Why is it important for dental practices to focus on Gen-Z patients?

It is important to engage with Gen Z patients through tailored marketing, convenient digital services, and preventive dental care to foster loyalty and long-term growth for dental practices:

Population Size and Growing Influence: Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) is becoming one of the largest segments of the U.S. population, accounting for approximately 20% of the total population, presenting a significant opportunity for dental offices to build long-term patient relationships early in their lives.

Healthcare Spending and Independence: A report by the Transamerica Center for Health Studies notes that 77% of Gen Z are likely to manage their own healthcare as they age. Dental offices that engage this generation early can establish loyalty and generate recurring revenue through preventive and cosmetic dental services.

Focus on Oral Health and Aesthetics: The American Dental Association (ADA) has reported an increased interest among younger people in cosmetic dental treatments like teeth whitening and clear aligners. This aligns with Gen Z's value of appearance and digital identity, providing dental practices with an opportunity to market these services effectively.

Digital Preferences: 98% of Gen Z owns a smartphone. They expect convenience and digital engagement, including online booking, digital reminders, and educational content through social media. Dental offices that adapt to these expectations can increase their reach and patient engagement.

Preventive Focus: According to the CDC, younger generations are more focused on preventive care than previous generations, making them more likely to seek regular dental check-ups if effectively encouraged.

To attract Gen-Z patients to your dental practice, it’s important to adapt to their preferences, which are shaped by the digital landscape and a desire for personalized experiences.

Here are some new-age patient acquisition tactics that dental offices should consider to effectively engage Gen-Z:

1. Social Media Presence (Especially on TikTok and Instagram)

Gen-Z spends a lot of time on social media, with TikTok and Instagram being the most popular platforms. Creating engaging short-form content, like behind-the-scenes videos, dental care tips, or myth-busting, can attract their attention.

Use relatable humor, educational content, or even collaborations with local influencers to generate interest and create a positive image of your dental office.

YouTube and TikTok videos that show what to expect during a dental appointment, introduce the team, or showcase transformations can build comfort and trust.

Live Q&A sessions can also be valuable to address common concerns or answer questions about procedures, which helps build credibility.

Gen-Z loves interactive and engaging experiences. Offer rewards for loyal patients, like points for every appointment or referral that can be redeemed for discounts, services, or branded items.

Gamify dental hygiene with challenges like “7-Day Smile Care” on social media, which encourages participants to share progress and win prizes.

4. Online Booking and Seamless Digital Experience

Gen-Z expects convenience. Make booking appointments easy with a 

Ensure your website is mobile-optimized and loads quickly since many Gen-Z patients will interact with your practice through their phones.

Power Tip: With CareStack’s built-in online scheduling module, you can set aside time slots for patients to book online, create workflows to send them on-boarding documentation, and get them to complete the documentation digitally, all before they even set foot inside your office.

Virtual consultations have become increasingly popular, and Gen-Z appreciates the convenience of telehealth. Offering an initial consultation virtually can lower barriers for those feeling uncertain about dental visits and can serve as an educational opportunity.

Power Tip: CareStack’s built-in tele-dentistry module can help you create virtual consultation time slots in your calendar, connect with the patient from within CareStack securely, and even get paid online before / after the virtual appointment.

 or dental health influencers who align with your brand to share their experiences. Authentic testimonials from people they trust can be a compelling motivator for Gen-Z.

Dental offices can also work with micro-influencers, who tend to have a highly engaged following and a more relatable presence.

. Highlight patient testimonials, share case studies, and provide genuine before-and-after images of procedures.

Showcase your team's personality with bios and fun content. Allowing patients to “meet” the people behind the office online creates a sense of trust and familiarity.

Power Tip: With CareSTack’s flexible email editor, you can create custom branding templates for your emails, and send them automatically from within CareStack. Which means that you can control and extend your brand yourselves, without paying for marketers and designers.

8. Focus on Sustainability and Social Impact

Highlight any sustainable practices you adopt, like eco-friendly toothbrushes, waste reduction initiatives, or supporting local charities. Gen-Z cares deeply about brands that align with their values.

