Bill Rossi For over 30 years, I’ve surveyed Upper Midwest dentists on the issues most important to them. Attracting patients, finding, training, and paying staff are always mentioned. However, the top issue for the last years, has been “PPOs & Insurance Write Offs.” I also asked how many dentists in the past year have joined a PPO. Last year, about 9% had joined A PPO and 13% said they left one in the previous year. That’s the first time ever that there have been more Doctors saying they left a PPO than joined. Still, when I see collection percentages as low as 80%, 75%, even 55%, I am am ..read more

FEBRUARY 15, 2016  By Bill RossiFor many practices, PPO participation is their biggest expense after staff wages (or even greater than staff wages in some cases).  Historically, dental practice collection percentages had been 95%+ (of gross production).  Now it’s not uncommon to see collection percentages at 70-80%…and sometimes less.Most dentists join a PPO in the hopes of gaining or retaining patients.  No dentist likes to lose patients, and when you do lose a patient because you’re not in the network, it can be a powerful inducement to sign up for a PPO.Once you’re part ..read more

by: Bill RossiGoing through a PPO transition is serious business. It is one of those moves in dental practice management that has substantial risks and rewards like adding an associate or building a new facility.So as dentists “balance” their PPO participation and decide to peel off some of them, I offer the following suggestions based on many years of helping clients through this process.It’s always better to talk face to face with patients about this transition. Letters are rarely thoroughly read, sound self-serving and can confuse and irritate patients.I know because a long time ago I used ..read more

Practices with little or no insurance participation generally see fewer new patients than practices with more participation. However, is there a point where there are diminishing returns with increased PPO participation? Anecdotally, he (and we) have noticed that practices that participate in almost every PPO available don’t see a proportionally greater number of new patients, and sometimes even see a drop. So, he looked into his company’s considerable database to measure this statistically.To summarize the results: Practices that have no or very little PPO participation tend to have significa ..read more

In case you weren’t able to attend our recent Scottsdale, AZ seminar, here are some recommendations from practice management consultant, Bill Rossi.  There can be a lot of money to be made if you handle this correctly: Do your homework. To get a sense of your fee reductions, prepare a spreadsheet with vertical columns going left to right listing first your top procedures by frequency.  The second column will be your full fee for each procedure.  The remaining columns would be for each PPO plan and their reduced reimbursement for each procedure.  Add the totals at the botto ..read more

In the January 15th Newsletter, we summarized how to best negotiate higher PPO reimbursements based on Bill Rossi’s lecture at our Scottsdale, AZ seminar in late December.  What follows is Bill’s advice for dropping a PPO plan and limiting the fallout.  Dropping a plan is a serious business decision and demands careful consideration.  This is not an ideal topic for this Newsletter, as the short format of the Newsletter items doesn’t adequately capture the nuances involved.  With that said, here are some recommendations:Don’t drop a plan out of anger.  Do it rationally ..read more

Practice management consultant, Bill Rossi of Advanced Practice Management, has shared some numbers for three practices that he helped guide through dropping the same large national PPO plan.  In each case (one on the East Coast, one in the Midwest and one on the West Coast), the PPO discounted fees about 30% and the PPO patients comprised about 33% of the practice.  In each case, production and collections increased in the months following the drop.  Here are the numbers:Case History #110 Months Before Drop           7 Mont ..read more

Is Your Practice Primed To Drop One Or More PPOs? PPO write-offs are one of the biggest practice management issues dentists face.  Dropping PPOs can add tens of thousands of dollars to the bottom line.  In fact, the impact on net profits is magnified beyond the simple percentage increase in the fee reimbursement by going out-of-network.  For example, if overhead remains fixed at 60% of revenue, then a 10% increase in fee income translates into a 25% increase in the bottom line.  We asked Bill Rossi, a practice management consultant and PPO expert, for the practice attribute ..read more

By Bill Rossi: This article is a follow-up to “Is Your Practice Primed to Drop One or More PPOs?” which appeared in the October 15th Newsletter.  So you’ve pulled the trigger and decided to drop a PPO.  It’s important that you don’t just leave PPO participation.  You have to be working toward something.  The stimulation of a PPO transition can help create a “Practice Renaissance.” You’ll be adding thousands to your collections each month – plow some of that back into strengthening the practice through: Taking good care of your team: Chances are, th ..read more

Our 2014 practice economic survey published last month revealed that most practices are now operating at only 80-89% of optimal capacity, defined as being as busy as the doctor wants to be, doing the kind of dentistry the doctor wants to be doing. This means that the average doctor is losing $100,000-$200,000 in profits annually, compared to what she would be making at 100% of capacity. Many doctors have attacked their busyness problem by increasing external marketing expenses or, even worse, signing up for or increasing managed care participation. However, we recommend a much more c ..read more