After a long day of providing excellent dental care, the last thing you want to think about is how you are going to collect payment from your patients.

Commonly, practices wait until they hear back from the insurance company on a claim and then reach out to the patient. But getting a hold of that patient and getting them to pay for services they previously agreed to can be difficult.

They don’t answer or respond to voicemails. You could spend the time printing and mailing a statement, but that will probably just end up in the trash.

That’s why we created Dental Intelligence Payments – a simple solution to an everyday problem amongst practices. With Payments, you can easily collect payment in a variety of ways from text-to-pay and bulk payment requests to virtual and physical terminals. We do all the hard work, so you can focus on patient care.

Practices like yours have collected an additional $25,000 on average in their first three months using Payments. The best part is, it’s a low flat rate of 2.59% for all payments processed through Dental Intelligence Payments. It’s taken out at the end of the month, so you can easily keep track of your deposits and make reconciliation a breeze.

Implementing Payments

Jina Alcobia, Director of Operations at Implant & Periodontics Specialists and Love Your Smile, recently started implementing our new Payments features at her practices. Jina has over 12 years of experience in the dental industry, so she’s seen a variety of softwares and operational processes.

“We've used other softwares before and it didn't quite go well,” Jina said. “But when we started using Payments, it was a game changer!”

At first, Jina was a little nervous to try implementing something new into her office.

Jina thought to herself, “I have to teach something new to my team and it's one additional thing that they're going to have to take on. Is it going to be good or is it going to be bad?”

Fortunately, once her team members saw the value that Payments added to their office operations, they were quickly on board.

New System = Better Results

Once Jina’s practice opened back up after being closed a couple months due to COVID-19, they implemented Dental Intelligence Payments and have kept it ever since.

Because of the pandemic, Jina and her team wanted to limit contact with things from the patient, such as payment. So they started sending out payment messages via text on the day of a patient’s appointment, prior to the appointment. This allowed the patients to pay through a secure link, so they didn’t have to worry about paying in office.

“What we do is a little bit different than what some other offices are doing,” Jina said. “I highly encourage people to at least try what we're doing because it's been really great for us.”

This system allowed Jina to collect payment prior to their appointment which also helped minimize cancellations and no-shows. She says they’ve only had one or two patients respond and cancel.

“I feel once they've sent that payment in, it kind of locks them into it,” Jina said. “They want to go to this appointment because they've already paid for it.”

Collecting Payments Made Easy

Since they’ve decided to keep this process around, now when they are treatment planning with a patient, they will inform them that they will be receiving a text message requesting payments on the day of their future appointment.

This system also helps simplify the appointment process and limit any confusion while in the office, since the appointment is already paid for. Patients come in for their work and that’s it.

Jina and her team also use other features from Payments, including physical card terminals. They use the physical card terminals for patients who prefer to pay in the office or didn’t have an opportunity to pay beforehand.

“It's another easy way for them to take care of their payment with you.”

Jina also loves that Payments makes collections simple.

“All of the payments that come in are in one spot,” Jina said.

Once they come in, they can choose whether or not to have it automatically write back to the ledger in their practice management system.*

By using Payments, Jina and her team have managed to keep their AR Days at 14 days and their AR Ratio at 0.6.

What makes Dental Intelligence Payments so effective?

Text-to-Pay

With Dental Intelligence Payments, you can send a friendly, personalized text or email message to any patient to request payment. Messages contain a custom link that they can click to view their statement and easily pay using a credit card, debit card, HSA card, or Apple Pay. In just a few clicks, their payment is securely made and your collection percentage is growing in the background while you focus on other tasks.

Two Types of Requests

We know each practice is unique, so we made sure you have options — you can send a payment request to a single patient or in bulk.*

With single payment requests, the specific patient will receive one message. Each message is personalized for patients automatically, but with single payment requests, you can add an additional note for your patient before sending. 

With bulk payment requests*, you can pull a list of patients with past-due balances and then send messages out in bulk. You can choose which patients from the list you would like messages to go to or select all of them.

Virtual Terminal

Virtual Terminal allows you to conveniently collect payment over the phone. By using the Virtual Terminal, you can securely enter a patient’s payment information to make a single payment. The best part is their card can be saved on file to make it easier to collect payment next time.

Physical Card Terminals

Dental Intelligence also offers physical card terminals for your in-office payments, making it easy to keep all your transactions and reporting from all sources in a single place. Our card terminals have tap, chip, and swipe capabilities and can accept payment from virtual wallets.

Card on File

Make it easier to collect payment in the future by saving the patient’s preferred payment method on file. Our card on file feature allows patients to choose whether or not they want to save the card on file to make future payments even more quick and convenient.

Payments Dashboard

Our user-friendly Payments dashboard allows you to see everything you need to know about collecting payments, so you can stay on top of your AR.

With the Transactions tab, quickly view all successful payments made by patients. You can see whether or not a payment has been associated yet, which means it was written back into the ledger in the practice management system.*

Once payments are fully processed and deposited into your bank account, they will appear on the list in the Deposits tab.

The Payment Request tab will give you a list of all requests that have been sent. You can also view additional information about the request, such as patient name, date sent, requested amount, paid amount, and status.

Ledger Write Back*

Once a patient pays, you can choose whether or not to have it automatically entered into the patient’s ledger in the practice management system. The Transactions tab makes it easy to keep track of associated and unassociated transactions, so you can make sure each payment is properly recorded.

Other Great Features

On top of the features mentioned above, Dental Intelligence allows you to issue refunds and provides a digital receipt for patients that is sent to them automatically.

Get Paid Today!

By using Dental Intelligence Payments, you don’t have to wait weeks or even months to get paid. You can get paid immediately!

You don't have to manually create reports. You don't have to email or mail statements one by one. You don't have to make uncomfortable phone calls that suck attention away from patients currently in your office. With Payments, you can quickly check and see who has a past due balance, click a few buttons, and eliminate hours of work while getting paid faster.

Payments has helped thousands of offices improve their collection percentages and simplify the payments process. Want to learn more about how Dental Intelligence Payments can help improve efficiency in your office? Request a free demo today!

^{*Ledger write-back and bulk request functionality varies between PMS integrations.}