Casey and Jarrod welcome Josh Smith, Co-Owner and COO of Dental Claim Support, to discuss insurance, insurance adjustments, and how managing them is vitally important to your practice and bottom dollar.
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Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Millionaire Dentist podcast, brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory. On this podcast, we break down the world of dentistry finances and business practices to help you become the millionaire dentist you deserve to be. Please be advised, we do speak with an honest tongue and may not be safe for work.
Casey Hiers:
Hello and welcome to the Millionaire Dentist podcast. In-studio today, Jarrod Bridgeman, my co-host.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Hey. How are you?
Casey Hiers:
And special guest, Josh Smith from Dental Claim Support. He is part owner and chief operations officer. Welcome, Josh.
Josh Smith:
Thank y'all. Really appreciate y'all having us today.
Casey Hiers:
Well insurance, it's probably one of the top two or three topics. That's a big one and we just wanted to get your perspective for our listeners on it and we really like to start from the beginning.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Yeah Josh, if you don't mind, why don't you give us a little bit about your company and your role and your background a bit just so we can vet you for our listeners here.
Josh Smith:
Absolutely. Dental Claim Support's an outsourced dental billing company located in Savannah, Georgia but we are remote company at this point. We weren't for forever until about three years ago but I think outsourcing has come a long way, especially within the last 10 years. How the background is, I am a third owner along with Davy Clay and Ryan DeLettre. And we started because we saw a need in the dental industry for billing to be done the right way and to be streamlined, moral and ethical as well. I actually worked with a small group out of Savannah and although we use the same software in every single office, the billing was done differently in every single office. As working in the centralized billing location, which is where Davy Clay and I did and then we moved out into the offices.
Josh Smith:
For offices that were kind of struggling with patient retention and really just the day-to-day operations, we were able to move these offices from the red to the black, make money, and then we were like, you know what? We've learned a lot here. If we saw that the billing was different in every single office that's combined with this one company, it's done differently throughout the United States. And we eventually found out that we were right about that. That's kind of where the idea came from but it's really just let's dumb down billing, let's keep it simple at the same time as realize there's a lot of money that dentists are leaving on the table. Sometimes it's because you don't know what you don't know.
Josh Smith:
People that might be working in the office, might just need some additional continuing education to find out where there are actually pitfalls or some kinks in that dental billing process chain. And that's basically where we come in. We handle a good bit of the process itself, especially as it relates to claim submission, claim research, and then posting payments. But we help out in all the other avenues as well. And that's just a little background of how we got started.
Casey Hiers:
That's a novel idea. There was a problem and you had a solution and you started a company to do it. That should be how all companies start. Why do practice owners struggle with insurance and insurance adjustments so much?
Josh Smith:
Well one, nobody wants to do it. It's not fun. Dealing with insurance companies is something that, how many people out there, even if you're listening, you get mail from an insurance company, you immediately cut it up and throw it away? You don't want to read it. You don't want to look at EOBs. And it's just a hassle, especially with everything kind of outsourced overseas and the communication barriers and things like that. But dentists struggle because one, typically dentists don't have business backgrounds is one. They like fixing smiles, which they should be able to do that. They should be able to focus on that and have other people focus on getting the money in, running the operations. The dentist does own the practice, don't get me wrong but it's okay to have other people that are kind of running that shop, so to speak.
Josh Smith:
And I think that's where there's definitely a disconnect. And then there just needs to be more education in the dental field. There's a ton of misinformation out there. The dental field changes daily, as we all know. There's coding that changes, insurance policies and procedures change. You have to stay in front of this or else you're going to lose money. If your administration team doesn't understand what has changed, what needs to be billed, what can be billed, understanding patients' policies, explaining this to patients, you're going to really struggle if you don't stay ahead of that. And that's what we see. We seriously see that there's just a disconnect on what is correct and what is not as it relates to how insurance should be handled from dual insurance to coordination of benefits, to your simple PPO plan, where you're posting and you need to take an adjustment. People just don't know. And that's kind of where that's where the disconnect is and that's where the errors are made.
