The Practice Partner for Peace of Mind
In a decade, eAssist has become the nation’s leading remote billing service platform for dental offices, helping dental teams focus on patient care
Shortly after opening a dental practice in Roy, UT, Dr. James Anderson hit the front-office jackpot. He hired an office manager who could juggle the multiple skill sets needed for the job—lead the team, interact well with patients, and successfully navigate the insurance maze to ensure the office is paid correctly for its services. A group practice owner, Dr. Anderson could operate the Roy office without worrying about losing out on money the practice was rightfully owed. After a few years, however, the office manager resigned due to a family relocation, and Dr. Anderson knew it would be difficult to find someone new. “You need someone who has these different skill sets,” Dr. Anderson said.
“You need an upbeat personality who can help make people feel comfortable, answer the phone on the first ring, talk with patients, and also be able to look at the debits and credits, look at the Explanation of Benefits, appeal the claims that are coming back denied but should be paid, and then call up insurance companies and be on hold for 30 minutes and demand payment. That’s a different personality, a different skill set, but most small practices can’t afford to have a division of labor—they need one person to do all of that.”
“We realized early on that we had to look outside the local area to find the dental billers.”
- James Anderson, DMD
Dr. Anderson’s fears were realized when the search for a successor would see a half-dozen unsuccessful office managers come and go. Meanwhile, the unpaid claims over 90 days kept climbing, from near zero to $250,000 in 2 years. He decided to divide the labor and use an outside service for billing, at first experimenting with agencies that would bill patients for outstanding balances. “That just makes your patients upset,” he said. “You’re not able to handle the insurance properly, so you’re asking patients to pay a balance that was denied by insurance even though they maybe should have paid 80% of it.”
A Creative Solution
With each of his offices experiencing the same challenge at one time or another, Dr. Anderson and Sandy Odle, then-office manager at his Syracuse location, decided to fi x the problem by eliminating geography from the equation and creating a centralized service. They hired 2 full-time office managers and a third to oversee the operation. Within 6 months, almost all of the Roy office’s unpaid claims were collected, and the new system of checks and balances resulted in a more efficient revenue cycle.
Soon enough, Dr. Anderson’s peers asked if he could help them navigate similar scenarios, and—with a desire both to create jobs and relieve the stress of fellow dentists—the company that would become eAssist was born. Dr. Anderson and Odle began to build a growing team of remote, experienced office managers to handle the time-consuming and complicated billing processes. “We realized early on that we had to look outside the local area to find the dental billers,” Dr. Anderson said. “I couldn’t find someone in Roy, UT, but I could find someone in New York and in Hawaii, and in St. George, UT. Those were our first employees. This was 10 years ago. We were letting people work from home before it was cool.”
The Billing Specialists
The eAssisters, as they now call themselves, are a network of verified billing specialists who partner with each practice to bring the over-90 uncollected insurance aging balance to nearly zero. They work on an ongoing basis to ensure the practice collects what it’s owed from insurance, while posting to ledgers daily. Other services offered include insurance verification, patient statement collections, scheduling and recall, credentialing, and more.
At its core, eAssist acts as an extension of the dental team, helping practices free up resources to focus on patient care and clinical outcomes. “Our job isn’t to replace the office manager at all,” Dr. Anderson said. “The idea is to divide the labor so that you gain efficiencies, and so that your staff can focus on patient care, the patient experience, the copays, and the treatment plans. And together, as a team, we’re rocking it. We’re delivering results.”
Multiplied Income
In fact, the services are based entirely on results—eAssist receives a percentage of what it collects, with no hidden fees or long-term contracts. Due to the daily claim submissions, fewer rejections, timely appeals, and a steady focus on aging claims, the dental practice typically generates more revenue than ever before. Robert Linder, who is now Chief Operations Officer for eAssist, experienced the eAssist value firsthand while working as CEO of a large group practice. He found that eAssist had the expertise to better manage billing while the dental teams focused on patient care.
“One of the things that stands out to me is the increase in revenue for a practice,” Linder said. “Let’s say the dental practice produces $1 million, and the overhead is such that the doctor takes home 15%, so he or she is earning $150,000. Their accounts receivable is at 90%, and eAssist is able to bring that up 8%, which is $80,000. You’ve already paid rent, paid your team, paid for everything. So, that 8% goes right to the provider. The doctor’s income just got a 53% boost, from $150,000 to $230,000 a year.”
Easing the Pressure
Over its first decade, eAssist has grown to be the dental industry leader in billing and insurance claims processing services. The company has expanded to support thousands of practices thanks to the network of vetted and verified dental billing professionals across the nation, helping practices be more efficient, profitable, and patient-focused.
“Like any business, you don’t always get it right, but you fi x it and do all you can to help dentists have peace of mind and sleep well at night," said Dr. Anderson. "And I know the stress of what it’s like to be a dentist—how hard it is to get the margins right, get the crown just right, to find the MB2 canal when doing endo, and meanwhile your schedule’s backed up and they’re asking you for a hygiene check. There are so many pressures that dentists face. The last thing I want them to be worried about is whether the insurance company is going to pay for the work that they did.”
