Welcome back to No Silver Spoons, where we talk leadership, legacy, and building businesses that actually make sense for your life.   I'm your host, Sarah Beth Herman, and today we're diving into a subject I have nearly 25 years of real experience in. I spent 15 of those years in the dental industry before virtual support even became a conversation.

  I was light years ahead of my time in this industry, especially when it came to what was happening behind the scenes of a dental office.   I knew the shift was coming. I felt it long before. Most   today's episode is all about virtual dental support and how powerful it is when it's done well, especially when you marry it beautifully with your in-office team.

  We're going to cover what it really looks like to integrate dental billing support, dental insurance, eligibility services, dental phone management, and credentialing into your dental practice, all without the overwhelm. Let's get into it   once upon a time, dental support looks like a clipboard, a front desk bell, and someone multitasking with phones, patience and eligibility Calls all at once.

  In fact, I worked at a dental practice and when I started as their front office, we actually had all of the appointment books from the previous owner who had owned the practice for 50 years. And at the time, I looked through the appointment and you would see different markings in pencil next to each appointment of how much the visits were.

  Cleanings were a dollar 50. Crowns were $3 and 50 cents. It blew my mind.  Anyways, fast forward 2025. Here we are,   dental offices. They're busier, they're more digital. They're more compliance focused than ever, and with that  virtual dental support has entered the room.  What we used to think had to happen inside the four walls of a practice, insurance verification, billing, scheduling, treatment, planning, support, claims follow up.

  It is now all shifted   and not only can it happen virtually, but it can happen better when it's done right.   Virtual dental support isn't just remote workers. It's structured, intentional integration  of experienced professionals who manage your back office systems from a different location. These are not temps.

These are career professionals.   At Dentistry Support, our team works with dental offices all across the country.   Handling dental insurance eligibility claim, resubmissions, overdue account follow-ups,   digital, front desk messaging, phones, credentialing, even medical billing for dental practices.

  It's not about replacing your in-office team, it's about supporting them in the most effective way possible.   we also offer mentor programs, free training and fully developed education platform. so that practices don't just survive, they grow.   Now, let's get real for a minute.

  If you are a practice owner, you might have some hesitation. Maybe you've had a bad outsourcing experience. Maybe someone told you virtual equals less control,   but this isn't outsourcing in the way that it used to be. This is team expansion.   It's not about getting someone cheaper, it's about getting someone smarter to help your team win.

  And just like any new relationship, there are growing pains, but when you give it time, communicate clearly and lead with emotional intelligence, it changes everything.

  Now, are there challenges? Absolutely.   But they are worth navigating.   Let's not pretend that virtual support is perfect, because when we pretend we aren't living in reality. Merging an in-office team with a virtual team. It takes intention.   Here are some of the things that we see   as we onboard practices or offboard practices that didn't go well, could go well or happen all the time.

  Now these are just hiccups that we see. This doesn't mean that this is what every virtual company sees, but this is what we see and here's ways that we overcome those.   First, not setting clear expectations.   If you want virtual support to work, you have to be clear in what you want to do.   Lack of SOPs for who does what?

  Office teams feeling threatened, delayed communication loops.   Here's the truth, these  same issues happen with in-person new hires too. The key is communication and documentation and leadership, and this is why here at Dentistry Support, we have built an onboarding system that is based on practice size,   hourly support, needed specific job functions, daily check-ins, communication,   and an incredible process of making sure we outline your SOPs and even create them for the very first time if needed, and share them with our team.

  We write detailed SOPs with every client.  We create response protocols. We tailor our billing, our eligibility, and our phones to your actual practice load.   We are not a one size fits all because we know your practice isn't. We have to take the time to know you, to know what you need, get you where you wanna level up to.

Let me pause for a moment here and mention something that I think is so important, especially when you are working with a virtual team.   Emotional intelligence is the glue that marries virtual support and in-office success. If you have a team that understands how to communicate without tone or context, show grace in remote interactions, offer consistent feedback loops.

  Then you're gonna win   Harvard Business Review notes that emotionally intelligent teams outperform others by up to 20% on collaboration metrics in the dental industry where tone and timing are everything this matters.

  Now, I've talked about SOPs a couple times. Do we know what those are? Let's talk about it. Standard operating procedures. Boring, maybe necessary. Absolutely.   We craft SOPs for every virtual team member that reflects your unique workflows. Now, your office may never have created even one SOP and maybe your SOPs are from 30 years ago.

Either way, we're gonna create them through your 10 day onboarding process, how you verify benefits. What I do with benefits. What do you do with claims that are denied? What phrases do you use when messaging patients? Who do we notify if there's something wrong? How do we upload this into your system? How do you use your dental software?

How do you want us to use your dental software?   The best part. About all of this is that it's collaborative. we build them with you. So your in-office team and your virtual team are truly speaking the same language. we have a HIPAA compliant chat system where we connect with you 24 hours a day.

You can communicate with us at any time. We aren't waiting for an email to come back and forth.  We aren't violating HIPAA by emailing about patient information or office specific things that shouldn't be in email.   We're doing things different and you should expect different.   And as we build your practices, SOPs, those are gonna change.

You are not gonna be the same practice today.   20 years from now. So every time something changes, we update those in real time.   As a five time CEO and someone who has worked with hundreds of dental practices, here's what I know.   Virtual support doesn't replace great leadership.   It requires it   in office, and virtual teams thrive best when they are both valued.

  what you tolerate becomes culture. So if there's disconnection, we have to address it early.   And addressing things doesn't mean someone's in trouble.   I've coached and guided my team to understand  that a week of failures is a week of growth, and that we look forward to the weeks where we learn the most because it helps us be better for future weeks.