Casey Hiers:
Why don't more younger dentists have fee for service practices? What's your opinion on that? That's a loaded question.
Josh Smith:
It is a loaded question, thanks for hitting me with that so early in this. I think honestly, dentists are now coming out of school with a lot more depth than they used to. It's easy for a dentist that's coming out of school to not get a note, not take out loan and start their own gig. It's starting with another practice. It's being an associate. And honestly, they're getting into a situation where insurance is king. We need patients. What's the easiest way to get patients? Let's go and network with an insurance company. Yeah, we're going to take lower fees but it's kind of insurance marketing, so to speak. That's what we're seeing. There is a switch over to insurance.
Josh Smith:
And now there's definitely been a switch a little bit into the offices lately with your office plans, your office discount plans that offices aren't allowed to do, different things like that. But as far as fee for service, it's really difficult. You got to be in the right areas and you have to just inform your patients and stick by it. We have seen so many dentists that they tell a patient, "Hey, we're fee for service." The patient says, "Nope, I don't want to pay you upfront with everything and deal and wait on my insurance claim. I want you to handle it." And a lot of times it just switches from wanting to be something, into being another insurance-based office.
Casey Hiers:
Well, you hit on it. You get a lot of debt, you get frightened from it almost. And then what do you do? Well, I need to be busy. It's looking at one domino and then the other, instead of the whole picture. I've got a lot of debt. I need to be busy. And then they get in this hole and this hole of insurance. And then they look up and they're drowning in insurance. I want to hear what you think from an insurance adjustments percentage when a practice owner should look up and take notice. And kind of what's the worst you've seen and where it should be. But you hit on it. It's debt and they're not sure. And those folks that luck out into a fee for service because some of them quite frankly do, they're so happy that they did.
Josh Smith:
Oh, they are.
Casey Hiers:
But insurance and corporate dentistry, the hot topics here. And that's why we wanted to have you on. What do you think is a healthy insurance adjustment percentage for a practice?
Josh Smith:
Well, it's understanding what they actually are is one thing. I can set my fee for $4,000 for a crown but if I'm in-network with Delta Dental and my fee is $700 in-network, I'm taking a $3,300 adjustment. These are things that dentists just need to understand right off the bat. That's already an 80% write-off. And I see dentists a lot of times just raise their standard office fees. Sometimes the word interchangeable would be usual and customary but really their office fee's raised. And that's ultimately going to increase their write-off percentage, of course. What you need to do, one, you need to do practice analysis on your fee schedules. I'm not huge into fee schedule negotiations, because I'm not saying it's a dying breed but there are pre-negotiated fee schedules at this point that people need to start looking into, these umbrella networks where you're in-network with basically one fee schedule.
Josh Smith:
Yes, it encompasses about 15 different payers, sometimes 20 payers but the fee schedules are far more favorable and you don't have direct contracts. You're contracting one time. And what that does is that raises your actual PPO. That's going to raise what your PPO fees paid to your office are, ie. decreasing your insurance write-off percentage. One, it's fair fees. It's getting a fee schedule analysis because if you're seeing insurances with extremely low fees, why are you accepting that insurance? Or sorry, why are you in-network with that insurance? You can still see patients that have that insurance but don't go in-network. Don't get in bed with the insurance company because you felt like you needed to. I see it with across the board. You might see two Humana patients a month and I see a doctor go in network and I want to go, "What are you doing? Why did you try to go to network? Why did you take the time to go in-network? You're going to keep those patients, just do some fair dentistry, but you don't need to go in-network with the world."
Josh Smith:
It's not a hypocritical thing to say the umbrella networks are good. Some are not good but if you can find one with favorable fees that puts you in the realm that you want to be in, as far as your bottom line, do it, at the same time as get out of your direct contracts with other insurance companies so you can pick up the higher fees. That's another thing.
Casey Hiers:
You hit on something that we see a lot where it's in reverse. They will almost set their own fees really close to what their insurance reimbursement is. It's like reverse cooking the books. You're not getting true data.
Josh Smith:
No, you're not.
