Hello, and welcome to season two of Dentistry Support the Podcast with your host, the kindhearted and infectious Sarah Beth Herman. We're back for a new season and ready to pack a punch. In every episode, we'll be sharing you quick, impactful insights into the challenges our dental community and leaders in all industries face.

Expect a little bit of flair, a few laughs, and you might even recognize a friend or two. Because of you, we are the number one podcast in dentistry and number one in management and business, and we couldn't be more excited.  Practical wisdom and leadership with a servant's heart all delivered in just enough time for your commute or morning team huddle.

We're glad you're here. So let's get into it. Please welcome your host, Sarah Beth.  Hey friends, 

welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Sarah Beth Herman. And today we're talking about something that could be silently holding your dental business, your medical practice, your med spa. Could be holding you back.

Chart audits.  Now I know the word audit sends a chill down your spine, but let me ask you something. What if your business, what if your practice, is losing thousands of dollars every year and you don't even know it?  Most offices go through the motions of the patient experience, the patient care.  They think they're running smoothly, but underneath it all, mistakes in billing, coding, the experience,  and documentation.

They can all be silently eating away at your revenue. In fact, have you ever wondered how much money is slipping through the cracks in your practice without you even realizing it?  Studies show that 85 percent of medical and dental practices are losing out financially simply because they aren't looking closely enough. 

But here's the kicker. Most of these issues are completely avoidable with one simple tool, a chart audit.  And today we're going to talk about how this often overlooked process could completely transform the way that your practice operates. You might be thinking, Sarah Beth, why would I want to open up Pandora's box? 

But here's the truth.  Ignoring these issues won't make them go away. Facing them head on will. By the end of today's episode, you're going to feel empowered, not overwhelmed. I'm going to give you the roadmap to uncover hidden revenue and opportunities in your business. And I want you to stay tuned because at the end of this episode, I have a free downloadable guide for you to help you get started.

So let's get into it.  First things first, what exactly is a chart audit? Now if you are listening to this episode all by yourself, thanks for joining me, but I'm going to encourage you right now to go grab your whole team, go get them all, or grab a link to this episode and go send it to all of your team members in a chat.

And I want everybody to listen to this. Thanks. You can even pause the episode for a moment and head on back here. I promise to be here when you return.  Okay, now that you're back,  a chart audit is simply the process of reviewing your patient records to make sure everything is accurately documented. This includes verifying that the correct codes are being used for billing,  the patient notes reflect the actual procedures performed, and Making sure there are no gaps that could cause issues with insurance claims, patient care, and anything legally that could come your way in the future. 

Now, I also believe chart audits go way beyond this.  So most audits stop right here,  but when I think of an audit, I take it all the way down to how was insurance verified? How are the appointments being confirmed? What does it look like to recap conversations that we had when delivering a treatment plan?

What extra services or products are for sale inside of your business that should be recommended? How are payment plans conducted? What do ledgers look like? Are adjustments correct? There's so much that goes into this. And I'm going to cover all of that today.  Why is this so important? Well, I'm glad you asked.

If there are inconsistencies between what is documented and what is actually done, you might not be getting paid for services that were completed. Now I know that's a no brainer and everybody understands that piece. But even worse, if billing errors are happening regularly, that can lead to serious compliance issues down the road.

And I'm checking for that.  Audits aren't just about catching mistakes, though. They're about identifying opportunities for growth, areas where best practices need to be created, where your mission, vision, and values need to be implemented. When done regularly, audits help you improve efficiencies, they protect your revenue, and they provide a better care and experience for your patients.

They also double as a tool for training for your team. I want to give you a real life example from a chart audit I completed recently. We're going to call this patient Jane Doe.  Jane had an outstanding balance of just about 250, it was like 249. 12 after her last visit. But no one in the office was following up with her when I looked at the notes.

And then I realized why they weren't following up.  The staff did not verify her dental insurance benefits correctly at her last visit. And so because of that, when the claim was sent out, the amount she owed was more than what they had treatment planned. And you could clearly see what had happened. They had presented the treatment plan.

She paid at the visit. There was almost 250 she would owe at the end of the ledger. And you could tell that that was the situation. There were also no clinical notes that were entered for one of her previous visits, which meant that no one could track the discussions about her treatment options. And then to top it all off, Jane had a financial concern about a treatment planned crown and root canal, and no one had offered her payment plans to help her manage the costs.

The only reason I know this is because of what was written in the recap notes and what was listed on the treatment plan that was presented for her. This treatment had not yet been completed. It was just sitting in pending treatment.  Now think about this. Had the audit not uncovered these gaps, the office could continue losing revenue on the treatment plan that Jane needed.

