Running a dental practice requires many critical functions, including ensuring patients return for preventive care, that they follow through on recommended treatment and that the practice gets paid — by patients and insurance companies — in a timely manner. Many of these functions require constant attention, such as calling patients who missed appointments, checking on available insurance benefits or following up on unpaid claims. When these systems can be streamlined, the team has more time to focus on building relationships and helping more patients get the care they need.
With CareCredit’s integration into Eaglesoft version 21.20, practices can now improve the patient experience through more detailed conversations with patients on financial expectations. With the integration, it is now easier for patients to apply for the CareCredit credit card and for your practice to process those transactions, so you can improve patient conversations and treatment acceptance.
Financial discussions with patients
When a practice can talk to patients about the financial options they have for out-of-pocket expenses, it can build trust and make it easier for the patient to accept treatment. Connecting a patient’s CareCredit status alongside their insurance eligibility enables this conversation. CareCredit’s new Batch Quickscreen integration allows practices to take their daily schedule through an automated pre-approval process. This will generate a report of all patients who are pre-approved for a CareCredit credit card or those who are existing cardholders. A smart best practice is to process the Batch Quickscreen at the end of the day and review the report in your morning huddle meeting. As a reminder, California healthcare professionals may not submit credit applications for consumers.
Collecting patient payments
When it comes to collecting payment for dentistry delivered, one of the most important tasks is managing accounts receivable and the patient collections for the day. Additional important financial tasks are to make sure patient payments are posted correctly, that your team chooses the right payment type and that the payment is allocated to the treating provider. Luckily, some of these functions can be automated.
With the new CareCredit integration into Eaglesoft, there is an integrated payment feature that may save you some time. Now, you can process CareCredit payments without ever leaving the ledger and no need to enter your CareCredit username and password. And when the patient pays with their CareCredit healthcare credit card, the payment is automatically recorded in the patient ledger. This streamlines the posting process and reduces the likelihood of human error in payment allocation.
Improving recall efforts
Another benefit of the new software integration is that it can help you get patients who haven’t scheduled treatment back into the practice. Traditionally this responsibility falls upon the treatment coordinator. Often, they are tasked with going through the unscheduled treatment report and reaching out to patients to try and get them back to the practice.
The process usually begins with generating The Money Finder report, then going through the list to identify patients. The next step requires researching the patients’ available benefits, reading the clinical documentation and finding any notes about the financial discussion with the patient and why they chose to decline or delay care.
It’s probably not too surprising that the reason many patients don’t schedule care is because of cost concerns. When contacting patients from The Money Finder report, it’s a great time to review payment options with them and to let them know that promotional financing is available with the CareCredit credit card.
With the new Eaglesoft CareCredit integration, you can look up cardholder information without ever leaving your Eaglesoft software so the information you need to have a great financial conversation with patients is right at your fingertips.
There are many opportunities to help your patients get the treatment they need and create an efficient system for your team. Here’s a summary of some of the ways you can use the Eaglesoft CareCredit integration to simplify, streamline and save time:
- CareCredit credit card transactions can be processed directly from the Account Page in Eaglesoft and it will automatically post back to the patient ledger.
- With CareCredit’s Batch Quickscreen integration, you can see which of your patients currently have a CareCredit account and those who are pre-approved for the CareCredit credit card by clicking a link on the On Schedule Activities Bar.
- Patient information is automatically transferred from Eaglesoft to the CareCredit application. When your patient wants to apply for a CareCredit credit card, simply type in a few fields and click “submit” and receive a credit decision within seconds. *
I encourage you to see for yourself how great this new integration is. If you would like to learn more about the benefits of accepting CareCredit in your practice, visit www.carecredit.com/dental.
To find out how to activate CareCredit within Eaglesoft, contact the Patterson Technology Center at 800-475-5036. You can download Eaglesoft version 21.20 here.
*Except for providers in California who are prohibited under state law from submitting applications on behalf of patients for certain healthcare loans of lines of credit, including the CareCredit credit card.
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