Casey Hiers:
And it drives me nuts. And for the people we work with, we look at the fees and we think people should probably be in the 80th percentile to their zip code of fees. And you need to know what that is and know what that looks like. Because all too often people's fees are 10, 20, 30% low. They don't know. But then sometimes they're so defeated they go, "Well, it doesn't matter." To your point, I can make them whatever I want but I'm so heavily insurance-driven, they almost feel powerless. And so it's a combination of getting the right fees, knowing what they are, to your point, understanding what that insurance adjustment situation looks like. Most of these practice owners, when we get into their data, Josh, there's a lot of information and metrics they don't actually know. And that's even more frightening.
Josh Smith:
Again, I explained probably way too long-winded, but what's the percentage to look at? If you're getting into your write-offs being 25%, you need to really start to pay attention.
Casey Hiers:
Well, I'll interrupt you real quick. We say here because that's one of the big things we'll look at as well, just to let people know where they're at. But if it's over 15%, that's an indicator that you really need to start paying attention. And listen, 15%, that's a decent goal. That's a nice number. But we say, "If it's over 15% in adjustments because of insurance, there's a red flag. You need to be aware of it," because you know this Josh, you look up and 15 months later, all of a sudden you're 25, 30%, no end in sight and they feel stuck.
Josh Smith:
Yes. I think I was probably looking at write-offs as a whole, all the credit adjustments, being professional courtesies, insurance, everything. I've seen that number shoot even higher than 25 and 30. But yes, on an insurance standpoint, 15 to 20 is where I would say, "You really need to hone in and see what's going on." Because to your point, if you just start writing things off, if you have a team that doesn't understand the necessity of getting you paid and they want their numbers to look better, guess what they do? They write it off because ultimately that helps your collection percentage, believe it or not. And another huge number that dentists need to understand, the national average is 91% is collection percentage across the board. Your million, 2 million, $3 million practices are losing 90, 180, $270,000 a year just by not collecting what they need to collect.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. It should be 99% plus, everywhere. And if it's not to your point, know what it is, know why it is, and then what's the plan? That three-step program is not touched on with insurance with collection percentages. They don't even know where they should be. They're not sure where they are. How in the world can you then set a goal to get there?
Josh Smith:
Correct. And again, so it's like if I sit here and I've only collected 91% and I have all this stuff that needs to be collected, all this outstanding AR, whether it be patient AR or insurance and I just write it all off, guess what my collection percentage goes to? It goes straight to a 100%. And I look like I'm God's gift to the dental billing world.
Casey Hiers:
It's clown world. You cook the books, it's clown world.
Josh Smith:
But to be quite honest, you're cooking it. You're cooking it. And the thing is there's so many dentists, they're not looking at that exact number. They're not tracking the trends. You talked about the 15%. If you go from 15 to 20 to 25, you're writing off 10 more percent of what your production is. Net production. Either way, that's just something that dentists, you really have to pay attention to your collections, your production, obviously, your net production, which is encompassing your write-offs. And if you see a trend in the wrong direction, you need to investigate. But you need to understand the why. And you just hit on that. It's kind of an out of sight, out of mind thing. We talk about all the time, your average gen has very nice house, 2.2 kids, that white picket fence, a perfect golden retriever, and everything's all sweet but really they could be doing a lot better.
Casey Hiers:
Well, Josh, I'm glad you mention that because it's twofold. One, with what we do, we look at a lot of financials, Profit and loss statements, balance sheets, taxes, production reports, fee, all those things. Unfortunately, a lot of practice owners live like a massively successful dentist or specialist but it's a house of cards, which is frightening. But to your point, knowing your numbers and understanding where you're at and why before identifying how to fix it, that's just what you call a treatment plan right there. But from your perspective, we see it all the time. People don't know the data points that you just mentioned, they also don't know what their overhead is. They're not sure what their income is. They're not sure when they can retire. This domino effect is incredible but it really does start with insurance and collections and overhead. And if you don't get those right, you're just opening yourself up for a hamster wheel career.
