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MailMay 2022
Zentist is Another Dental A.I. Solution for Scaling Practices and DSOs
At the inaugural meeting of Women in DSO (WinDSO) in Las Vegas, Amol Nirgudkar, Patient Prism’s co-founder and CEO, interviewed Sina Amiri, Vice President of Business Development at Zentist.
Zentist is a platform that uses robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning to simplify and automate insurance revenue cycle management (RCM) for single and multi-location dental service providers located throughout the United States.
The Problems That Zentist's Platform Solves
“When you look at the traditional process for managing insurance claims, it is obvious that a lot of practices are struggling with insurance claim follow up, and even on the submission side of the claim,” says Amiri. “If the claims don’t have the proper details and information attached like narratives and X-rays, they get denied.” Historically, dental practices have often relied on dental billers who submit claims manually. Often, these billers don't understand the creative denials payers are using. So, we thought, ‘What can we do to take the tribal knowledge that exists in industry and start building machine learning models and develop software that helps automate a big component of the claim submission and follow up process?’"
This type of solution supports DSOs in scaling across multiple locations because finding the right people with billing training is difficult. Secondly, not having to add team members to focus on billing helps DSOs economize.
“And this is where having a platform that gives you visibility on what's happening with claim submissions, providing data from clearing houses, and giving you that central view across all your practices—irrespective of the practice management software that you are using, is key,” says Nirgudkar.
Zentist’s A.I. Platform Improves the Volume and Speed of Collections
In addition to reducing labor costs, the existing RCM department becomes much more efficient.
AI takes away things that a human does not need to do because it's repetitive and predictable,” says Amol Nirgudkar. “Not only are fewer people needed, but AI is more accurate. Machines more predictably perform repeatable tasks without becoming tired. The visibility is also important because when you enable visibility across a DSO’s offices, the problems are visible, and you can fix them quickly before they become a 90-day issue.”
Amiri responds, “And what's amazing is the number of DSOs and dental groups that come to us and say, ‘We have an aging problem,’ meaning their A.R. is ballooning. Past a certain number of days, it becomes exceedingly difficult to get payment from insurance companies. We try to solve that problem by making sure A.R. never gets to where you need to write off a big component of potential revenue.
“If you are not collecting what you are owed from the insurance companies, how do you retain associates who are oftentimes paid on collections and not production? We've noticed there is an increase in associate retention when we get involved because they can communicate with associates that they now have a high degree of confidence in their ability to collect for them."
Amir continues, "Zentist’s AI bot can log into the payer portals and download the explanations of benefits (EOBs) and pull ERA/835 data from the clearing houses. “Historically, you had to assign a team member to call the payers. When you call, you're limited to the number of inquiries that you can make and you're stuck in these call clicks. Eliminating that time allows the front desk staff to spend more time with the patient. Perhaps there is patient A.R. that requires follow up. You can focus on that because you have a relationship with the patient and it's better for you to manage that relationship than for Zentist to do so."
You Can Now Focus on the Patient Experience
With staff freed from so much insurance AR processing they are free to interact with patients.
“It’s time for us to leverage technology in dentistry so that we can enable our team members to spend more time with the most important person in that office which is the patient,” says Nirgudkar. “Let's make the patients the centerpiece of the dental office. Let's spend time with them. Let's earn their trust so that they accept the treatment that's going to change their life and let technology handle some of the things that we don't need to handle. AI machine learning has enabled Zentist to tackle this age-old problem and bring it to light so our industry can continue growing. Congratulations."
About Zentist
Zentist is a platform that uses advanced technology to simplify and automate insurance revenue cycle management (RCM) for dental practices. At a time when dental businesses lose an estimated $2.1 billion due to legacy billing systems, Zentist leverages robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning to place otherwise tedious billing tasks on autopilot.
Zentist’s platform is fully and easily scalable to meet the more complex billing needs of the modern dental industry—which has been marked by aggressive consolidation and unprecedented pressures for RCM scaling. Its software minimizes human error, maximizes insurance payout, provides advanced analytics on revenue, and improves the patient-provider relationship.
Patient Prism Delivers Actionable Intelligence
Patient Prism’s artificial intelligence (A.I.) incorporates machine learning to provide deep insights into dental patient phone calls and conversion analytics.
Managers can easily see how many people asked about implants, the percentage booked, and the revenue opportunity won or lost.- They can see how many people said they had Delta Dental PPO or spoke Spanish.
- They can see how many called in pain with emergency needs.
- They can see how many prospective patients did not book due to the unavailability of near appointments.
- They can determine if team members are uninformed about advertised promotions, don’t know how to respond well to financial questions, or are so pressed for time they fail to demonstrate empathy for callers’ concerns.
It's really quite simple. Patient Prism's dashboards provide unique insight as to what exactly is happening on the phones in any dental practice, including DSO or enterprise dashboards that include all practices' strengths and opportunities in one view.
These insights help managers identify where to expand services, better coach team members, increase staffing during peak hours, consider participation with an insurance provider, and adjust marketing.
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