And she will continue to fall through the cracks without getting the care that she needs and has been diagnosed.  Now, because my team conducts a pre chart audit training, and then we complete the audit, and then once the audit is completed, then we do a post audit training, and then four weeks later, we do a follow up on the results.

We know now what has happened with Jane Doe. So I presented all of this information to the office. We went through exactly what their best practices and goals are for the practice and talked about how they can follow up with Jane to let her know she has a balance due, to present a proper treatment plan for her future treatment, present payment options for her, and get her scheduled. 

We went through all of that training. And what I can tell you now is that Jane has paid her balance. She is scheduled for a future treatment. It has not yet been completed, but she is scheduled.  This is why audits are so powerful. They help you avoid these very situations and they make sure that nothing and no one falls through the cracks.

Yes, the team was a little bit taken back, that I realized exactly why the patient had a balance and why they weren't following up. Because that is scary to call a patient and tell them they have a balance due when the insurance just wasn't verified correctly. But it's a conversation you can have, and I have some amazing tools to make that conversation a whole lot better.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Sarabeth, my team is going to hate this. They will feel like we're nitpicking their work. And you're not wrong.  The word audit often brings up a lot of emotions, defensiveness, anxiety, resistance. People don't like feeling like they're being judged. And they definitely don't like feeling like someone is going to expose their mistakes. 

But here's what I tell my clients. An audit isn't about placing blame. It's not about pointing fingers.  It is about growth. It is about taking your practice, your business, to the next level by uncovering the areas where you can improve, even if that means looking at uncomfortable truths. And now, this is where a pre audit training comes in. 

I encourage every one of my practice owners to prepare their team ahead of time. And how we prepare them is through a roundtable training session with me, my team, you, and your team. We explain the goal is to identify opportunities, not faults.  We allow the team to know that every audit is a chance to fine tune the way we run our practice, the way we improve our patient experience, and to make their jobs easier in the long run. 

During this pre audit training, we talk about what the dream experience for a patient would be in this office. What is your mission? What are your visions for your practice? What are the values that you want your patient to know about you?  What best practices should be happening right now as we're conducting this audit? 

What are the best practices that you want to implement in the future? We gauge where your entire team is at. We get them pumped up and excited for the audit to come because they know it means that so much goodness is on the horizon.  I can promise you right now that if we do a proper pre audit training, your team will be itching to get those results back because they want to see where they can improve.

It is a completely transformational experience. It isn't about doing the audit, hiding it from your team, and then throwing down a packet of your audit results and saying, fix this, you're doing a bad job. That's not how we work.  Let's talk about another real life situation.  This time I'm going to call this patient John Smith. 

John needed a tooth extraction for a severely decayed tooth, but financial concerns prevented him from moving forward with treatment. This staff did not follow up properly and no clinical notes were added to track any discussions. As a result, John didn't schedule his treatment, and his health deteriorated. 

The only reason I know this is because of the post audit training that we completed on this patient. I know a lot more information, and this is a well rounded report on this patient because of all of the different steps we take during an audit. During the audit, we found that better follow up and consistent financial discussions could have made a huge difference.

The practice was able to put in new systems, new best practices.  John was ultimately scheduled for the new treatment plan that he had to have, because this old treatment plan was no longer in effect. Other teeth around it were compromised, there was a higher treatment plan, more cost was involved in this, and a different conversation with this patient.

What I know now is that this patient is scheduled for treatment, he has not completed it yet. But we now have a plan, the payments are arranged, the patient is scheduled, we're doing the right things. This shows that audits don't just help you financially, they also help your patients receive the care that they need.

And I want you to understand that. Every patient not scheduled is a patient's needs not being met.  Now, how do I personally conduct audits for my clients?  Well, I take a really deep dive into every aspect of the patient's chart.  For each chart, I spend around six hours reviewing all of the details with my team, from clinical notes, billing codes, insurance verifications.

Notes about communication, what best practices the office has and how I can see those best practices lived out in the patient experience in the system, and anything else that can impact your bottom line. In my career, I've completed audits for over 4, 000 patient charts. And trust me, those six to eight hours per chart, it's necessary to make sure everything is reviewed thoroughly.

I'm not just checking off a box to make sure everything was done right. For more information visit www. FEMA. gov We're actually paying attention to how things are worded, what we're saying, what we're doing. Typically, for a full audit of 10 to 20 charts that are randomly selected by my team, you don't get to choose which charts get audited by me and my team, but we will randomly select them from a recent pool of patients.

The turnaround time is about two weeks. This gives our team enough time to not only conduct the audit, but also prepare a detailed action plan for how you can address any issues that we uncover.  I want you to remember, it's not, again, it's not about finding what's wrong. It's about identifying your opportunities for improvement, for growth, for training, for more patience, for more revenue. 

