The Dental Billing Podcast

Final Episode + Lessons From Thousands of Billing Conversations

• Ericka Aguilar • Season 12 • Episode 3

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Pivotal moments often arrive unexpectedly. After years of helping dental practices decode insurance denials and maximize reimbursements, I've made a significant discovery that's reshaping our journey together. What began as technical discussions about coding and claims consistently opened doors to far deeper conversations about practice culture, team alignment, and leadership challenges.

The highest-performing billing departments I've encountered share one critical element that transcends technical knowledge—they operate within practices where leadership is strong, vision is shared, and team members pull in the same direction. When I stepped into offices to address billing issues, I frequently uncovered symptoms of deeper organizational challenges: fear-based decision-making, reactive management, artificial harmony, and teams trapped in survival mode. These cultural issues were directly impacting financial performance.

That's why this finale of the Dental Billing Podcast marks not an ending but an evolution. While billing expertise remains my foundation and passion, our new "Practice and Purpose" podcast will embrace the whole picture of practice success. We'll explore leadership development, navigating difficult conversations, building high-performing teams, and aligning your practice with your deeper purpose—all while continuing to sprinkle in the billing wisdom you've come to expect.

To my loyal listeners who've shared stories of successfully challenging insurance companies, securing deserved raises, and transforming billing departments: thank you for making this platform sacred. This shift honors the truth of what you've been teaching me all along—that our conversations were always about more than just billing. They were about becoming the leader your practice needs and creating a culture where your team and your purpose can thrive. Join me next week as we begin this expanded journey together, right here in your podcast feed.

Want to learn Dental Coding and Billing? Join here:

https://tr.ee/efzYrY7mp-

Would you like to set-up a billing consultation with Ericka? She would love the opportunity to discuss your billing questions and see how Fortune Billing Solutions may help you.

Email Ericka:
ericka@dentalbillingdoneright.com

Schedule a call with Ericka:

https://calendly.com/ericka-dentalbillingdoneright/30min


Perio performance formula:

(D4341+D4342+D4346+D4355+D4910)/(D4341+D4342+D4346+D4355+D4910+D1110)





Speaker 1:

Hey friends, welcome back to the final episode of the Dental Billing Podcast. I'm your host, erika Aguilar. This has been tugging at my heart for some time now. This podcast started as a was to help you decode denials and fight back against insurance companies utilizing the power of the insurance commissioner, and really just to bring clarity around billing and really just to bring clarity around billing. But what I realized along the way is that in the conversations I have been having with you, the listeners, dentists, with office managers, billers were never just about billing. They were about fear, about burnout, about leadership, about not feeling seen and why a team isn't gelling. Why is my team not pulling in the same direction? The conversation would open up with what code could I use for this procedure? But the reality is that conversation would shift into well, if I implement this code, I'm not sure that my hygienist is going to agree with using this code, especially if the patient is going to have a copayment. So those types of conversations were much larger than just a billing conversation. Billing was the entry point, but the real work that needed to happen lived deeper in that conversation. We ended up having deeper conversations around culture, around mindset, in the way that the team is being led and in what you, as the practice owner or the office manager, believe is possible for your practice and for your life. So, yes, this is the final episode of the Dental Billing Podcast, but this is not the end. This is just the beginning of our next journey together.

Speaker 1:

I am, and always will be, a dental billing expert. That part of me will never change because it's my foundation. But along my journey I've worn many hats. I've owned multiple businesses. I have trained large teams on the cohesiveness needed to create a smooth billing system. I've been inside multi-location practices helping them bring their billing back in-house with clarity and confidence, because they thought outsourcing it was going to bring them that clarity and it caused chaos. I've taught thousands of individuals how to master dental coding and billing. I've seen what works and, more importantly, I've seen what breaks. And here's what I know for sure the highest performing billing departments all have one thing in common it's not just knowledge. They have the checklist, they have the right software. So high-performing teams have strong leadership. They have a team that is pulling in the same direction. They have clarity and they share the same vision, and that's what this shift is all about.

Speaker 1:

While we are going to make this a billing-ish podcast. We are also going to start talking about culture. The journey started with claims and it started with unpaid AR and write-offs that didn't make sense and fighting insurance denials and getting doctors paid for the work that they've done hiding insurance denials and getting doctors paid for the work that they've done. But what I've learned along the way is that if we don't have culture, if we don't, well, you have culture. You either have a good culture or you have a bad culture. So if we don't have good culture, or if we have artificial harmony that has seeped into our culture, that is now affecting your productivity, that is now affecting your ability to maximize on insurance reimbursement because you have team members who aren't feeling it. They just show up for a paycheck. This all boils down to culture, and if we don't know how to nurture our culture, we are not going to experience growth spurts. We're not going to experience what it feels like to really teach insurance companies how to treat our practice. Insurance companies are profiting off of our confusion. End point, blank, stop point. However you want to put that Period, I turned my fire for billing into a billing company and from there I built this podcast and it was about making sure that our doctors weren't working for free and about systemizing the mess and giving our billers a seat at the table. I created Dental Billers Appreciation Day. It's a national day that we can celebrate our dental billers and make them feel special July 20th of every year.