Josh Smith:
Yeah. You can add another product. Oh, I do Invisalign now. Oh, I can put in implants now. That's all gravy. I love that. But if you don't get paid on it, what's the point? It's all-new if you don't get paid. And again, you can dumb down the process into patient AR is directly reflective of insurance AR. If you have a high insurance AR, I guarantee you, you have a high patient AR. It is they're one and the same. If you collect from a patient upfront, like you're supposed to, because you've done insurance verification accurately, your data entry is correct and you send clean claims off, you get paid from insurance. And then when you get paid from insurance, you have a $0 balance on that patient's data service. That's how simple this really is and it all starts appointment, getting the information, following through.
Josh Smith:
Again there's like a, I'd call it an eight-step process, up until the claim is posted. But it all starts there. Again, you can add more and more patients. Sure, your revenue's going to go up. I get you, but you're working your butt off probably for the same amount if you're still not collecting. If you're always losing that nine or 10%, which is across the board in average, I can't believe it's an average. Yes, you said it should be 99% and above. I completely agree with you. But if we're talking about 91% being an average, how many people are at 75%? How many people are at 70%? You are producing a million dollars a year that you should have in your pocket and you're collecting 700,000 of it. That should make you wake up.
Casey Hiers:
Well, it should. Josh, let me ask you this for maybe a listener out there that started this podcast feeling pretty good, and now they're going, I'm drowning an insurance.
Josh Smith:
I'm sorry.
Casey Hiers:
Oh my gosh. I don't know my number. No, that's why we do this. We're not doing this to tell people what they want to hear. We're doing it to help them with what they need to hear. But let's say somebody's out there listening and they're like, man, I think I am drowning in insurance. And besides just giving you guys a call, what's a good first step for a practice owner?
Josh Smith:
Good first step?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. For a practice owner.
Josh Smith:
Run your insurance aging report. That is to me the best step. You can pinpoint all the inaccuracies or inefficiencies in your dental billing process. And again, your insurance aging report is what is outstanding that you have submitted claims to insurance companies? That's all it is. What we do is we really focus on the over 30 day. And insurance companies have 30 days to be able to pay you. I'll be honest, some pay within a couple days. We have our ERAs and you get paid by direct deposit nowadays. You should be doing that, if you're not. But even checks come within a couple of weeks. That being said, if you focus on your over-30 day report, it should not make up more than 10 of all outstanding claims. If you have a $100,000 outstanding to insurance, only $10,000 of it should be over 30 days, in a nutshell, is what we're looking at.
Josh Smith:
I urge all dentists to run this report. It's super simple. You can get a Dental ClaimSupport and we literally tell you how to run all these reports because we try to be as informational and educational as possible. If you can just go and figure out this number and you see that you are one of these that are 25, 30, 40, 50, 60% over 30 days, you've got problems elsewhere. You've got problems with data entry. You've got problems with insurance verification. You might have a problem with your clearinghouse getting claims to the insurance company the right way. Somebody in your office is not being held accountable for working these outstanding claims and getting you paid. Meaning that patients haven't paid you yet. Patients don't want to pay until their insurance claim pays so you've got that outstanding as well. That is the best place to start because it literally tells you if you're running a well-oiled machine or if you're not. But again, like anything else in dentistry, it can be fixed and it can be fixed pretty quickly if you know where to focus.
Casey Hiers:
We hear a lot this sentiment and I think I'm looking for validation here that I'm not a complete jerk but this is the sentiment we hear. It's, "Well, I'm okay and I'm doing fine. And my practice is in this geography with this demographic and I want to give back and I want to help. And it's okay." I hear them rationalize a lot of the time. And my feedback is typically, it is wonderful to be generous in dentistry and potentially give away free dentistry but do it on your terms. The rationalization that I hear for these insurance running at 20, 30, 40% the wrong way, I don't like their rationalization and I try to encourage them, be generous but on your terms. Am I a complete jerk or just halfway?
Josh Smith:
No, you're not. There's kids' days on Friday, you know how many dentists work Monday through Thursday and they don't work on Friday? Friday's the day. And hey, go do that pro bono work. That's when you can go and help out in your community. There is always somebody that would love some free dentistry. It doesn't need to come on your own share time during your 40-hour work week though. Because it's not just you that suffers. It's also your administration team. Please don't forget about that. You want to incentivize your team as well. And if you're not making money, they're probably not making money. It's just, it's that again, it's that domino effect. There are so many ways to give back.
