or Invisalign starts in a practice, which does many of them
3) A sudden drop in fees due to less treatment required per start (12 months vs. 24 months, etc.)
4) Poor control of fees and financial agreements
5) A sudden acceptance of Preferred Provider insurance starts that reduce your fees by up to 25%.
Staffing factors that affect your charges include:
1) Who sets the fee: the doctor or is it automatic, based on the treatment required?
2) Is there a Fee Schedule and set of possible financial agreements for every treatment fee listed?
3) Who determines the discounts and courtesies (doctor or TC)?
4) Who negotiates the financial agreement and sets the initial payment (TC)?
5) Who enters the contract into the computer (TC or Financial Coordinator)?
6) Is every treatment fee and financial agreement contract that is entered, monitored by a second person (doctor, Clerical Coordinator, TC, Financial Coordinator, etc.)
7) Who sets the non-contract (miscellaneous) fees and who posts and collects them
Refer to the attached PDF for more guidelines on “where the production went”.
This concludes how production affects where the money went; the next part will analyze "where the collections went".
