 Hello everybody, Andrew Mayeski here with Dental L. So a little bit about me. I have been tutoring dental hygiene students and dental assisting students for about 14 years now. I was a dental assistant. I then became a dental hygienist and then I became a restorative hygienist after that and I have owned my own dental hygiene mobile practice since November of 2018. So it's been about six months now. So I wanted to hop on to talk to you guys about what I've learned in six months, what has gone well for my new practice, what maybe hasn't gone well, things that I had changed, and just overall, you know, how I feel after six months because when I was starting my practice, I would have loved to just talk to somebody about, hey, do you have any tips for me on what to do to get started, what you learned after six months, how much money you were spending, how much money you felt maybe you didn't have to spend, or were there things you had realized, okay, I need to spend the money on this even if I don't want to, you know, just all of that. Now, if you want to hear more, I do explain everything inside my new course, Mobile RDH Academy, where I literally had started to do the videos literally when I first started thinking about starting a practice to a week in, two weeks in. I even go through how I talked about getting a loan for the business, how I decided to own a sterilizer for my home versus going to a dental office to sterilize. I talked about how much money I did spend. I go through everything. So if you need more, let me know. I can leave the link for my course for you guys, Mobile RDH Academy. Sorry, I just had allergies right now. My nose is starting to run. I will leave a link for you guys on the bottom here, okay? So just in case you are either thinking about starting to own your own practice or you do have your own practice now and you just kind of feel stuck, I can actually help you because I talk about it. There's not a lot of us out there and there's not a lot of us who do have our own practice that feel comfortable maybe enough to talk about it, but hey, I don't mind. If you guys know me by now, I talk about everything, the good, the bad, the ugly, the amazing, things that people don't talk about, I talk about everything. So okay, so what you guys want to know here. So six months into my practice. So I did start my practice in November. I have learned a ton. So six months, what I'm kind of doing now that I never thought that I would do, number one is I am starting to direct bill. So if you guys have seen some of my previous videos, I talk about how I will never do that because I'm a mobile dental hygienist, meaning I don't have a van with equipment where I see people in, but I actually go to people's homes and bring all of my stuff in. All of my stuff includes my compressor unit, my patient chair, my stool to sit on, my big luggage with all of the instruments, my piezo, all of that. I have loops as well. I bring two side tables. I'm just trying to think now because I just saw a patient yesterday and that's it. I mean, yes, that's a lot, but that's also not too, too bad, right? I do take about three or four trips to the car, but it's totally worth it. Yes, it would be easier to have my own van to see people in. But my whole business model is that I make things as easy as possible for them. So I go to them the comfort of their own home. So if I'm seeing, let's just say a family of five people while I'm cleaning the mum's teeth, dad can be making dinner or dad can be helping kids with their homework. The kids can be in their rooms doing, you know, homework or taking a nap. And then I see them next for a cleaning that type of thing. Whereas if I had a van, they would have to come inside the van. I don't know. To me, a van just doesn't speak. Luxury. I mean, I'm not trying to say that my dental hygiene services are luxury because it's in their own home, but I don't know. I just liked it more to be able to go into their home. Not a lot of people offer that, plus it's a lot less expensive. I looked into it briefly for me to have a big van means that I would also have to drive that van. No, thanks. I like my little car. That's what I'm driving now, and I will probably always do that. So me driving the van, no thanks, plus it's very expensive. So again, no, thank you. But more importantly, what I've decided to do is to direct bill. And I had always said that I wasn't going to do that because well, I'm providing a service. So I have always felt that patients should be almost trained. You know, when you go to the store and, you know, go on a $300 shopping spree would be nice. You don't say at the cash. Oh, can you send this through to my insurance and I'll pay later. You don't do that when you go to the vet. You don't say, oh, can you send this through to my insurance? Nobody has insurance or at least not a lot of people when they have pets. But that's like literally five times is more expensive. But in dental, I feel that patients are just so they expect us to direct bill to insurance companies so they only pay the difference. I didn't want to do that. I'm doing it now. I didn't want to simply because that's just more paperwork for me to have to deal with. I'm the one who has to call insurance companies when they don't pay me, blah, blah, blah. You