Although dental practice consultants are industry experts, they’ve likely never even held a polishing tool before. Dental consultants are better at running a dental practice–organizing meetings, running through spreadsheets, or taking care of insurance policies, making them highly useful to dentists.
After all, dentists go to school to learn how to provide the best oral healthcare, and save the world one mouth at a time. These schools rarely have curriculum to teach them how to run the business side of their practice, how to manage a team, or how to take care of insurance things. While these issues might seem like they can be taken care of after a small learning curve, they’re more important than that. The fact of the matter is, clinical skills simply aren’t enough to make a practice grow.
This is where dental consulting comes in. There are several different kinds of consultants, and each are experts in a given aspect of the industry. One of the most important kinds is a dental insurance consultant. These are professionals who obtain special certifications after undergoing training programs concentrating on insurance laws.
One of the biggest benefits that a dental insurance consultant can provide a practice is the ability to work with insurance companies more efficiently. This allows a dentist to provide a higher quality of customer service, which improves patient retention. A higher patient retention rate means more earnings. Essentially, the help of a dental insurance consultant practically pays for itself.
Lately, dental insurance consultants have had a more important role to play lately, as the Affordable Care Act finally starts to gain traction. Many dentists are too busy to figure out how to adjust their practice accordingly with it, so they hire dental insurance consultants who can help their business adapt.
If you have any questions about how a dental insurance consultant can help your practice, feel free to ask in the comments.