If you're wondering how often to audit, I recommend letting go of the mindset that an audit happens once and it magically fixes everything. That's never been the case, and it probably won't be the case anytime soon.  I recommend that you audit your dental practice, med spa, or medical practice every three months.

This keeps your practice running smoothly, and it makes sure that you're not leaving anything on the table.  Now, the reason I'm saying every three months is because something changes every season. You might have new staff, you might have different best practices, you might be offering different services.

You might be having a different set of products that you want to sell in office. You might have a different way patients can connect with you via telemedicine. There are many different ways that you interact and work to grow your business. And we want to make sure that those ever changing best practices and processes that you have are always being met head on with every patient experience. 

Now, those audits are going to help you refine that over and over and over. Now, for those of you leaders who struggle with connecting with your team and telling them to do a job differently, trying to implement a new best practice and not knowing how to get past the fact that now you're friends and you've crossed that line into friendship and now you can no longer lead them and you don't really know how to have those hard conversations, having a third party audit for you is glorious.

It creates a beautiful boundary where we can be the inspirers, we can be the ones that guide, train, and coach your team where they need to be, and you all can work together in a roundtable format to discuss what's going on. We don't need to point out who was wrong and single that person out as though they are a terrible team player, but  what we do need to do is work together as a team.

Where one area falls, we all fall, and we're trying to help you all grow.  Before I get to our that's good moment of this episode, I want to share some powerful statistics from the ADA. According to the American Dental Association, 68 percent of dental practices that don't conduct regular audits are missing significant revenue opportunities.

These are often due to incorrect coding, incomplete documentation, and billing errors.  On the flip side, offices that perform regular audits see an average revenue increase of 12 to 15 percent.  Imagine what that can do for your practice. If you right now produce 100, 000 a month, that means we're taking you from 100, 000 a month and we're increasing your revenue 12, 000 to 15, 000 after one audit. 

That is incredible. It's not even just about the revenue though. Offices with consistent audits are at a 25 percent lower risk of facing compliance issues or penalties from insurance companies.  I wanna leave you with an amazing quote. Jamie Kernlina, who's been a huge inspiration in my own life. She said, you cannot change what you refuse to confront. 

When we avoid audits because we're afraid that they might reveal something really bad about our practice or our team,  we're holding our businesses back.  But when we're willing to face the truth, To confront the areas that need improvement, that's when true growth happens. That's when you unlock the real potential of your business. 

Alright, let's bring it all together with today's That's Good moment. Here's what we've learned.  Chart audits aren't about exposing mistakes. They're about discovering opportunities for growth. They help you recover hidden revenue. They help you improve patient care.  They ensure your practice, your business that you have worked so hard to build, is both compliant and efficient.

And don't forget, the statistics show that regular audits can increase your revenue by up to 15 percent while also protecting you from potential compliance risks.  Audits are not something to fear. They are a tool for empowerment. They allow you to take control of your practice and make sure nothing slips through the cracks. 

You cannot change what you refuse to confront.  Audits give you the chance to confront those hidden areas in your practice and turn them into stepping stones for success.  Imagine a world with your team working towards the common goal together to grow your practice It's a part of the process, so we're going to be talking about the process of conducting a chart audit.

So, to get started, if you're ready to get started, I've created  a free chart audit guide just for you. This guide will walk you through the process of conducting your own chart audit or preparing for a professional one. It also includes tips on how to prepare your team mentally for the process and what it looks like to actually begin doing this.

You  And what it looks like to embrace the growth that comes from it. You can download this chart audit guide right now from the link that's in the show notes.  If you'd like to schedule an intro call with me where we can chitchat about your practice and what you're looking for and possibly doing an audit for you,  the link to schedule a call with me is also in the show notes.

This call is complimentary and I would love to chat with you.  Well that's it for today my friends. I am Sarah Beth Herman and I honestly cannot wait to see you thrive with the power of audits. Keep growing, keep thriving, and remember, your practice, your business is potential. is only one audit away. And for me, that's a good moment right there.

I'll catch 

you on the next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Dentistry Support, the podcast. If you want to get in on the conversation or have something to share, join us on our Facebook group, The Dental Collaborative. Looking to connect or to be a guest? Head over to DentistrySupport.

com or if you'd like to learn more about your host, Sarah Beth, or maybe you're thinking of starting your own podcast or looking for mentorship opportunities, well, just visit SarahBethHerman. com. If you've got just a sec, remember to rate, subscribe, and leave a review for the podcast. That helps us keep growing.

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