Speaker 1:

I'm recording this. On 4th of July, it is 12 o'clock in the afternoon. I'm getting ready to head out to hang out with family and friends and I really needed to just get this episode out there so that I can share this new chapter of the show. So we are going from talking about claims and insurance games and compliance and we have talked deeply about coding. We've talked about posting systems, denials, audits. We've talked about all of it and over the years this show became something I never expected. It became a whole movement.

Speaker 1:

I was getting emails from doctors finally feeling like they understood where the holes were in their revenue cycle and understanding how to patch those holes. I've had office managers say, since I've been listening to your podcast, I have increased our UCR fees. I have started the negotiation process, I used the power of the insurance commissioner and the claims that used to get denied are no longer getting denied. I've told them that I'm not going to give them additional information because they have what they need to pay the claim. And if they don't pay it, I'm going to go to the insurance commissioner. And if they don't pay it, I'm going to go to the insurance commissioner. I've had all of those conversations and they've all just filled my heart with joy, knowing that I'm sharing knowledge that all of you can use in your career. I had billers telling me that they finally got the raise they deserve, because they gained confidence through this podcast to ask for the raise with the confidence they never felt that they would have.

Speaker 1:

While all of this was happening, something else started to stir inside of me, because every time I came in to fix a billing issue, it led to something deeper. The real issue, friends, was not billing, it was culture, it was leadership gaps, it was fear-based decision-making. Sometimes really bad decisions were being made out of lack of knowledge, out of lack of what to do next. It was doctors who didn't know how to lead and office managers who were reactive because they were never taught how to be proactive. Ultimately, it was about teams stuck in survival mode, and I can't ignore that anymore. Here's what most people don't know about me Billing is my zone of genius, but my real superpower is alignment culture, getting teams into high performance, purpose, mindset and legacy. I started out helping offices collect more and now I wanna help offices be more. I'm not just here to get you paid, I'm here to help you live with your purpose.

Speaker 1:

Though this new shift and new podcast show is going to continue to evolve around billing, we are going to continue to sprinkle billing into the episodes. We are going to continue to sprinkle billing into the episodes. However, this new show launching next week is called Practice and Purpose with Yours. Truly, it's about leadership. It's about high-performing teams. It's about navigating difficult conversations, mindset shifts and about managing people without losing your peace. It's about scaling without chaos and aligning your life, your team and your business. This shift, my friends, is for you, to my loyal listeners. You made it possible, you made this platform sacred and I want to thank you deeply.

Speaker 1:

I also want to give a few special shout outs to people who have been instrumental in this decision, which is a huge decision for me to shift away from just talking about billing because I am a dental billing coach, and for those of you wondering if you can still reach out to me about billing 100%, please do. Billing will always be my foundation and my passion, but we are going to expand on just billing because, as I mentioned earlier, these billing conversations are more than just billing. They are really just a symptom of something bigger going on within the practice and I believe that if we can gain cohesiveness, if we can get the team through the four stages of performance that a team goes through and, as a manager, if you master this process and you are able to recognize when your team is in a storming phase and how to get them out of storming into performing, you can master management. That is why we created this podcast, because our conversations are deeper than billing. There are more layers to that conversation. Back to the shout outs.

Speaker 1:

The first person I want to recognize for helping me to make this shift is Jennifer Lyman. Jen has been on our podcast many times talking about how hygiene applies to billing and billing applies to hygiene. She has had a very powerful presence in the dental billing podcast community. Jen, I love how you always keep it real and you have been a mentor to me through our collaborations and I love how you just keep it simple and you are always trying to do the right thing. I love that about you.

Speaker 1:

To my good friend, manny, and mastermind, sister Manny, your vision and your boldness are so unwavering to me. You were the mirror I needed when I doubted myself about this shift that I was about to make. So thank you for reminding me who I am. To Jasmine Star you have given me the push I didn't even know I needed. You challenged me to pivot, to own the next level and, more importantly, this was the big one for me. You challenged me to stop hiding behind what's familiar and to step into what is necessary. I will never forget our conversation. You saw the purpose in me before I was ready to speak it out loud. To Kelly Roach, my business coach and mentor your faith-forward business leadership model has completely reshaped how I move. Thank you for showing me how to operate with integrity, boldness and grace. Thank you for reminding me to put God first. Thank you for reminding me to put God first. This podcast shift is grounded in faith because of what you modeled. Thank you for that, kelly, and to you, the one listening in your car maybe some of you are on a walk during your lunch break or you're just sitting there doing some billing.

Speaker 1:

This show has always been for you, but now it's about the whole you, not just the billing part. You deserve to run your practice with clarity. You deserve a team that has your back. You deserve to lead with purpose and, most importantly, you deserve a culture that feels life-giving. We're going to take all the billing lessons, the newfound courage and the voice that we found here and we're going to expand it. To expand it, practice and Purpose is not going to be just another podcast. It's going to be a whole new movement, y'all, and I'm inviting you to it. So, yes, this is the last episode of the Dental Billing Podcast, but it's not the end. It's the upgrade. You don't have to go search for practice and purpose. Starting next week, you will come back to this show and it will have a new name and a new look and we will start our journey then. This is not goodbye. This is your permission slip to step into the leader you were born to be. Let's go.

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Ericka Aguilar

Host