Participating in community events and sharing your involvement on social media can also demonstrate your commitment to positive social impact.

 to phone calls. Offering appointment reminders, follow-up, and communication via SMS or even through platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram DMs can make it easier for Gen-Z to interact with your practice.

Let them DM questions directly on Instagram or other platforms where they follow you.

Power Tip: CareStack is Gen-Z ready, as it comes with in-built capabilities for two-way patient texting, along with abilities to send automated appointment reminders, recall reminders, payment reminders and a lot more.

10. Personalized Experience and Education

Personalize their experience by using reminders tailored to their preferences (e.g., choosing their favorite music for dental treatments).

Provide easy-to-understand educational content about procedures and oral health, as many Gen-Z patients value being informed before making decisions.

Power Tip: With CareStack, you can access patient education videos directly from the patient chart, so that you can show them what a gingival flap procedure is, rather than talk about it. You can also set up periodic newsletters from CareStack to broadcast to your patient base to educate them and build better patient relationships.

11. In-Office Selfie Spots and Shareable Moments

Create an “Instagrammable” corner in your office with props or a ring light where patients can take pictures after their visit. Encourage them to share their “bright smile” moments with a practice hashtag. This turns the patient experience into something shareable and fun.

Add incentives, like entering them into a giveaway if they share and tag your practice.

Gen-Z looks for social proof before making decisions. Encourage satisfied patients to leave reviews on Google, Yelp, or social media.

Share those reviews or testimonials on your social media channels to showcase happy patient experiences.

Power Tip: You can send review requests as text or email directly from the appointment scheduler as you check out the appointment, so that you can immediately convert a happy patient experience into a positive review in Google, Facebook, Yelp or others.

13. Provide Affordable and Flexible Payment Options

, student discounts, or offers targeting young patients. Gen-Z is budget-conscious, and transparent pricing can help them decide faster.

Consider options like pay-over-time services (e.g., CareCredit) and advertise them clearly so potential patients know they have flexibility when covering costs.

Power Tip: CareStack comes with CSPay, a built-in payment processing module that allows you to easily create payment plans, which you can then assign to patients and keep their cards securely on file for periodic billing. What’s more, the patient payments go back to the ledger and auto-applies against charges! Plus, your patients can make payments online, from their phones or even by scanning a QR code. How cool is that!

Use augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) to provide interactive experiences that educate Gen-Z patients on dental procedures. For instance, using VR goggles to let them “experience” what a typical dental visit looks like could be a good way to familiarize nervous patients.

Gen-Z patients are looking for a mix of convenience, transparency, and engaging experiences. Adopting a strategic digital presence on platforms where they spend time, offering easy ways to book and communicate, and adding a personal touch are key to winning over this generation. By embracing these new-age tactics, your dental practice can stand out and foster loyalty among Gen-Z patients.

Brand Guidelines for Dental Offices to Attract and Retain Gen-Z Patients

Switching to the right dental practice management software can change the fortunes of a dental office.

A modern practice management solution can improve in-office workflows, reduce the burden of documentation, minimize human errors, and create patient delight resulting in a higher number of new patients, better treatment acceptance and improved quality of care. Unfortunately, the decision to switch practice management software is a big one. Most practices cannot find the right set of objective metrics to evaluate the switch to a new system. They also find it difficult to plan for change management and data transfers. Even when a practice boldly decides to switch software, they often end up doing research on their own without access to the required resources to properly plan and execute their transition. This often results in ill-informed decisions and poorly implemented transformations, resulting in massive financial losses, productivity degradation, and loss of staff morale.

Thankfully, the ultimate guide to planning your switch to modern practice management software is now available. Our partners at 

, have created the best guide for selecting practice management software in 2024. This guide will walk you through every step of the dental practice management software buying process, and help you make a confident buying decision without hassles and wasted resources.

This guide breaks down the buying process into 6 different stages:

Define the Problem and Why it needs to be fixed

Determine your budget and software requirements

The article covers each of these stages in detail, with the steps to follow for each step, along with resources for assisting you in these steps. It will help you understand the advantages of a modern practice management platform, while giving you mental models to evaluate the impact for your office and make decisions accordingly.

