Eric Vickery and Shelly VanEpps discuss optimizing Eaglesoft dental software: scheduling strategies, payment processing, and the importance of daily audits to maximize efficiency and prevent revenue loss.
Resources:
About Shelly VanEpps
Shelly is the VP of Business Development & a Mastery Coach with All-Star Dental Academy. By aiding in the growth and expansion of All-Star, Shelly’s passion for dentistry allows the company to focus on guiding dentists and their teams towards achieving their vision of a successful dental practice. Because each office has their own definition of “success” Shelly focuses her attention on customized coaching by applying her 21 years in the dental field to each department within the office. In addition, as a John Maxwell Certified Leadership Coach, Shelly enjoys working with doctors and office managers on shifting their approach from a managerial approach to a more effective leadership style.
About Eric Vickery
Eric holds a degree in business administration and brings a strong business and systems approach to his consulting. His initiation into the field of dentistry was in the area of office management. He managed dental practices for over ten years and has been consulting over 250 offices nationwide since 2001.
Episode Transcript
Transcript performed by A.I. Please excuse the typos.
00:02
This is Dental All-Stars, where we bring you the best in dentistry on marketing, management, and training. Welcome to Dental All-Stars. I’m Eric Vickery, president of coaching at All-Star Dental Academy.
00:26
She’s a lead mastery coach at All-Star. She is our lead integrator. She runs All-Star’s integration process and she’s an absolute, absolute treasure for us at All-Star Dental Academy. She works with a ton of clients all across the country, helping them maximize their practices. She’s got, I’m not gonna say how many years, experience in dentistry. It’s all there. She loves dentistry.
00:53
completely and she loves coaching offices and we love having her on here and today We’re gonna do a part two of a three-part series on dental software practice management software today We’re gonna take on Eagle soft and Shelley being an Eagle soft expert I thought hey, let’s get Shelley on and talk about how do we utilize Eagle soft more effectively in our offices? So Welcome, Shelley Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited
01:22
I like my Eagle Soft. I know you do. I know you do. I won’t say the Dentrix word at all today, I promise. Okay. It’s all good. It’s all good. They all have great features, right? But I just have a sweet spot for you. I think it’s one of those things. You love what you grew up with. You know, I’m a Chevy guy. I grew up, Chevys were the thing. You know, not that there’s something wrong with Ford. It’s just not my thing. It’s just not something I’m going to buy. So, I got a Chevy Silverado and I got a Cadillac.
01:52
I’m going to be in that world. I love it. I grew up with dentrics. I’m probably going to be in that world because I’m comfortable there. Do I see the pauses, open dental, and egosoft? Yeah, I have to admit those things. So today, what I want to talk about is I’ve got an egosoft listener hearing this. And they don’t know what they don’t know. And there’s a frustration happening in their practice. And so let’s start with frustration. They don’t know what they don’t know. We’ll go down that path. We’ll see where it takes us.
02:22
Eagle soft users, you see them operating in their practice all the time. You’re looking at their software saying, oh, you’re under utilizing that. You’re not maximizing the potential here. What’s the number one thing you see as being that thing you want to get your hands on and fix generally there. There’s a couple of them, but one of them in particular is how we’re utilizing the schedule, whether it be from block scheduling and maximizing our, or minimizing our chaos, I should say.
02:48
utilizing the different color codes that you can do for block scheduling by appointment type and or using the X’s and the hashtags to identify doctor’s time within the schedule or the provider’s time within the appointment. Got it. So my question has always been, do I have to go up to that dollar sign and always click that and see everybody? Do I always have to see everybody on one screen? Can I get it down to I just want to see Dr. Smith’s schedule and that’s it? Is there a way to do that?
