14 Ways Automated Patient Payments Will Improve Your Dental Practice

The best way to show your team that you value their contributions to your dental practice’s success isn’t to treat them to pizza for lunch. It’s by ensuring their work is meaningful every day. You can achieve this by greatly reducing their time spent on tedious manual patient billing and collection tasks with automated patient payments. You’ll see that this creates a 4-way win.

Automating patient payments won’t harm your dental business! In fact, your practice can thrive when your team dedicates more time to building strong relationships with your dental patients and less time on routine paperwork.

Automated patient payments help shape a better patient experience, and more.

Your administrative team is the heart of your dental business. They are the first faces your patients see, and your admin team is likely who spends the most time communicating with them.

Doesn’t your front-office team deserve to enjoy their roles? Everyone wins when they do.

“A thriving dental office staff begins with a leader who truly supports them in their triumphs, and showing your appreciation for their hard work is a terrific first step.” — Bryant Consultants

So, how exactly can you show your dental team that you appreciate the care they show your patients? Don’t just buy them a group lunch and call it a day. Give them something that will free them up for more meaningful and enjoyable work every day: automated patient payments.

Automated patient billing will reduce your team’s manual paperwork and allow them more time to connect with patients and grow your practice. This article explains how valuable automated patient billing will be for you, your dental team, your practice, and your patients—win-win-win-win. 

Key takeaways on how automated patient billing will benefit your dental team: 

• Strong patient relationships are how you retain patients and increase revenue.

• Automated patient payments provide time to strengthen patient relationships, which benefits both your dental practice and your patients.

• When you show your team you’re invested in their professional success, they’ll perform at a higher level.

The human costs of manual patient payments

Have you ever driven home from work along the same route so many times that you essentially fall asleep at the wheel? After you arrive home, you look back and wonder, “Did I run a stop sign? I can’t even remember… I was on autopilot.”

That’s how the daily routine of manual dental billing can be for your administrative team—a blur of mindless activity.

The tasks are critical for your practice’s financial health but also repetitive and tedious, which is a dangerous combination. The repetition and tedium make it easy to make mistakes with work that needs to be error-free.

They also make it difficult for team members to shake their “asleep at the wheel” mindset when it’s time to engage with in-office patients with genuine enthusiasm. And you can bet that your patients will notice.

A day in the life of your front-office admin team

Take a moment to picture patient billing paperwork from your team’s point of view…

Every day, you have to:

• Calculate balances for new statements, then

• Print the statements, then

• Stuff envelopes, stamp, and mail the statements

• Sort incoming mail

• Log received payments in the PMS (practice management software)

• Process checks and generate receipts—more to mail

• Follow up with patients about outstanding balances by phone

• Mail payment reminders to patients you can’t reach

It’s a never-ending list of tedious to-dos while patients continually arrive in the waiting room to be checked in and tended to. Even at its most streamlined, this manual workflow with constant interruptions is prone to errors and creates stress.

Manual dental billing is a burnout machine

When your team is constantly stressed at work, it can lead to the apathy and lackluster performance of burnout.

Then, not only are the in-office patients not receiving the full attention they deserve, but the rest of the front-office team is likely stretched thin. With this, one person’s stressors negatively impact the performance of the entire team and the patient experience at your dental practice.

How billing stress impacts patient experience

Like when a team member is mentally disengaged, when your team is stressed, your patients notice—especially when it shows on their bill. They’ll notice the atmosphere of the dental office, and they’ll see stress-induced mistakes that affect their balance.

When the team is stretched thin, they’ll be irritable and perhaps more reactive. And if patients are in the crossfire of those emotions, they’ll come away from your practice with a negative experience under their belt. And if this happens often enough, you could even start to receive negative reviews online.

With that in mind, how can you, as the business owner or leader, combat burnout and its aftermath? You can start by reducing your employees’ routine paperwork to ensure your patients are getting your team at their best.

How automated patient payments support your team and your patients

Here’s how we define our automated patient payment product here at QuantaPay:

Automated patient payments, defined

A technology that automates the payment process for busy dental teams, making payments easy for patients, and ensuring steady cash flow for dental business owners.

From automatic payment reminders via text and email to customizable financing options, patient billing has never been easier or more convenient for your team and also your patients. But let us be more specific…

What’s included in QuantaPay?