Download this comprehensive guide, and start your practice transformation journey today.

Learn how we can help you reduce claim rejections and denials.

Book a demo with us!

Guide to Buying Software for Dental Practices

Ultimate Guide to Buying Software for Dental Practices - From Method USA

The dental industry is evolving rapidly, with technological innovations like Artificial Innovation playing a pivotal role in transforming practice operations and patient experience. In this ever-changing landscape, making well-informed decisions about the right software solutions is a difficult activity for dental office operators, who are already short on time due to their day-to-day tasks. This is especially true of Practice Management software that serves as the beating heart of a dental office, and a wrong choice can significantly impact the efficiency, patient satisfaction, and financial health of the practice.


, a strategic partner of CareStack, recognized this critical need to support dental practices for making informed choices for practice management software, and commissioned 

 to conduct a comprehensive study on the return on investment (ROI) of implementing CareStack in dental practices. Today, we are proud to announce the release of this groundbreaking study, which is a game-changer for dental practices that are looking to adopt technology for growth and success.

The study, titled "The Total Economic Impact™ of CareStack," conducted by Forrester Consulting, provides an in-depth analysis of the financial benefits, cost savings and patient satisfaction that dental practices can achieve by adopting CareStack's all-in-one practice management solution. The research methodology included detailed interviews with CareStack customers, analysis of customers' operating metrics over a 3-year period, and an evaluation of the platform's impact on the various aspects of dental practice management.

Highlights from the Study include the following improvements for customers over a 3-year period:

307% Return-on-Investment over the period

40% higher patient production, with an average increase of $1,300,000 in production due to higher number of appointments being scheduled and completed

35% reduction in Day Sales Outstanding, with an average savings of $162,200 due to improved revenue cycle management processes

A total savings of $282,400 from consolidating systems

Forrester Study on CareStack in Dental Practices

Based on their research, Forrester determined that the investment made for implementing CareStack paid back within 6 months for dental practices.

The study also summarized the overall benefits of implementing CareStack into 2 sections:

1. Increased Profit from fuller schedules

2. Improved Revenue Cycle Management (RCM)

3. Avoided costs due to system consolidation

The release of Forrester's "The Total Economic Impact™ of CareStack" study marks a significant milestone for us at CareStack, as it objectively validates what our customers have been experiencing all along - overall improvement in practice health that they have experienced after switching to CareStack.

We are elated with this validation from one of the most reputed independent research firms in the world, and further strengthens our mission to help dental practitioners focus on what really matters - quality patient care.

You can now access the full Forrester study and discover how 

 can revolutionize your practice. To access the complete study and learn more about the benefits of implementing CareStack, 

Forrester’s Latest Study on CareStack

Maximizing ROI: Insights from Forrester’s Latest Study on CareStack in Dental Practices

 largely occur between insurance carriers and dental practices. While a practice seeks to collect payments from carriers, insurance companies reject claims that don’t fall within their parameters of acceptance, and this happens often.

Add the complexity of dental claims processing to that, and we can see an average practice forfeiting around 9% of its yearly production to uncollected insurance revenue. If you take a moment to think about it, this is revenue that has been rightfully earned and owed to the practice.

When you crunch the numbers, the ramifications are astonishing.

Annual revenue generated by an average dental practice is around $1,500,000

The average annual revenue lost in uncollected insurance benefits is around $135,000

Average uncollected revenue over 30 years: $4,050,000

To add insult to injury, to write off the debt as uncollectible, a dental practice has to clear audits by the IRS and prove that it has taken reasonable steps to collect the debt but was unable to do so.

Impact on Staff and Cash Flow

The complexity of the dental billing process has made this ‘task’ into a full-time skill-based ‘job.’

Considering the range of responsibilities handled by staff, such as engaging with patients, presenting treatment plans, answering phones, keeping the schedule full, managing staff, and maintaining the office, it becomes difficult for them to contend with all that is required.