03:18
Yeah, there is. There’s different views that you can create. They’re workstation specific. So if you’re at the front and you want to be able to just focus in on your hygiene schedule, you can do that. Um, you have to set it for that particular computer station. You can go from anywhere from one room to as many rooms as that you have, or as many columns, if you’re using it by provider, um, that you want, you can use the HIPAA version so that you can show your patient and do the whole
03:46
This is how we schedule kind of conversation with HIPAA versions, especially in that hallway computer and things like that. I always recommend. I don’t think many Eagle soft users know how to do this. I think every single Eagle soft office I’ve ever been in, I’ve never seen them toggle back and forth. I, you know, as a Dentrix guy, I have to set that up for Dentrix users too. The F keys at the top, you just go F1, F2, F3. So I can be sitting at a workstation up front, say I got a schedule for hygiene.
04:13
I can click that button. Just look at the hygienist schedule, schedule her to goal, or I can click a different button and see the doctor schedule and schedule the doctor to goal. Is that? Yeah, essentially. I mean, it’s not as simple as just pushing one button. You have to go up to the menu and then choose your view. Yeah, but you can toggle that back and forth as you would like for sure. So utilizing that.
04:43
Yeah. Yep. The dollar sign is going to help you. I wish it was just vision. Why do I click another button? Just put it right there. OK. I don’t know. You can put that in as a request for an updated version, maybe. And they’re still doing updates? As far as I know, yeah. They have been as long as I’ve been. All right. And then so that brings me to you talked about Xs and slashes and blocking out. How should it look in a schedule? Let’s say I’ve got my view down. I’m just looking at doctor schedule.
05:12
but I want to do my primary rock time for a certain length of time, and I want it to be $800 an hour. How do you do that? What does it look like? Right when you open up that Edit Appointment screen, so you double click on your schedule, there’s an option to be able to put those different hash marks into a sign your provider off on the right-hand side of that particular appointment. In that column. Yep. And so you can slide which part you want to assign your doctor to, if you want to assign a specific hygienist to part of that.
05:41
appointment or an assistant, a specific assistant to a room, you can do that and give them each their own letter, number, icon, whatever, so that when you’re looking at the schedule, you know, oh, hey, Shelly is supposed to be in this room for this 20 minutes, and then it’s going to be the doctor. And while Shelly’s over here in this room, then I have the doctor scheduled in column number two, and it just helps to be able to visualize where the doctor needs to go and or your hygienist or assistant.
06:11
So we call that dovetailing in our language where I’m not double booking, but I am using two columns. My doctor’s never being requested to be in two rooms at the same time. And what are those, and it’s on the right side of the appointment, EgoSoft, what are those symbols that you’re signing? You said Xs and slashes or? You can set it up to be whatever you’d like. Their default is an X and a slash or a hashtag, I guess is what it would be. But when you go into your providers or your team,
06:39
um, set up, you can select what image, um, or icon that you want to utilize for that particular person. So if you have five different doctors, they’re not all going to be Xs, which is what it shows up as default, but you can say, you know, doctor, you could do one, two, three, if you wanted to, or whatever, so that it just shows up in those boxes. Yeah. Okay. That’s cool. And then can you say, uh, let’s say you template your day.
07:06
Can you move that time around easily in the schedule or once it’s in, it’s locked in? Okay. All right. That is it. I would say, I would agree that that is one downfall for EGLEsoft over Dentrix and that once that block is there, you it’s for here and forever. If you say on Mondays, this is my, my ideal schedule every Monday is that same ideal schedule. So there was different ways that I would work to get around that. For example, if my doctor said, Hey,
07:33
We’re not working as many days on this particular week. I want every day to be rock time or those high production times. I would go in and put a block in there just to make sure that I didn’t put any of the smaller appointments in there. And then as I replace those blocks, um, with an actual appointment, then I would take those back off, but you have to basically block it out. Like, do not go here. Yes.
08:00
just putting it almost like a memo or a note in the place of where an appointment would go until that appointment is scheduled.
08:09
Got it. Got it. Okay. And do you get to label before there’s any appointments in the schedule? Can you label what blocks are or you just need to know what the color are is meant to be? Yeah, you need to know the colors to some extent. There is a guide that you can revert over to. If you know, if you have access, you have to be given access within the system. So you would just want to make sure all of your users who would need to be able to see it have access to view certain things.
