Year: 2020

Reopening Results

In our last update, we reported seeing an increase in new patient accounts as States slowly started encouraging businesses to reopen. Since then, business has been soaring, and it is encouraging to see how quickly the situation has changed for many of our practices.

We reached our daily low of new patient accounts the week that ended on April 24th. That low was 57 per day. During the first week of May, our new patient activations began to climb, and our average daily activations jumped into the 200 range. The second week surged to over 500 and to over 700 in the third week. For the period following Memorial Day through yesterday, we averaged 921 new patient accounts each day. Last year, during the same period, we averaged 944. Obviously, business has returned, and if you are an office that has reopened, we certainly hope you are seeing similar results.

Those numbers become even more impressive when you consider that they are generated by only 70% of the practices that contributed new patient accounts in the 45-day period prior to the shutdown. With about 30% of practices still closed, the volume likely indicates some pent-up demand resulting from the shutdown, but more importantly, it seems to represent that most of your patients do not fear the personal contact required to seek treatment.

No doubt your office has implemented best practices to protect both your staff and your patients. With these measures in place, and with consumers apparently not fearing the contact needed to seek treatment, business volumes should remain solid even though we are finding our “new normal” way of working.

OrthoBanc Impact

OrthoBanc has been blessed beyond comprehension during the shutdown. Our staff all remained employed and continued to serve your needs and those of your patients. Practices used our patient lifecycle tools to their fullest extent to continue winning business remotely. Many new practices have joined our family, desiring to benefit from our tools and especially from our management of patient accounts that sustained so many practices during this period.

It has been a pleasure to serve your needs in these very unusual times. January seems like light-years ago, yet this year is flying by. I’d love to hear about your experience and how your business is doing. Send me an email using the contact information below. Until then, the OrthoBanc team wishes you continued success.

Bill Holt
OrthoBanc’s President/CEO
bholt@orthobanc.com

TURNING THE CORNER

The national shutdown has been an effort to curb the number of citizens infected by coronavirus with the goal of preventing as many illnesses and deaths as possible. “Flattening the curve” has been the topic for nearly two months. As we learned in science class at a young age, every action has an opposite but equal reaction. At least one opposite reaction in this case has been a considerable impact on our economy. It isn’t the purpose of this update to debate the merits (or not) of the shutdown or whether the impact to our businesses is worth it. What we can say is that it seems we may be reaching the opposite “flattened curve,” economically speaking.

For the two weeks ending on April 25th, we appear to have hit the low point in new patient accounts added to OrthoBanc. New accounts averaged 51 per day for those two weeks. Last week we saw increasing new patient accounts each day with two days topping 100 and one day reaching 166. The daily average for the week is 101. While that is very small compared to our typical 900 to 1000 new patient accounts just 2 months ago, it is a welcome sign that your practices are coming back to life and responsible parties are making appointments.

New patient accounts are not confined to a few states or just a few practices. In fact, 150 different practices submitted new patient accounts so far this week, from 37 states. Of those new accounts, 80% have a drafting start date in May, with 17% starting in June, and the remaining 3% starting sometime from July to September.

Collecting Down Payments Remotely

To help your practice during these difficult days, we developed a tool to help you collect a down payment from your new patients. Many practices are diagnosing cases through remote communications and need to obtain a down payment to secure the relationship. Using our Breeze payment service, you can create up to five URLs with five different preset payment amounts and easily send them to a new patient either through email or text. The new patient simply follows the link, securely enters their name, address, and payment card information, then presses submit. Your down payment is authorized and settled into your bank account the second business day.

As an OrthoBanc provider, even if you are not a current Breeze client, we can fast-track your setup to have you up and running quickly. Contact us at marketing@orthobanc.com, or call (888) 758-0585, option 2. Ask our staff about creative ways other practices are using this very helpful tool.