With QuantaPay, you and your team will get: 

• Payment links sent as soon as the balance is known (no manual processing)

• Hands-free outreach delivered via email and text messages

• Automatic recurring follow-up with consistent friendly reminders by email or text

• Payments accepted 24/7/365 from all major credit cards and wallet apps, whether using mobile, tablet, or desktop

• Customizable payment plans and memberships/subscriptions

• Monitored direct deposits and outstanding balances 

• Easy integration with all major practice management software

• Automatic write-backs into your PMS—a time-saving and hard-to-find feature

• Detailed reporting for insightful business decision-making

• A free wireless terminal included for in-person payments at low processing rates

• Surcharge capability to pass on payment processing costs

When you use QuantaPay, all the patient payment tasks are simply taken off your team’s plate—from statement billing to the bank deposit. They only need to review the easy-to-read online dashboard periodically to get insights on how your dental business is performing.

What your dental team will no longer have to do

You’ve already pictured a day in the life of your front-office team; now imagine a day where your team’s time can finally be dedicated to in-office patients and managing your dental business’ growth.

With QuantaPay’s automated patient payments: 

1. No more manual calculations, statements, and reminders that take up your valuable time.

2. No more chasing patient payments via phone call, mail, and email.

3. No more uncomfortable calls about late payments that risk the relationship with the patient.

4. No more posting transactions by hand while also attending to in-office patients.

Read more: Why Payment Experience Matters as Much as Patient Experience

Instead of being bogged down with manual tasks, your team will focus on more meaningful actions that require human touch and intelligence, which automation can’t match.

What your dental team can do instead

With QuantaPay automating your patient payments, your team will finally have: 

5. More time for patient conversations. They can actually build relationships with your patients and create trust.

6. More time for treatment plan discussions. Accurate treatment presentations take time to produce, and the conversation should be thorough and never rushed.

7. More time for retention, experience, and growth. The team can spend more time caring for patients, encouraging referrals, marketing the practice, or even preparing to open another location.

Your team will come to understand each patient’s unique needs, wants, favorites, and fears, and they can use their insider knowledge to shape the very best patient experience for all. 

These enriched connections are what will set your dental business apart from others. 

Automated payments are a win for patients, too

Patients love automated payment processing. It adds convenience they’ve become used to, and it makes paying as easy as possible for them.

They’ll have: 

8. Less paper mail to manage. Go paperless! They’ll no longer need to find and file—or lose and forget—mailed statements or bills.

9. Convenient payment options. Pay from anytime, anywhere, on any device, 24/7, 365 days a year with a variety of digital payment methods.

10. . Payment plans and memberships. No matter the patients’ financial circumstances, you can bring oral health within reach for them.

These benefits for patients are how you win loyal patients for life who recommend you to all their friends and family.

There are benefits for your dental practice, too

The benefits of QuantaPay are what we call a win-win-win-win. Your team and patients will love it. You’ll love it because they do, and your overall business will benefit too. You’ll see: 

11. . Improved cash flow. Overall, more money will flow through your business.

12. . Less cash in A/R limbo. With more cash in hand, you won’t be asking yourself, “Where is the money I’ve earned?”

13. . Confidence payments are being requested consistently. And also in compliance with HIPAA regulations. QuantaPay is reliable, easy to use, and secure.

14. . Fewer embezzlement worries. Without manual handling, it’s more difficult for funds to be diverted. You’ll also have an easy-to-view dashboard, so you’ll be able to review your data more regularly, ensuring your money is where it belongs.

Your dental practice is where people maintain their oral health, but it’s also a place of business that needs to make a profit. You need software and systems in place that help you make money and provide an excellent patient experience.

Use QuantaPay to give your team—and your patients—the convenience they deserve: 

To recap, we covered: 

• The human costs of manual patient payments

• How automated patient payments support your team and your patients

• How automated patient payments support your business

We hear from our customers that they collect more, and collect faster, from their patients after turning on Quanta’s automated dental patient payments. 

Their patients embrace the convenience it offers and appreciate how easy it is to pay online from their phone, tablet, or laptop using their debit card or digital wallet (Apple Pay or Google Pay). 

“QuantaPay has significantly reduced our front office workload, allowing us to focus on patient care. With easy text-to-pay and a convenient dashboard, we've seen more patient payments than ever before!”
— Franklin Pediatric Dentistry

And with your dental team free to give comprehensive treatment presentations that detail insurance coverage and the patient’s responsibility, there will be no surprise bills, which will be a relief to everyone.

Show your team and patients how much you appreciate them by implementing our automated patient payment product: Book a live QuantaPay demo today.