Josh Smith:
No, you are not a jerk. I see it all the time. I see these DHMO plans and they're basically seeing patients for free and yet complaining about their collections. And I go, "Listen, you can't have it one way or the other, you got in bed with an insurance company or a type of insurance you shouldn't be. I think you really need to look into not seeing this particular type of insurance if this is the type of office you're really looking to run and you want to be a profitable office." You can always give back at the same time as be profitable. 100% you can.
Casey Hiers:
Well, and that's kind of the sad part is ultimately some of these practice owners who are getting smoked by insurance and not necessarily because they want to or a saint, their patients are getting great treatment. They're happy. A lot of the staff listen, they're getting paid on production so they're okay.
Josh Smith:
That's a whole other can of worm.
Casey Hiers:
Then you look at again, it's the practice owner who suffers. The tail wagging the dog. And I find it odd that people feel badly if they are considering cutting insurances or not quote-unquote, serving the community. But there's a lot of ways you can serve it on your terms. Josh, what's the biggest wall you guys run into? Practice owner, you guys communicate and you speak and you're going to help them and you're doing your thing. And you have great success. We wouldn't have had you on here, had you not? But what are some challenges or walls that you're seeing in insurance in general and with what you guys are trying to accomplish?
Josh Smith:
Honestly, it's we do our best to build a relationship with the office but sometimes we can be looked at as a threat in an office, for an office manager, an insurance coordinator and we certainly don't want to be.
Casey Hiers:
Kind of territorial, those that are in the office.
Josh Smith:
I would say territorial. How many people have you heard, oh, this is my baby. This is my baby. Talking about the insurance process or the office itself. And that's fine. We can share this baby, is what we can do.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Joint custody.
Josh Smith:
We're literally here to help. Joint custody of the insurance billing process. God, we're nerds. Basically, if we can work together, everybody's just, we're taking off the mundane process or part of the process because we have the time to do it. We don't have patients in front of us. We don't have patients calling us. Well, I'm not preventing treatment to patients. I'm not purging charts and making sure everything is digital. I'm not doing that. I'm not confirming patients. We are simply getting you paid from insurance companies in a very timely manner, is what we're doing. At the same time as making sure that if we see inefficiencies, we are tackling those.
Josh Smith:
We're talking to the office, we're making sure that there's training put in place, as long as the doctor understands what's going on. And we just try to have that open communication and feedback. I will say that sometimes, we're hindered with the fact that it is a learning process. It's a new process for somebody. We are in a sense, a service and it's communication. We've got to talk on a daily basis. We have to make sure everybody's on the same page. We have roles and responsibilities. The office still does too. The offices that embrace this, flourish. The offices that are combative, it's difficult and we try to win them over. Don't give me wrong, I'm never just going to bail on an office because it's not just the office. Sometimes it could be one person, one bad egg, so to speak.
Josh Smith:
That is probably the biggest thing. As far as insurance challenges, we don't have any. There's nothing that we've seen, there's no report that will ever scare me again. There is no one thing going in an office that we can't fix and that we can't work together to get fixed. Insurance-wise, not worried about that. It's mainly just the fact that, hey, we're here to help, so how can we work together to make sure that we fine-tune this dental billing process to where you can focus on your patients and not have this insurance strain.
Casey Hiers:
Amen. Well, and the most successful people and this rings true with dentistry. They know what they're good at and they find others to delegate and master things that they may not be so fluent in. Those are the most successful people. That territorial vibe that you mentioned sometimes of somebody in the office, that's their responsibility and they feel slighted, there's services that we offer that that similar sentiment happens. And I simply say, "That person's time can most likely be used in another area within the practice that can absolutely help you thrive."
Josh Smith:
Oh, man.
Casey Hiers:
And that kind of will get people maybe juiced up. Maybe they can help with some digital marketing or whatever that looks like.