This includes preparing and submitting insurance claims, appeals, and follow-ups on receivables. Even the most committed office managers inadvertently have a negative impact on cash flow.

A general approach to dental practices that are considered efficient is to deal with claims in batches.

They set aside one day in a week or a month for these tasks.

The flip side of such an approach is that many claims and payments get delayed, with missing or incomplete information that stacks up the pending paperwork.

Outside the most apparent impact on cash flow, delayed submissions result in a wasted investment of time and efforts of your staff.

Pulling together missing or revised information can set them up against claim deadlines and appeal processes that might not always yield results.

The strain on time for your staff resources sets them up to unsuccessfully contest a commonly acknowledged ‘fact’ – delayed collections with outstanding balances over 90 days are unlikely to get settled.

But let’s say that you are able to afford a qualified professional who handles nothing else but dental billing and coding and A/R collections.

Even if this were the case, instances when your employee is on extended leave or quits their job leave you at a disadvantage with the added investment of hiring, onboarding, and training new staff.

These short-term setbacks have long-term consequences.

Meanwhile, your collection mechanism grinds to a halt and severely impacts the cash flow at your practice.

Another high-impact obstacle to dental billing is its impact on your patients.

While you prioritize patient health, a typical patient generally prioritizes their finances before health.

Your patients depend on you to help them navigate the maze of insurance benefits they are entitled to.

This is understandable as it’s difficult for a common consumer to comprehend their Explanation of Benefits (EOBs).

Undoubtedly, accurate financial processes are a large part of the patient experience.

Any errors regarding benefits coverage or surprises regarding out-of-pocket payments, irrespective of whether the fault lies with you, erode patient trust.

Once a patient loses trust, it’s difficult to patch it back up.

Complexity of Filing Dental Claims

Inarguably, filing dental insurance claims and appeals is a complex process. Let’s look at the following figures to understand its scope of complexity better.

250+ insurance companies are offering individual and group dental insurance.

Each has its own befuddling prerequisites, claim requirements, and benefit limits.

While filing, there are 700+ dental codes and over 10,000+ codes for specialists and medical billing.

To complicate matters further, you must deal with constantly changing state and federal laws and regulations, followed by a diverse range of appeal processes for every insurance company.

Malicious Intent and Human Error in Dental Billing

Human Error in Dental Billing

Having adequate checks and balances in place is a wise business practice.

Especially when you consider that two-thirds of all dental practices in the U.S. have reported being a victim of fraud or embezzlement.

Instances of intentional fraudulent activities, such as upcoding or billing for services not rendered, can lead to financial losses and tarnished reputations.

On the other hand, honest mistakes in coding, documentation, or data entry may result in claim denials and delays in reimbursement.

To mitigate these risks, dental practices must implement stringent internal controls, conduct regular audits, and invest in staff training to ensure compliance and accuracy in dental coding and billing procedures.

Vigilance and diligence are key to maintaining ethical practices and financial stability.

Why Dental Billing Outsourcing is a Viable Alternative

Dental Billing Outsourcing is a Viable Alternative

To excel in dental insurance billing and payments requires knowledge, experience, and efficient processes.

Challenges in maintaining the right staff and expertise, managing staff turnover rates, and the ever-evolving complexities of the insurance ecosystem, makes outsourcing dental billing a viable alternative.

The core responsibilities handled by your practice naturally make it difficult to provide uninterrupted time, attention to detail, and the consistent focus required for insurance collections.

Hence, seeking a dental billing support provider with high-caliber staff, round-the-clock support, and an excellent track record is vital.

The logical next question is about the cost viability of outsourcing dental billing. An objective cost vs. benefit analysis will provide the data necessary to make the right decision.

For instance, a full-time employee trained in EOBs and A/R management will cost around $20/hour.

This cost becomes significantly higher if you recruit highly experienced individuals.

The annual cost of having a full-time employee will be at least $36,000 or higher.

This is excluding benefits, taxes, or other compensation.

A good exchange is to invest $36,000 a year to collect $135,000 in uncollected revenue.

