Are You Truly Ready To Scale Your Dental Practice?

By Sarah Beth Herman, CEO of Dentistry Support®

Hey friend. If we were sitting together in your consult room right now, you would probably tell me you want growth that feels steady, not stressful. You want healthy profit, a calm team, and patients who feel cared for every single time they call, text, or walk through your door. You might even be considering a second location.

This free training is your warm-up. It is not the full workout. On Monday’s episode of No Silver Spoons, I’ll teach the deeper strategy. Today we are going to get you ready for it without spoiling a thing. Think of this as your readiness lab for real growth in the dental world.

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What “Ready” Looks Like In A Dental Office

Readiness is not about how many new patients you booked last month. It is about whether your operations and revenue systems can sustain what you already have while making room for more. Before you talk leases or chairs, I want you to evaluate four areas that quietly make or break growth in dentistry.

1) Financial clarity that is simple and honest

• Can you explain last month’s cash flow in two sentences or less?

• Do you know your true cost to collect from insurance and patients?

• Can you see a snapshot of production, collections, adjustments, and refunds before the 10th day of the following month?

Why this matters: rising denial activity across healthcare has been real in recent years, which increases the burden on revenue cycle teams to collect what was already produced. When the landscape tightens, clarity wins. CAQHACDIS

2) A revenue cycle that moves on time

Healthy revenue cycles in dentistry share a few signals:

• First pass acceptance on claims is strong.

• Days in A/R are steady.

• The percentage of claims over 90 days is low and trending downward.

If these signals look fuzzy, your collections depend on hope rather than a repeatable system. Dental analytics platforms and RCM benchmarks emphasize using an aging view that makes bottlenecks visible so you can clear them fast. 

3) Clean data, clean handoffs

Messy data creates real costs. Wrong subscriber IDs, missing coordination of benefits, or policy changes that were never captured will slow everything. Industry groups that focus on administrative simplification have flagged inconsistent data exchange as a contributor to denials. That shows up in your world as rework, phone calls, and delays. CAQH

4) Technology that supports how your team works

Your tech should help your team see the same truth, from the same source, without five extra clicks. Practices that modernize core software often report stronger visibility, easier standardization across providers, and smoother administration. If your tools make it harder to find answers, that is a clue. 

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A Simple Readiness Check You Can Do This Week

You do not need a giant overhaul to start. I want you to get a clean read on where you are today. Pick a quiet hour, close your door, and walk through this readiness check. Be honest. This is for you.

Revenue Readiness

1. Pull your last 90 days of insurance A/R. What percentage sits over 60 and 90 days?

2. Spot check 10 recently submitted claims. Were eligibility and frequencies verified and documented the same day as treatment planning?

3. Review top 5 denial reasons from the last month. Are they preventable at check-in, coding, or submission?

Why it matters: denial patterns respond to better front-end work. Real-time eligibility, accurate coverage data, and consistent claim content reduce waste before it starts. analyticsweek.com

Patient Financial Experience

4. Choose five patients who had balances after insurance. Was the estimate accurate within a reasonable tolerance?

5. Do your team members use one shared, plain-language explanation of benefits and out-of-pocket expectations?

Patients remember money conversations more than we think. Clear, consistent language protects trust and reduces outbound calls later.

Team Load And Role Fit

6. Ask your team: what tasks feel most repetitive, confusing, or double-entered?

7. Map every task related to eligibility, claims, and A/R. Who owns it, when does it happen, and where is it tracked?

Burnout rarely comes from hard work. It comes from unclear work. When tasks are owned, timed, and tracked, people breathe again.

Data And Visibility

8. List your practice software and tools. Which ones show your operations in real time, and which require manual workarounds?

9. Identify one recurring report you never use. If it is not helping decisions, remove it or replace it.

Growth Pulse

10. Pull your hygiene capacity for the next 6 weeks. Are you growing or just adding noise to the schedule?

11. Review payer mix and reimbursement trends for the last two quarters. Where do you win, and where do you struggle to get paid on time?

The ADA’s Health Policy Institute tracks headwinds and confidence across dentistry. Use that macro view as context while you tune your own micro reality.

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Common Early Warning Signs I See Inside Practices

You might recognize one or more of these. If you do, do not shame yourself or your team. Notice it and decide to correct it.

• Estimates are frequently off and your team spends time explaining surprises.

• Insurance phone calls multiply because member IDs or policy info are incomplete.

• Multiple spreadsheets hold pieces of the billing story, and no one trusts which file is current.

• Checks and EFTs are posted late because the day gets away from the front desk.

• Denied claims are reworked slowly or not at all, which starves cash next month.

• Everyone is “busy,” yet balances are not moving.

Across healthcare, denial volume has grown in recent cycles. The fix is not to push the team harder. The fix is to prevent avoidable denials upstream and make rework simple and trackable. 

Quick Wins You Can Implement In 7 Days

These are small, human steps that do not spoil Monday’s episode and will create immediate relief.