Josh Smith:
Yeah. And you see it too. You come into an office, you run reports, you retrieve the data and you basically can say, "Hey dentist, here's where you're really inefficient. This is where you're losing money. This is where I think you can pick up." In a nutshell. And it could be that somebody's not doing their job correctly or there's just a process that hasn't been implemented the right way. It could be anything of those things. But when somebody comes in, in a sense that just that, that elephant in the room. There's that fear that they're going to find something.
Casey Hiers:
What are they doing here?
Josh Smith:
And I could have done a better job. And I just would stress to people that dentists that are looking to actually further their business, I love that. It's a hard business move and anything changing in your dynamic of your office is very difficult. We shouldn't be looked at as just an outsourced dental billing company. We want to be literally an employee of the office. Our best again, our best clients are ones that they're talking about birthdays and kids and families and stuff. There's that rapport. They're an extension of the team. But if your doctor is investing in an outsource dental billing company, it's in your best interest to be invested in and try to make it work too because they're just trying to fix something that they think could be a little bit better. And that's really one thing that I would stress. And at the same time, stress that dentists need to talk to their staff about the change. Encourage the change. Understand that, yeah, it's going to be a working relationship but we can kind of get through it. That's one thing that I would say.
Casey Hiers:
No, that's really good. We were talking a little bit beforehand how, unfortunately, so many practice owners want the one or the two or the three big ideas that change everything. And especially as a practice-owning dentist or specialist, it's not one or two or three things. It's 25 or 30 things. But getting those right is such the difference. But insurance is a huge one and getting insurance right, getting those metrics and data points in line. Then when they're capturing more of it, then it's helping and our firm helps make sure that they can capture that money and actually use it to pay down debt, a raise at home, save more for retirement. All of this is connected in a comprehensive manner. That's why we wanted to have you on. You don't just go in and do one thing. Okay, insurance is taken care of. Well, that's a huge one but there's so many numbers and metrics that we just mentioned.
Josh Smith:
Yeah, you said 25 to 30 things. I could not agree more. It might even be 35, 40 things. But kind of another thing you're hitting on is, what took a long time maybe to kind of get out of whack, it's not going to be fixed overnight. And that's one thing that I would just really strive to let that soak in for dentists is, hey, it'll get fixed. And just remember, there's timely filing limits of a year, things like that. Don't worry about that as far as insurance is concerned. Pick up where we are, let's start at square one and let's work our way backwards to where we fix things at the front end to where they're not continue to be problems on the back end. We talked earlier about you can add implants but if you don't get paid from it, what's the point?
Josh Smith:
That's kind of it. You don't want to put bandaids on everything. It's really, you got to fix where there are inefficiencies and it starts with one thing and it might end at 30 things and it might take a few months but you're going to see the money come in. You're going to see the influx. You're going to see your team happier because they're more patient-focused.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. And that's the difference between the dentist who has the freedom to retire in their mid-fifties versus the dentist who they're calling you guys or they're calling us when they're 65 plus. And I hate to say it's too late, but decades and decades of not addressing these types of things, it really, really is unfortunate. And I'm sure you have those conversations. We have those conversations all the time.
Josh Smith:
We have seen a change. We get called by more and more young dentists that have started their first practice and I couldn't encourage that more. It's tough to send your first claim and have everything put in place. But when a team's doing it for you and is incentivized, I guess you would say, to actually get you paid, you know nobody's going to drop the ball. And again, you're able to focus on the operations of your day to day in office. That's what you should be able to do.
Josh Smith:
When you're starting out as a dentist, you should not be dealing with claims. I see dentist sometimes posting payments. They're like, "I've been posting payments." I work my aging report and I'm like, "You're working your agent report." And they're like, "Yeah, I get on web portals when I get home at night." I go, "You're going to run yourself ragged."
Casey Hiers:
Burnout is a real thing.
Josh Smith:
You're literally going to hate your job. And you didn't get into it. 99% of dentist, literally, that's what they love to do. I don't know how they do it to be quite honest. I don't know how y'all do it. I really don't. But it's incredible that 99% of them absolutely love it. Stick to that but again, understand your numbers but let some other people deal with that insurance headache.
