How Subscribili can help relieve your office’s staffing crunch

Despite the US Department of Labor reporting strong job growth in October, many dental offices remain in a crunch. Since 2020, the ADA has reported nearly 8% of the dental workforce has exited the industry, leaving offices in a lurch looking for qualified, compassionate staff. 

Shortages in qualified applicants within dental only makes hiring more competitive, as practices have to offer increasingly lucrative compensation packages to the teams they are able to hire in order to compete with equally stretched practices across town. This compounds issues for dental practices as well, since higher compensation packages often mean practices cannot afford to hire enough people for adequate coverage in the office. 

Your team–and your patients–deserve better 

Without adequate staff coverage, the teams currently in dental practices report feeling the pinch. According to the American Orthodontic Society, nearly 50% of clinicians and 45% of front-office teams report feelings of burnout, a debilitating state of exhaustion caused by overwork. 

Teams are overscheduled, often with too few resources and hands available to help, while still holding themselves to incredibly high standards for the patient experience. 

Fortunately, there are options to help give front-office teams some relief–reducing their responsibilities and giving them more time and headspace to engage in the meaningful work and connections that make this industry so fulfilling. 

Why introducing a subscription plan makes an impact

According to front desk teams, the most stressful parts of the job are:

   1. Managing a high-volume of phone calls 

   2. Navigating insurance 

   3. Collections and AR management

By introducing a patient subscription plan like Subscribili, you can ease stress related to these toughest responsibilities at the front desk. 

Reducing the reliance of insurance

Working within the constraints of dental insurance–verifying benefits, coordination of benefits, securing pre-authorizations, billing and addressing claim denials–is one of the most time consuming and frustrating parts of the front-office job. 

And all that work doesn’t come to the benefit of patients, either. 65% of patients, even those with insurance, report that they skip regularly scheduled dental appointments because they are concerned about the cost. Most feel that insurance limits their access to important preventative procedures, while still expecting them to pay large portions of their care out of pocket. 

With the introduction of a dental subscription service, patients are offered a solution to get them into the chair without the burden of large, one-time care expenses. And furthermore, with the support of Subscribili, managing patients’ subscription plans becomes significantly easier at the front desk than insurance could ever be. 

Easier, smoother conversations at the front desk 

For many, financial conversations can be among the most fraught. Money is emotional by nature, but it becomes even more complex in a dental practice, where the financial conversation is intertwined with the level of care a patient is able to accept. 

But with Subscribili, that conversation is easier and more focused on the care itself. According to Holly Crumpton, office manager at Subscribili customer, Mosaic Dental, explains, “we handle the care side of things without having to worry about the finances or administering the membership.” 

Reducing manual work in the front office

Data entry is some of the most tedious and frustrating part of work in the front office. Cutting data entry, especially situations where the team is entering the same information across multiple systems is an immediate release valve for pressure on your team. 

When selecting tech solutions, look for integrated tools that cooperate with one another. With a strong integration, key details about the patients’ experience and benefit utilization move between systems seamlessly–meaning the front office doesn’t need to worry about doing double duty, but the information stays close at hand. 

With Subscribili’s patient subscription platform, you can alleviate some of the most burdensome aspects of front-office operations, giving your teams some relief and making it easier for your team to focus on delivering quality care.