That said, the comparative costs of outsourcing dental billing services are lesser and provide immense value returns.

The most evident benefit of outsourcing is an increase in annual revenue collections.

Dental billing services include patient enrollment, eligibility checks, claims submissions, dental coding, billing charge entry, A/R follow-up, payment posting, and denial management.

Benefits of Outsourcing Dental Billing

Things to Consider While Outsourcing Dental Billing

Before outsourcing dental insurance billing, it is important to understand the breadth of services you will receive from a dental billing company and how they will make it work.

This includes examining hidden costs and how their technology and processes integrate with your practice systems.

Other points of consideration include the contract terms and whether the company offers related services that would benefit you now or in the future.

Dental billing companies partner with practices that generate a sizeable amount of claims. This means your practice should meet its threshold for claims generated at a practice.

In such cases, consider partnering with other practices to cross their minimum criterion collectively.

Opting for outsourcing would still require certain billing activities that must be performed at your practice.

Assess if it’s viable to outsource all activities or if it makes sense to maintain certain activities at your practice.

Examples of this would be all billing-related patient communications and gathering patient information.

Another critical point of consideration is with regard to your working relationship.

Will you be assigned account managers that dedicatedly work alongside your practice?

You must conduct a thorough background check to assess the track record of the billing company and examine the insurance companies to which they submit claims electronically.

All said, it’s safe to request a trial run on all services offered before you decide to outsource.

An outsourced billing company should typically offer the following:

Experienced professionals with expertise in medical coding and billing

Access to a state of the art billing software

Ensure that the billing systems are up to date

Know how to change regulations and insurance procedures

Provide in-house staff training on coding and billing rules

Troubleshooting and timely communication with in-house staff when it comes to discrepancies in claims

Provide on-demand performance reports and data charts

Flawless and timely claims submissions are an integral part of practice revenue. When focused on providing quality dental services and patient care, it becomes hard to accept the loss of revenue from insurance billing. This is where outsourcing dental billing becomes a significant consideration. With an experienced company handling billing-related activities, you can focus on what you do best. Improve the quality of your dental procedures, build a unique patient care experience, and develop long-term relationships with your clients. You can continue to do what you do best without worrying about uncollected revenues.

Manage your claims pending payment in real-time, track claim statuses, and eliminate the need to print separate reports or process them manually.

Wish to Know How?

Dental Billing Outsourcing

Dental Billing Outsourcing - A Walkthrough

For a dental practice, revenue cycle management is the equivalent of the body’s circulatory system and the heart of a practice’s financial success. In fact, its success can be defined by the time taken to collect payments while ensuring a smooth billing process from the moment patients schedule a visit.

From a dental RCM perspective, a healthy system works in concert with industry best practices and technical solutions that help identify leaks and improve operational workflow. But as every practice is unique it is difficult to prescribe a “one size fits all” approach. Therefore, there are key performance indicators that can and should be followed to measure the dental billing and coding performance of a practice.

The revenue cycle incorporates data capture, claims and denials management, and the

collection of payments from both patient and insurance receivables. Basically, it lets you keep your receivables and aging organized with many automated tools to improve revenue and reduce costs.

Within Dental Revenue Cycle Management, several potential KPIs provide valuable insight into the collection’s performance and the financial health of the practice. These include, but are not limited to, Collections percentage, production growth, Aging accounts receivable, Days sales outstanding, Adjustments percentage, and Credit Balances. At the end of the day, the ultimate goal of any practice is to generate revenue appropriate for financial stability and continued growth.

Understanding the cycle as a holistic and comprehensive view of a 

 is the first step in developing the strategy to respond. Therefore, a healthy revenue cycle management strategy enables practices and providers to

 Identify gaps and employ proactive measures to reduce the time spent collecting past-due balances and get paid faster. 

Gain financial control over your practice

 Monitor and manage all areas of the practice, thereby establishing standards and benchmarks required for collective action if required. 

 Streamline and automate tasks, saving time on administrative duties and leading to effective patient care.