  We aren't just support, we are an extension of your brand.   If you are not integrating with intentionality, you are just managing chaos with a prettier wrapper.

 without giving away our internal client onboarding strategy.

Here's what great integration looks like   in weeks one to two.   That's where we're making sure all of your SOPs, workflows, introductions, logins, setups of software is happening That's your traditional onboarding timeline. We're gathering information. We're building the wiki pages for your practice.

We're educating your team on the specifics for your office. Because truly no two dental offices are exactly the same,  even in a group practice.  No matter how many offices tell me they are the same, they work the same. They're all part of the same brand. I'm telling you, there's differences. And so we get everybody in alignment on what it looks like.

Weeks one and two,   weeks three and four. Services are beginning.   The flow of things are happening.   You are seeing how our team is working and we are getting feedback from you at the end of every single week for your first 12 weeks. We have a QAC process, a quality assurance checklist. We're going through all of the metrics for every level of support to dial in on what's working.

And what's not working, and I promise you there will be things that are not working. That doesn't mean we're doing a bad job. That means that we need to understand how to do it differently or better to meet the needs of your practice.   Weeks five through six, we're doing audit checks, we're escalating paths.

We are getting a rhythm established for your practice so that we're always all on the same page.   By day 60, your office is feeling great. There's less stress, there's more clarity, there's better follow through, but it takes investment. It's not just the financial that I'm talking about, either the emotional you, emotionally are invested in the process and what this looks like.

 What your team was doing before you got your virtual team is different than what your team is doing now that you have a virtual team. And so with those changes can come differences of opinions on how adjustments are posted, on how claims are researched, on where the system is used to input data.

There are many differences in how approaches are made, and our goal is to learn everything about your practice along the way. I.   You are seeing results immediately because we're doing things immediately. We're teaching your practice exactly what best practices need to be in place so that you have a healthy running, financially secure business.

  Here at Dentistry Support, we aren't just a service. We are a solution that was built to scale with your practice. So here's what makes us different. We provide dental, billing, phones, and eligibility as our core three services. We also offer credentialing, medical billing for dental and mentorship and education.

  You get three to nine dedicated team members based on your practice size, not just one person juggling it all.   Our 24 hour help desk resolves most requests within 60 minutes, including same day verifications. We don't charge anything extra for this help desk or those immediate insurance verifications.

  We've done the research, we've cold called our competitors, and what we found is that most of them charge double our rate for half of the services. Our model is designed to consume no more than three and a half percent of your practice's, total revenue, and it's even less the larger practice you are because we've optimized our team and used technology to make them the most efficient in their roles.

So even if you're using all three of our core services, that price is still the same.   That means phones, billing and eligibility with a team that's showing up daily, a team that's communicating. And if one of our team members doesn't show up or decides to end their employment with us,  it's not on you, it's on us.

those are the deep breaths that you get to take and rest and relaxation for not having to go chase employees or hold people accountable.   We are a team that communicates, we're a team that cares, and you are a fully supported practice.   And a fully supported practice is a well run practice.

So whether you're a solo doctor or multi-location DSO,   you deserve support that meets you where you are and levels you up.   Virtual doesn't mean distant. In fact, with the right systems, it often means closer communication.   Clear accuracy and real clarity around who does what. And yes, you can still have your trusted team members in office, but let the administrative load be lifted.

  Let someone who's trained, documented, and intentional take that off of your plate. And that's where we come in at Dentistry Support. We're not claiming to be perfect, but we are committed. We offer free training resources  Because we believe the dental community deserves access to support, not just sales.

This podcast, it's one of those resources.   Our digital products, same thing. When you win, the community wins and we wanna be part of that.   If something in this episode Is resonating and you are curious about how to actually take the next step. We've made it simple. You can connect with our team at dentistrysupport.com where we have a clear breakdown of all of our virtual dental support services.

From insurance verification, dental billing, outsourcing, front desk phone management, credentialing to medical billing for dental practices. We also offer an entire digital product store,  a suite of downloadable, instantly accessible tools to help you run a cleaner and more confident dental practice.

  Everything we create is made to make your life easier.   And remember, we're not just here for a large practice or a small practice or solo providers. We're here for everyone. So whether you're searching for the best dental billing companies for a private practice, how to outsource dental eligibility verification, remote dental, front desk support,   virtual insurance coordinators for your dental office or dental credentialing and medical billing help,   you'll find your solution with us and we're honored to do the work   And as we wrap up this episode, we always like to bring in our, that's good moment,   the time where we recap what we learned in this episode and bring it all down and back to home base.   Today we explored the beauty and the complexity of integrating virtual support with an in-office dental team. We unpacked why virtual dental support isn't just about replacing people, but multiplying your practice's capacity.

We talked about emotional intelligence. Clear SOPs, intentional onboarding and treating your virtual team like the professionals they are. We highlighted our support systems, pricing structure, help desk, response times, and our mission to serve the dental community at every level. And most of all, we reminded ourselves.

That growing is a process of trust. It's not perfection. We gave you real world answers for people asking how to integrate dental billing, how to offload insurance verifications, and what virtual support can look like in a practice that wants to lead with intention. And to me, I. That's pretty good.   Thank you for listening to No Silver Spoons.

This episode is powered by dentistry support, where we support dental practices with virtual team solutions that work.   If you're a practice owner, manager, or dsso executive looking to finally get organized and scale smart,  head to dentistry support.com. Explore our digital product store.

Download something that will help today, book a consult. We'd love to start the journey with you. Let's get your systems in place. Let's give your team the relief they need and let's do it together. Follow along on Instagram at No Silver Spoons Podcast. I'll see you next time on the next episode.