know how it is, right? But I decided to do that because I'm getting more patients. Literally a crazy amount of patients. So even if it takes me a month to get paid, I would not have had those patients otherwise. I see a lot of patients in smaller towns. So maybe that has something to do with it. But their first question is always, do you direct bill? Even if I tell them I'm happy to take payment plans, which might not be a good thing. Everybody says something different. But hey, at least I get paid, right? They will still say, well, you know what, I can't even afford a payment plan. Like if you can direct bill, that would be perfect because I just don't have the money to give up front even two weeks later. I just simply don't have it. But I want to be able to see them. And part of my mission statement is that I see people and I try to make things easier for them because I want people to have access to dental care. So I didn't like turning people away, saying, you know, yeah, you're a family of five people, you know, $150 per cleaning for an adult. Well, no, sorry, for those five people, you're going to have to pay up front. Sorry, you know, like I felt bad doing that, actually. I know that's normal, but I still felt bad doing it. So I have not been direct billing for too long. So who knows in two months, I might come back to you guys and say that this was the worst idea ever, but I'm going to give it a shot. But I'm also having some rules that go along with that, that I doubt a lot of dental offices even do. But again, I'm providing a service. I go to them. If they're not happy with it, then they can go to a dental office and pay twice as much. You know, I don't say that to them, but that's what I'm thinking. So the rules that I am going to set out is for direct billing. They have to call the insurance company themselves and they need to have a printout that says how much they are covered. If the insurance company doesn't send that, they should be able to look at their coverage online and then they will send me a picture of that. Because any patient can say they're 80% covered. They think they are, but maybe they're not. And then what I can see happening is I submit things to the insurance and then they're only 70% covered. I don't know. And then they might not want to pay me the difference. You know, sorry, it sounds like I don't have a lot of faith in people, but I've been in the dental practice for 14 years now. I see what happens. Patients don't want to pay. So that's what I have decided to do. So that is kind of rule number one where they call the insurance company if they want me to direct bill and they get that info for me. So then that way I know how much they will owe paying the difference. So I have to do a little bit of math. That's okay. But they will be paying me the difference at the time of that appointment. No exceptions. If they don't want to do that, then I'm sorry, I'm not the one for you. You can pay twice as much somewhere else. I mean, I don't think it's twice as much, but you know, you can pay more somewhere else and you will have to pay them the difference because they don't know any dental office that writes off the difference. I could be wrong, but I don't know of anybody that actually does that. So that's rule number one. Rule number two is I want them to have a credit card with me on file. So if I don't get the money by the insurance by about, I think I'm going to say 40 days. So a little more than a month just to give time. If I do not get the money from the insurance by 40 days, then I can put through their credit card for the amount that is owed to me. Because I find if the dental office doesn't get the money, it's because the insurance company paid them and the patient, oh, they never paid me, I have no idea. Or they know that insurance paid them, but they just keep forgetting to pay the dental office. So that's a way for them to be on top of it because they don't want me to take the money from their credit card. So then they will go the extra mile to call themselves. So I don't have to and say, listen, like you haven't paid my dental hygienist, she's going to take the money off of my credit card, yet you guys should be paying her. So what's the issue? Are you guys paying her? Is the check in the mail? Is it coming to me? So it just puts the onus on them. Because, hey, I'm seeing patients every single day. They just have to worry about one person themselves. So it makes sense for me and for them to just call on their behalf. That's what I'm thinking. And that seems to have worked so far. Another exception, I guess, or another rule that I do have is for me to a direct bill, I need to see two patients per appointment minimum. So me going to somebody's house to see a child, a cleaning for a child is $65. I don't mean to say it, but that's not worth my time. It's not worth me going there, lugging all of my stuff. I might be able to clean their teeth, maybe not, depending on how young they are. If I can't clean their teeth, if they're throwing a tantrum, I'm not going to do it. But then am I going to leave without making money? No, because then that time is taken up that I could have used on somebody else who would pay. So I say two people minimum for me to do that. It doesn't even matter if I'm direct billing or not. So