Casey Hiers:
Yeah. No doubt about it. And it's we travel and present continuing education around the country. I know you guys are big on education but typically corporate dentistry and insurance, those are the big topics people want to talk about and understand a little more. And again, there is no quick fix. It's to your point, they can spend an incredible amount of time on their own to get it half right or change business models or find some people who can master it for them. And again, some of the most successful people do that. And we know that because we see those who have tried to do this all on their own. The business side of dentistry, insurance, all of it, and be a dentist and we see them practicing 15 years too long. Versus the people that go, "I know what I'm really good at and I don't want to screw this up." And those people that figure that out early in their career, they've got a lot of options.
Josh Smith:
Yes, they do. You and I are having a conversation right now because I feel like what we do works and it helps dentists. Well actually, I know that it does. I think when it just boils down to that, it should almost be enough to where it's like, it's okay. And that's another thing I just would love to hit on is I think sometimes there's an apprehension from dentists to realize that they shouldn't have to do it all. You don't have to hold the stress and hold everything on your shoulders just because you're the business owner. I own a business with two other partners. We lean on business coaches. We lean on people smarter than us, that do things in a different way, that have opened us up to personal development, professional development. This is what we lean on in order to actually give a better product to our dentists out there. It should be no different for a dentist to lean on others that are more secure in a certain area.
Casey Hiers:
That's a great point.
Josh Smith:
And let them focus on dentistry.
Casey Hiers:
It's a great point.
Josh Smith:
It's okay. It is okay to seek help is what I'm saying.
Casey Hiers:
Well, and that's exact, I'm glad you're encouraging listeners to do that because what do we know about dentists and specialists? They're overachievers. They've been overachievers their whole life. People come to them to solve problems. And so there can be an odd dynamic almost that they feel bad or guilty if they can't figure something out. And again, newsflash, that's unattainable. You're going to burn out. Even if you can get to that point where you can handle all that, you're going to burn out.
Josh Smith:
Completely agree.
Casey Hiers:
And encouraging folks to find help is good. Well, Josh, I appreciate you joining us today. Again, this is an important topic. Unfortunately, we see a lot of practice owners who they're where they want to be with this and it's not their choice me. Meaning, they're not giving away 30% of free dentistry because they want to, it's because they feel trapped. They feel powerless and they don't know where to turn and there are options out there and your organization is a great resource. I appreciate you joining us.
Josh Smith:
Thank you very much for having me on.
Casey Hiers:
Absolutely.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Thank you.
Casey Hiers:
I want to thank again, Josh Smith, for joining us today and really sharing some wisdom for our listeners. If anybody out there wants to learn more, you can go to a dentalclaimsupport.com, that's dentalclaimsupport.com.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Casey, before we go, I wanted to say, I know you don't have much social media but for those of you that do, we are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter. Just search our name, look us up and follow us and give us a couple likes. That's a good way to keep up on what we're doing and where we're going to be. I know you're going to be at the Indiana Dental Association meeting and Fort Wayne, Indiana in a week or two? Couple weeks?
Casey Hiers:
Yeah, little mid-May, and I've got one social media thing. I'm not that old. Anyways, yes. We'll be at the Indiana State Dental meeting in Fort Wayne. We're going to be at the Florida one in June.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Oh, nice.
Casey Hiers:
AGD, back to Orlando in July. We've got a lot of fun events where we're going to be.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
In nice weather areas.
Casey Hiers:
Well.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
Sounds like it.
Casey Hiers:
Orlando in June isn't necessarily in January. But a lot of good information, a lot of good people and hopefully we can help some folks around the business side of dentistry.
Jarrod Bridgeman:
All right. Sounds good. Thanks, Casey.
Announcer:
That's all the time we have today. Thank you to our guests for their insight and for sharing some really great information. And thank you to you, the listener for tuning in. The Millionaire Dentist podcast is brought to you by Four Quadrants Advisory. To see if they might be a good fit for you and your practice, go on over to fourquadrantsadvisory.com and see why year after year, they retain over 95% of their clients. Thank you again for joining us and we'll see you next time.