1. Adopt a one-page eligibility capture.

   One sheet, one place, same fields every time. Include plan name, member ID, group number, frequencies and limitations, waiting periods, remaining benefits, and notes on anomalies you see often in your payer mix.

   
   

2. Create a “same-day submission” habit for attachments.

   Radiographs, perio charts, narratives, and photos should leave with the claim, not later. Give your team a daily cutoff time and celebrate when they hit it.

   
   

3. Set a 15-minute daily A/R block.

   One person, one small bucket, every day. Work 0–30 or 31–60 consistently before touching older claims. It builds momentum and cuts the emotional weight. Aging views are your friend here. withwisdom.com

   
   

4. Use one script for financial talks.

   Give patients the same clear explanation of what insurance typically covers, what it does not, and how you help them plan for care.

   
   

5. Pick one metric as your North Star.

   Choose first pass acceptance or percentage over 90 days. Track it daily for four weeks. Watch how the team focuses when the target is simple. carerevenue.com

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Leadership Notes From My Chair

I spend my days inside dental businesses and I have a front-row seat to your courage. You balance clinical excellence, team growth, and financial stewardship. If parts of this training felt tender, that is a good sign. It means you care. You are not behind. You are building. You deserve tools that match your effort.

Here is what I know about practices that grow in a healthy way:

• They tell the truth about where money slows down.

• They let technology simplify, not complicate.

• They protect their team’s focus by removing duplicate work.

• They teach patients how their benefits really function and never promise what a payer has not promised.

None of that requires perfection. It requires ownership and a simple plan.

How Dentistry Support Fits Into Your Growth

At Dentistry Support, my team and I provide virtual dental billing, dental insurance eligibility verification, A/R management, credentialing, medical billing for dental when appropriate, phone support, and leadership coaching for admin teams. We start with a respectful audit of your current reality, help you clean it up, and then keep it running so you can spend more time chairside or leading with a clearer mind. When you are ready to talk through your specific goals, we are ready to help you build the support that fits.

Your 30-Minute Action Plan Before Monday

Print this section. Circle what you will complete today.

• Pull your insurance A/R aging and write down one number you want to change this month.

• Choose one payer and build your one-page eligibility capture based on real patterns you see.

• Schedule a 15-minute block tomorrow for same-day claim follow-ups.

• Draft a single patient-friendly script for benefits conversations and share it in your next team huddle.

• Pick your North Star metric for the next four weeks and post it where your team can see it.

When Monday’s episode drops, you will already have momentum. You will hear it with a sharper ear because you did the pre-work.

Final Encouragement

If your practice has felt noisy, you are not alone. Most offices are one or two small changes away from relief. You do not need to become someone else to lead this well. You just need a clear picture, a simple plan, and people who can support you while you grow. I am cheering for you, always.

See you Monday.

References

American Dental Association Health Policy Institute. (2024, December). Economic outlook and emerging issues in dentistry: 4th quarter 2024. Chicago, IL: ADA. ada.org

American Dental Association Health Policy Institute. (2025). Economic outlook and emerging issues in dentistry [Quarterly poll results]. Chicago, IL: ADA. ada.org

American Dental Association Health Policy Institute. (2025). All HPI publications. Chicago, IL: ADA. ada.org

CAQH CORE. (2024). 2023 CAQH index report: Administrative transactions and operating rules update. Washington, DC: CAQH. CAQH

Dental Intelligence. (2024). Revenue cycle management and claims aging views for DSOs [Product education]. Lehi, UT: Dental Intel. educate.dentalintel.com

AKASA. (2023). Provider survey on denial rate trends [Reported by ACDIS]. ACDIS

Trend Health Partners. (2024). 2023 retrospective of denial industry trends. Trend Health Partners

Curve Dental. (2025). Why cloud-based practice management supports growth [Practice blog]. Curve Dental

DayDream Dental. (2025). Cloud dental software: Benefits and drawbacks. DayDream Dental

CareRevenue. (2023). Dental revenue cycle management KPIs for a healthy practice [Practice blog]. carerevenue.com

AnalyticsWeek. (2023). Healthcare in denial: The state of claims in 2023 [Industry overview]. analyticsweek.com

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Disclaimer:

To learn more about Sarah Beth Herman, the author of all free training content you can read her bio here. These materials are intended to provide helpful information to dentists and dental team members. They are in no way a substitute for actual professional advice based on your unique facts and circumstances. This content is not intended or offered, nor should it be taken, as legal or other professional advice. You should always consult with your own professional advisors (e.g. attorney, accountant, or insurance carrier). To the extent, Dentistry Support ®has included links to any third-party website (s), Dentistry Support ® intends no endorsement of their content and implies no affiliation with the organizations that provide their content. Further, Dentistry Support ® makes no representations or warranties about the information provided on those sites. You can view our privacy policy and terms and conditions by clicking those pages in the footer of our website.