Payment Trends

We are in week 6/7 of the lockdown and based on our data of almost 400,000 currently active responsible parties, we have noted the following:

Payment Trends

• Payment volumes remain strong, running at nearly normal levels.
• Payment failures have now increased slightly compared to last year – 5.9% vs 5.8%(LY) – but not out of line.
• Payment failure reasons remain consistent with normal patterns.
• Call volume in our call center is at normal levels.
• The number of responsible parties requesting payment deferrals has increased slightly to just under 1% (.89%) – still very low. That figure was .77% in our last update.
• Deferral requests are not biased toward one payment method: Card or ACH.

Responsible Feedback

• Our call center staff estimates that about 20% of callers are expressing some distress over their current economic situation. Our compassionate customer care team listens carefully, making adjustments as we have previously indicated, and calls typically end with your responsible parties pleased with the arrangements that have been made.

Observations

• As indicated in previous reports, the trends noted above are solid evidence that you should stay the course with your payment plans.
• You should be communicating regularly with your patients and billing parties, either through email, text or phone calls.
• In your communication, please remind responsible parties that they can speak directly with OrthoBanc should they need to discuss their payment plan. Please include our responsible portal website URL, https://my.orthobanc.com, and our phone number, (800) 636-6600. They can speak with us via email, on-line chat, or telephone.
• Availability: Our customer care team is available from 8am until 7pm eastern time, Monday through Thursday, and from 9am until 5pm eastern on Fridays. The responsible portal is available 24/7 for self-service features such as balance inquiries, updating payment methods, making on-line payments or help requests.

We certainly appreciate the trust you place in us to work on your behalf. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you desire to do so. I’ll enjoy hearing from you. My contact information is below for that purpose.

Bill Holt – President/CEO

bholt@orthobanc.com

April 17, 2020

Nearly all customer offices are closed except for emergency patient care and virtual diagnosis and treatment. So far, we have been able to keep our full staff employed and working for you. We are pleased to serve your needs and make certain that your income is protected and managed effectively during this very difficult time.

We are in week 5 of the lock down and based on our data of almost 400,000 currently active responsible parties, we have noted the following:

Payment Trends

• Payment volume remains strong, running at nearly normal levels
• Payment failures are lower than the same time last year at 5.4% (5.8% LY)
• Payment failure reasons remain consistent with normal patterns
• Call volume to our call center is returning to a more normal level. We had expected this to increase more than it has.
• Payment deferrals have increased to a little more than 3/4 of 1% (.77%), still very low
• Deferral requests seem are not biased toward one payment method: Card or ACH

Responsible Feedback

• This week we have received many calls asking to setup arrangements for past due payments. It seems that the stimulus checks are perhaps being used to catch up your missed payments.

Observations

• The trends noted above are solid evidence that you should stay the course with your payment plans.
• You should be communicating with your patients and billing parties regularly, either through email, text or phone calls.
• In your communication, please remind responsible parties that they can speak with OrthoBanc should they need to discuss their payment plan. Please include our responsible portal website URL my.orthobanc.com and our number (800) 636-6600. They can speak with us via email, on-line chat, or telephone.
• Availability: Our customer care team is available from 8am until 7pm eastern time, Monday through Thursday and from 9am until 5pm eastern on Friday. The responsible portal is available 24/7 for self-service features such as balance inquiries, updating payment methods, making on-line payments or for help requests.

Free Webinar

On Wednesday, April 22nd at 2:00 EDT, Marla Merritt will host a live webinar to introduce new tools we have released to help you build business during this time of social distancing. You will not want to miss the webinar. It will also be repeated on April 23rd and April 27th. Be sure to reserve your place as these webinars will fill up quickly and the audience size for each is limited. Click here to register.

Preparing to Reopen Your Practice

Once the coronavirus has begun to subside and our federal, state and local governments allow a restart of our economy, you’ll want to ramp up as quickly as possible. That is going to take preparation, prioritization and planning.
Paul Zuelke recently emailed a message with excellent thoughts about preparing to reopen. If you didn’t see his message, I highly recommend that you read and consider his advice. You will find his article here.