08:38
just like any other software, depending on what your parameters are that you’ve been given, you can see certain reports or different features. And so you need to make sure everybody has access to it, but you can access that if you need to. That’s why I think having just a few colors is helpful because then everybody knows them. We would go with, you know, doctor’s favorite color, he’s a U of M fan. Got it. And then maybe like a new patient color or an emergency color. Yes.
09:08
Exactly. Got it. Yes. So second question would be you’re sitting in an Eagle soft office and you’re watching them use it and you’re saying, Oh wait, that’s not how you do that. There’s an easier way to, there’s a shortcut to it. Let me teach you something. What do you often see? Whether it’s sometimes posting. I feel like sometimes an Eagle soft for me, it’s posting an insurance payment while updating the payment table. Sometimes that can be cumbersome. People don’t know how to do that. Well, what do you see?
09:37
There’s, there’s honestly so many different ways to do everything within Eagle soft, um, that that does tend to be a challenge for a lot of team members. Like what’s the right way, quote unquote, right way. And really what I found in how I trained team members is let’s talk about what the goal is, and then we can figure out which way you’re going to be able to access it quicker. If you’re in the clinical area and you’re working on something, it may be quickest to go straight through the appointment. If you’re working at the front desk and you’re
10:07
you have a phone call coming in, clicking on the person tab up in the corner versus clicking on the schedule and searching for them maybe quicker. And so that is going to vary based on what your task is that you’re doing. Now, you’re asking specifically about accounts and applying payments. So the way that I would always do that is going straight to the accounts tab, opening up the account, applying a payment.
10:33
clearing a claim all at once by clicking, you know, that you’re clearing the claim, you can enter in down at the bottom of that screen, all of your different payments based on procedure specific codes, and then hit to apply to your fee table. But you need to separate that payment out if you want it to automatically update your fee or your your payment table, your fee schedule. So one of the things that we talked about with Open Dental was fee schedules and write-offs.
11:01
when you get into in network versus at a network in Eagle Soft, do you find it’s better to just have your office fee schedule in Eagle Soft, bill that to insurance and do a write off or do you find it’s better to have office fee schedule number one, delta fee schedule number two, Cigna fee schedule number three, MetLife fee schedule number four, and therefore eliminate the write off process. What what do you prefer? For myself and for
11:28
KPI purposes or key performance indicator purposes, I prefer to always bill the full fee. And for that to be reflected on the patient’s account bail or their ledger, as well as on the claims. So submitting the full fee and then doing the adjustment as those EOBs come in, but making sure that you have several different adjustment types set up by insurance company.
11:52
I’ve found kind of going in and helping different offices that have ego soft. One major mistake in my opinion that happens is that they just have everything lumped under insurance adjustment. And if you’re in network with multiple insurance companies, that doesn’t help you assess, is this a good relationship that I have with this particular insurance company, or is it something that I could consider parting ways? And by making sure to always say Delta dental adjustment, met life adjustment, whatever ensure, I don’t care.
12:23
By always indicating exactly which insurance company it is, your assessment is going to be much cleaner, as well as your patient’s account ledger is going to be easier to follow. Yeah, I find that in Eagle Soft, it’s much easier to track what the write-off’s going to be, therefore what the copay’s going to be, versus maybe Dentrix or Open Dental. It seems a little wishy-washy in those two, because you can’t get really specific on what is the patient’s copay after the write-off.
12:49
And so in those two softwares, I like to put in the insurance company’s fee. So I know what I’m supposed to collect. Whereas in Eagle Soft, you have the option to do either, and you can track your write offs a bit more specifically. I really do think that Eagle Soft is a more ledger friendly software. The little mouse guy running around I’m not so sure about, but I like the little brain with a pencil sticking out of its head myself. That’s my favorite icon.
13:17
I didn’t even know you could change the icon. You can’t. It’s just a pencil. I mean, it just looks like a little brain with a pencil sticking out of its head. It’s the thinker. Um, I don’t know. Got it. Okay. So lastly, lastly, if you had to give people advice on software and you said, Hey, I know you’re, you’re using Eagle soft and you obviously think it’s the best software out there.
