Two of the greatest administrative benefits of a dental savings plan are that there are no insurance claims to file or track down, and there is no estimating of the patient’s financial portion. What time savers for your team!
So why would you then put upon them the increased burden of manually processing and reprocessing plan enrollments each month or year?
First, merchant processing regulations forbid you from keeping a paper copy of your patient’s credit card number on file, so if you are manually running it at each renewal, you’re stepping outside the bounds.
Second, think of the time it’s taking for a team member to manually track and run credit card payments! Not only that, if someone’s card is declining, there is even more time spent trying to get a new one from the patient that can be processed.
Third, consider your lost revenue between the time a credit card should be charged for a renewal and when it’s actually charged if a patient needs to be tracked down. Even worse, when a renewal isn’t processed automatically, patients get away saying, “That’s OK, I’ll just renew at my next appointment.”
UGH!
The cost of plan management software pales in comparison to the staff hours spent managing a plan manually. If you need help to better understand your options for automating the process, please don’t hesitate to reach out to SmileMore Marketing directly. We’d be happy to share our experience and ideas.