We certainly appreciate the trust you place in us to work on your behalf. Please do not hesitate to contact me should you desire to do so. I’ll enjoy hearing from you. My contact information is below for that purpose.

Bill Holt
OrthoBanc’s President/CEO
bholt@orthobanc.com

April 6, 2020

CORONAVIRUS IMPACT:

Payment Trends; Building a New Patient Pipeline

In just a few short weeks, our nation has transformed from a booming economy into fears of extreme unemployment and a deep recession. Some of us lived through the assassination of JFK, the Challenger explosion, 9/11 and the Great Recession of 2008. There is no doubt that the coronavirus impact is perhaps the most significant event in our lifetimes.

In a previous memo, we discussed making slow, calculated changes in operating procedures rather than sudden, sweeping changes. Making calculated adjustments based on market trends is the wise approach when dealing with this crisis.

Payment Trends

Based on our data of almost 400,000 currently active responsible parties, we have noted the following payment trends:

Payment volume is still strong and running at normal levels.

• Payment failures are within the range of last year with no significant increase.
• Payment failure reasons are consistent with normal patterns.
• Call volume in our customer care center is actually down.
  1. This is contrary to what we anticipated.
  2. This may indicate that your responsible billing parties remain employed and financially stable for the moment.
• Less than ½ of 1 percent of responsible parties have asked for payment deferrals.

Responsible Party Feedback

• Many responsible parties want to rearrange their payment plan rather than defer payments.
• Some responsible parties are asking to temporarily reduce their monthly payment instead of deferring a payment.

Observations

• A few offices refuse to allow payment deferrals. In many cases, when the responsible asked for a deferral and are told a deferral is not an option, they elect to cancel the payment plan (their right under financial institution regulations).
• Some responsible parties ask to temporarily reduce their monthly payment rather than defer their payment.
• The best financial outcomes are going to offices who are the most flexible and compassionate.
• We believe that the financial picture is going to change for Americans over the next few weeks. As this change occurs and as we learn more about how to adjust, we will update you, keeping you informed of what we see and how we are responding on your behalf to help you be successful during this very challenging time.

OrthoBanc Recommendation and Protocol Change

It is always better to successfully collect as much of your accounts receivable as possible. When a responsible party asks to temporarily reduce their payment amount instead of deferring a payment, we recommend you allow the change in payment amount.

Effective immediately, based on what we are hearing from the responsible billing parties that have contacted us, OrthoBanc will make a slight shift to its protocol. When a patient asks to defer a payment, we will begin that conversation by offering a payment amount reduction of up to 50% for the upcoming payment only. If this doesn’t work for the responsible party, we will offer to defer one payment (only) to the end of the contract without reaching out to you for approval. If the responsible billing party requests to defer more than one payment, we will contact you for guidance. (Please note, the only adjustment we have made to our current protocol is that we will first ask the responsible party to reduce their payment amount rather than deferring the payment.)

If you have any questions concerning how we are managing your payments, please reach out to COVIDProtocol@orthobanc.com. Again, we are making small, calculated adjustments based upon feedback from the market.

Notifications of Our Actions

If our customer care team defers a payment or reduces a payment amount, you are notified on our Weekly Recap Report in the Notice To Practice section. Please refer to the real-time Weekly Recap Report that is available on our website to learn of adjustments we have made.

New Patient Pipeline

The number of new patient accounts OrthoBanc receives has dropped from nearly 1,000 each day to below 100. It is surprising this number is not lower. However, several practices are taking advantage of AccepTx Pro, our treatment and fee presentation tool that can be easily viewed by the responsible party from home.

By combining a teledentistry diagnosis with AccepTx Pro’s elegant in-home presentation, practices are still building a new patient pipeline that will help fill chairs once the “stay-at-home” measures are lifted. Responsible parties can view your treatment recommendations, design a payment plan that fits their budget, and accept and sign all necessary forms from the comfort of home. You build a pipeline of business that will help your practice recover as soon as you can reopen your doors.