13:44
What’s the number one first thing you think they need to do to utilize Eagle soft the best way possible. Ultimately figure out what your long-term goal is. Honestly. I mean, I’ve been through a practice that we’ve done conversions. We’ve switched from other software over to Eagle soft from Eagle soft over to another software and then back to Eagle soft. And ultimately we knew what it was that we were looking for in that.
14:11
transition that we went through didn’t offer that particular thing. And that was ease of use for our practice, and processing reports quickly. Whereas if you want every kind of report you possibly could ever consider, go through Dentrix. They have a million reports. It’s amazing. It’s almost analysis paralysis, if you can really keep diving in and looking at those reports where, for me, the reporting process within Eagle Soft is so simple.
14:39
You process an end of the day every single day that day is close out. It’s done. And then you’re, you’re starting fresh the next day. You’re not, Oh, well, this was a mistake from three weeks ago. And when I edit it on the account, it messes up a day from three weeks ago. It’s truly like day to day accurate numbers. So I really liked that about it. I’m kind of black and white that way. Yeah. I think, I think, like I said before, Eagle soft is a, is a more ledger.
15:08
true software where it’s locked at midnight every night and in Dentrix you gotta close the month out and people can go back and make changes. I think that makes Egosoft safer from embezzlement. I think people can’t go and delete things. I also think it creates some frustration because there are mistakes made and then you got to do a debit and a credit and you got to know those things. So make sure you know how to utilize that.
15:29
So I guess one thing that I recommend on that Eric, because it does happen, whether you’re Ecosoft or Dentrix, print a report that shows your providers exactly what they did that day, or at least what was posted as done that day. And ask them to look at it before the end of day is run. That was a hard and fast rule for us. Like you look at your provider productivity report or provider reconciliation report is what it is. And it breaks out every code, everything that you did.
15:56
And each hygienist had to look at that and make sure, okay, yep, that’s everything that I actually did. I give you my blessing. Go ahead and process it. Then it’s not a matter of, Oh, shoot. Yesterday I didn’t do a four-eyed on Joe. They, they looked at it and they made sure that it was accurate. So that’s the suggestion that I would have with it because it is locked out. Yes. You’re, you’re done. You, you can’t post, you got to post it today. Now, now it’s a different day of service. Yeah. Exactly. So in, in dentrics, we would.
16:25
do you could do an entry date and you could change it to enter that procedure the next day. So we have the audit done the next day. I think the funny thing that we’re saying here is that you got to do an audit every day. You got to audit your billings and most officer going, what are you talking about? I don’t look at anything. I said it completely and I walk away from it. My clinical notes done. I’m done. You got to go back and look at every single patient. So administrator lead, whoever that is, you look at every single appointment at lunch. You’re looking at the whole morning, going back to every single
16:54
Did we post, did we submit to insurance where we’re supposed to, did the right provider ID go under, uh, in the ledger so that the right person is getting the right production credit and the afternoon you go to the same thing. Now in other softwares you go to the next morning, but in Eagle soft, it’s best for the end of the day. And then you’re going to verify that production with each provider. Did we bill out six X-rays? Did we bill out the fluoride? Did the exam go the way it’s supposed to be? And maybe those were things you did or did not do that need to be posted correctly. So.
17:21
there are tens of thousands of dollars every year lost because of incorrect billing in each office. So, it’s really important to pay attention to. I love that. I think that’s great. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you, Shelly. I really appreciate this. So, obviously, for the Eagle Soft offices out there, they’re listening and you want an Eagle Soft expert, you got Shelly right here. You can just reach out to Heather at AllS Talk to Heather about what you’re looking for. We’ll get Shelly on the job and she will help you
17:51
Remember, I really appreciate you guys joining us. Share the podcast, share the YouTube channel with those so we can help spread the word. We’re really trying to provide just amazing content that’s a value for you to help grow your practice. So we really appreciate you spending time with us. Thank you so much for joining us and taking the time to invest in yourself. And until next time, go out there and be an All Star.
18:20
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Dental All-Stars. Visit us online at allstardentalacademy.com
