Healthcare practice guide
Billing, Books, and Payroll for Dental Practices and DSOs
Production versus collection, plan maximums, and the write-offs nobody tracked.
Dental practices track production obsessively and collections loosely. The gap between the two is where the money goes: contractual adjustments taken without checking the fee schedule, benefit maximums exhausted mid-treatment, and patient balances that age past the point anyone will pay them.
Your practice
Set once — every healthcare tool below pre-fills from it and it stays with you for this visit.
- Collection ratio target
- 98%+
- Days in A/R target
- Under 30
- Over-90 A/R
- Under 12%
Collections against adjusted production
Dental settles faster than medical
Share of total A/R aged past 90 days
Which pricing tier usually fits
A single dental office typically fits the Growth accounting tier; multi-location DSOs with consolidated reporting across sites usually need Scale, both paired with percentage-of-collections billing — see current numbers on the pricing page.
Where the money leaks
Fee schedule drift
Adjustments posted to the old contracted rate after a plan renegotiated. We reconcile allowed amounts to the current schedule.
Benefit maximums
Treatment planned past the annual maximum becomes a patient balance nobody warned the patient about.
Unposted patient balances
Statements that stop after one cycle turn collectible balances into bad debt.
How we run it
- 1
Breakdown of benefits
Verified per patient before treatment planning, including remaining maximum and frequency limits.
- 2
Claim submission with attachments
Radiographs and narratives attached up front so the claim is not held for records.
- 3
Adjustment audit
Every contractual write-off checked against the current fee schedule.
- 4
Patient balance cycle
A real statement cadence with a defined escalation point, not a single reminder.
- 5
Production-to-collection reconciliation
Monthly report showing what was produced, adjusted, collected, and still outstanding.
Payers we bill every month
- Delta Dental
- MetLife
- Cigna Dental
- Guardian
- State Medicaid dental programs
- Discount plan contracts
State rules we work under
Medicaid programs, payer portals, and payroll rules change at the state line. Pick your state for the specifics.
Arizona Medicaid · Phoenix, Scottsdale, Mesa
State billing detailMaineCare · Portland, Bangor, Lewiston-Auburn
State billing detailNJ FamilyCare · Newark, Jersey City, Princeton
State billing detailNorth Dakota Medicaid · Fargo, Bismarck, Grand Forks
State billing detailOregon Health Plan (OHP) · Portland, Salem, Eugene
State billing detailApple Health · Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma
State billing detailTexas Medicaid · Houston, Dallas–Fort Worth, Austin
State billing detail