CareStack’s practice management platform is built to help growth-focused practices run their revenue cycle management operations smoothly and efficiently. With integrated features for credit card processing, electronic claims attachments and auto posting of claims, CareStack helps your office to streamline your RCM operations better than all other software.

Identifying and resolving leaks in the Revenue Cycle

When a dental practice is leaking revenue, issues need to be identified and resolved promptly. Both clinical and administrative processes can lead to revenue loss. Therefore, understanding the entire revenue cycle in a complete and thorough way is the first step in creating a strategy to address these issues.

Here is a short guide to Dental RCM and how to resolve leaks within your revenue cycle:

With changes in the healthcare landscape, network participation is becoming more necessary. It is also the area that produces among the highest claim rejections, often as a result of lapses in licensure, missing documentation, or failure to meet filing deadlines.

When performing such a repetitive task, it's common to transpose a number or transcribe a name incorrectly. A simple mistake can lead to significant issues over time, resulting in processing delays and lost revenue. Everyone at the practice should understand the importance of data in an environment that prioritizes quality over quantity.

With more than 80 per cent of patients covered by some form of dental insurance, it is critically important that a practice employs comprehensive verification processes. Capturing insurance demographics, plan coverage details, and eligibility specific to each patient is the gateway to optimizing a practice's reimbursement potential. Proper carrier and plan setup, including fee schedule attachment and limitation or exclusion details, ensure accurate fee estimation and secure the trust of your patients.

Often overlooked or disregarded altogether, coding and charge-outs play a significant role in the revenue cycle. As each dental procedure code is specific to the diagnosis, proper understanding of Current Dental Terminology (CDT) is vital. Accurate charge-outs result in clean claims, which ultimately results in faster reimbursements and fewer denials.

Maximizing reimbursement potential extends beyond complete and accurate claim forms and avoiding common data entry mistakes. It requires a fundamental understanding of how insurance companies receive, process, and pay claims. Many procedures require the attachment of supporting evidence, including radiographs or clinical photographs, periodontal charts, narratives, or other relative reports or findings necessary to review and determine clinical requirements.

Payment posting in today's landscape is more sophisticated than ever. It requires knowledge of complex technology, downloading and reconciling reports from multiple platforms, and capturing EOBS from various sources. Many of the issues in the revenue cycle can be prevented or resolved with accurate payment posting and the lessons learned from payment and denial trends. The ability to identify reasons for line item denials or differences in expected reimbursements is the first step in preventing them in the future.

While denial management has become an expected part of day-to-day operations, working denials is a tedious and time-consuming task that is subject to timely filing constraints. Failure to measure denial rates, identify trends, and analyze the root cause for common denials leads to a cycle that unnecessarily repeats itself. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

The likelihood of accounts receivable collections decreases as the balances age. When you consider the staff time, mailing, and supply costs associated with collections efforts, the total revenue lost is more damaging to the practice than the actual charges. It is essential to have a process in place that automates the recovery process and alerts users to take action to minimize the amount of time it takes to secure payment.

With many moving parts and claims undergoing processing every day,

real-time insight is essential to identifying gaps early. The longer an issue moves through the cycle, the harder it is to recoup the time and financial resources lost in the attempt to recover. Consistent monitoring of the trends and financial performance allows a practice to learn and resolve the root cause of issues in the revenue cycle and develop strategies to influence positive change.

CareStack’s unique opportunity miner module helps you quickly identify patients who owe you money, and helps you reach out to them via text or email to collect outstanding debt.

Successful claim submission and faster reimbursement

While insurance rates, reimbursements, or limitations should never influence clinical diagnosis or quality of care, it is crucial to understand what is needed for insurance to process a claim and get paid the first time.

Filing electronic claims with attachments results in faster processing. All dental insurance claims need to be verified to contain accurate information, including carrier name, address, group number, and payor ID.

Radiographs should be clear and of diagnostic quality, ensuring that the entire crown and root are visible and pathology is evident. Pre and post-operative X-rays should be sent for the following procedures:

Periodontal charts need to have the following details:

Dental Revenue Cycle Guide for Dental Professionals

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