If you want to learn more about AccepTx Pro, our team stands ready to review its benefits with you and get you set up to start building that pipeline. We can even help you locate a teledentistry solution. Call us at (888) 758-0585, option 2, and ask about our special offer on AccepTx Pro.

Please be safe during this time. Perhaps in a few more weeks, we will be returning to normal.

Bill Holt
OrthoBanc’s President/CEO
bholt@orthobanc.com

3/27/2020

Surviving Coronavirus

The ADA recently advised dental offices to close except for emergency procedures. Several states have ruled that businesses close and residents remain at home. These attempts to try and tamp down the impact of the coronavirus have left practices facing challenging financial decisions. Here are some suggestions that may help.

Communicate with Your Patients

Keeping open lines of communication is critical during a time when your office has been forced to close. Emails, texts and regular social media posts are effective ways to keep your patients engaged. You need to create the perception that your office is not closed but operating in a different manner due to self-isolation. Topics to cover are the need to continue good dental hygiene, how to contact your office in case of an emergency, and how patient appliances are continuing to provide the desired outcome even though visits to the office may be temporarily missed.

Engage Patients Through a Teledentistry Solution

By utilizing a teledentistry solution, such as Rhinogram, you can monitor the progress of existing patients and keep them highly engaged with your team during this downtime. If an appointment was scheduled during the office closure, send instructions on how to text selfies so you can perform the same observation as if the patient came to the practice. Some practices are even offering sizable discounts for new starts who will communicate through a teledentistry platform and be ready to start as soon as business returns to normal.

Don’t Assume Patients Cannot Pay

Some practices have contacted our office asking us to defer all patient payments for one, two or even three months. Nothing will ruin your practice like removing your revenue stream! Presently our call center is seeing only 1 in 5 calls related to the coronavirus. Some of those callers are asking for payment relief, but most are asking simply that we move the payment to another date that works within their new work and pay schedule. If the majority of your patients are still employed but working from home, don’t cut off your income.

Exercise Patience

From our governments to business leaders, from elderly to young, we are learning more each day about how to effectively operate under the threat of this virus. Each day brings new information and a different way of working. Your reaction to this crisis needs to be in slow, measured steps. Many of you are concerned about the financial impact of this crisis. What you don’t want to do is react too quickly and ensure failure. Make small adjustments as needed rather than large sweeping changes overnight.

We are advising our practices to let patients communicate what they need. If they have lost their job, they will call and ask for help. We’re here to help them. What does that help look like? For some it may be simply putting off today’s payment until next week. For others it may be deferring 1 payment to the end of the contract. In severe cases it might mean deferring payments until a new job is found. But even in the severe cases, we act one payment at a time instead of deferring payments for 3 to 6 months…small, measured steps.

Know Your Patient’s Financial Character

During the last several years of a robust economy, practices have largely ceased obtaining credit recommendations on new patients. Over the last few years, some consultants have preached a low down payment, fill the chair approach to obtaining new starts. It is precisely in times like these when your portfolio will reveal the risk contained in it. If you have filled your chairs with too many C-level patients, your income is going to suffer and delinquencies will rise rapidly. How do you know which patients fill your chairs? The only way you can know is by having obtained a credit recommendation such as ZACC. You need to ensure that your financial portfolio is balanced with a proper ratio of A, B and C level patients whose treatment and payment plans have been structured according to risk.

It is true that an A-level patient can lose their job as easily as a C-level patient in the circumstances we face today, but credit grades are an indication of character. A-level patients are committed to meeting their obligations. Even if they become unemployed, they will do what is necessary to meet the obligation as soon as possible. C-level patients are accustomed to walking away from obligations that are no longer convenient.

From our credit risk assessment tools to our payment management solutions, OrthoBanc can help you maintain a healthy financial portfolio that will survive sudden economic changes. If you would like our help, please contact us at (888) 758-0585, option 2, or by email at marketing@orthobanc.com.

Bill Holt – OrthoBanc’s President/CEO