even if they don't have insurance, I tell people that I have to work on the wording. But what I've been telling people is I come to your home with two people minimum or one adult, so not just a child. So I've been going to lots of homes where it's only one adult, and that's perfectly fine. But I won't go for just one child because $65 just isn't worth my time. And as I said, if I can't do anything, that's a waste because per appointment, at least for adults, so per cleaning is an hour long. But I tell them to set aside two hours because for a new patient, it takes a little bit longer plus take an account of me having to set everything up, which takes about 10 to 20 minutes, depending if I'm talking or not, and then to clean everything up at the end, which takes about 10 to 20 minutes and for me to bring everything from my car for me to bring everything to the car at the end, so I do set aside two hours. For a child, yes, it's a lot quicker, but sometimes you have to talk to them, you have to calm them down almost, and then they let you do things, but it might be 45 minutes later. Plus, if it's in their own home, they are a lot more comfortable too, so that has helped a lot. But that's something that I'm doing, and honestly, that has helped me huge. Literally, when I first started, I did have experts where I would probably see three people a week, which is a lot, actually. So I would go to seeing three people a week to maybe one person a week, which is still pretty good. But now, there's not enough hours in the day for me to see people. I typically see two patients a day in my own practice. That's enough for me, because it is a lot of work to love back and forth. But yeah, like two patients every single day. So I went from seeing five patients a week, max, usually, to seeing now two patients a day. So that's a big, big difference. Just because I can tell them I can't direct bill. So that has become huge. I'm not going to send claims electronically yet, because you have to get an additional software that you have to pay more. I'm just not ready for that yet. I'm totally fine to take the extra five minutes to fill out a paper claim, take the extra two minutes to put it in an envelope and pay the extra $1 or $2 for a stamp. I would rather do that than sign up for this big $5,000 software, send electronically. I'm not saying I'm not going to do that, but just not yet. Plus, I'm thinking about hiring an administrative assistant to take care of the insurance stuff for me too. And the nice thing is that when I do hire somebody, they can work from home, because why not? And it's just so much help for me, because I'm tutoring. As I said, I still work at another dental office twice a week, sometimes three times a week, and I'm seeing my own patients. So things are pretty busy. So if I can hire somebody to do that, that would actually be amazing. But I'm going to get a little bit busier first. OK, so enough about insurance. Sorry, that took a while about insurance. So I'm going to cut this video short, so it's not too long for you guys. But hopefully, you like listening to me. Anyway, so another thing is I decided to buy my own statin sterilizer right away, and that has been amazing. Yes, it did cost $10,000. Yes, things are expensive. I didn't want to buy a sterilizer from China, because who knows, right? Who knows? And if it breaks down, who do I call? China, probably not the best idea. And there's probably rules against that in our association to get something like that. I'm just assuming. Like, I didn't even look into it, because I wasn't going to do that, because the sterilizers from China are like $2,000. So $2,000, $10,000 is a big difference. The $10,000 statin just makes more sense to me. So I'm so happy that I have that. I don't even use it every single day, unless I am seeing patients every single day. But it's just so nice to have, so that I don't have to worry about going to a dental office, putting them through right away. It's just so much easier for me to do that. I love having it in my home, honestly. Other things that I've learned, you know what? Those are kind of the big ones, you guys. I talk a lot about stuff in my other videos, so have a look if you would like to hear more, and then even see my step by step. Literally, like I go through weekly, probably when I first even thought about starting the practice, to what I went through, the good, the bad, some crazy things, things that have saved me a ton of money, things that I did spend more on, but it's been a good choice. I talk about all of that in my course, Mobile RDH Academy. So I will leave that link for you guys on the bottom, but I hope you guys liked hearing about my insurance stuff. I'm pretty excited, and who knows? In two months, I might come back to you and say it was the worst idea ever, or I might come back to you and tell you that things have been amazing. I will let you know, because I still have to return some phone calls to patients, because I have had patients, at least five patients a day, calling me and saying, hey, I heard about your service. Can I book an appointment? So that's huge, right? That's huge. So thank you guys so much for listening. Have a good Tuesday. It's not so nice out there right now, but have a good Tuesday and let me know if you have any questions.