The Dental Billing Podcast
Dental billing is not data entry. It's the difference between a practice that collects what it earned and one that writes it off and calls it the cost of doing business.
The Dental Billing Podcast is hosted by Ericka Aguilar and Jen Lyman, RDH. Ericka has been a dental biller since 1998 and has taught billing in 31 states and Mexico. Jen came out of the operatory and now runs Lyman Revenue Solutions, handling both dental and medical billing. One of us knows exactly what the carrier is going to do with your claim. The other one knows what actually happened in that chair. You get both.
Every week we break down denials, appeals, coding, and the carrier behavior nobody warns you about, in plain language, with real sources. We teach the law before the codes, because a code doesn't win an appeal. Knowing what that carrier is legally required to do wins the appeal.
If you've ever been told you're "just the biller," this show is for you. Downloads in 114 countries and counting. Bring your coffee and your worst denial.
The Dental Billing Podcast
How Membership Plans Help Dentists Drop PPOs
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Insurance paperwork is eating the front office alive, reimbursements keep tightening, and expenses keep climbing, yet many practices still feel stuck on the PPO treadmill. I sit down with Jordan Comstock, founder and CEO of Boom Cloud, to talk about a strategy that gives dentists real breathing room: building an in-house patient membership program that creates recurring revenue and reduces dependence on dental insurance PPO plans over time.
Jordan shares the blunt numbers driving the pressure, then walks through what a membership plan looks like when it’s treated as a serious business asset instead of a “cute” discount sheet. We talk through a practical path many offices miss: grow the membership base first, create a financial safety net, then make payer changes with confidence. Along the way we dig into surprising case acceptance data comparing cash patients, PPO patients, and membership patients, plus why predictable collections on the first or fifteenth can change how you sleep at night.
We also get honest about why DIY membership plans often collapse under manual tracking, forgotten billing, annual churn, and lack of reporting and how automation, staff training, and incentives make the difference. Jordan explains how Boom Cloud uses integrations and data-driven pricing to speed up launch and help teams actually scale to hundreds of members, which can improve cash flow, resilience during downturns, and even practice valuation when it’s time to sell.
If you want a clearer, less stressful way to grow profitability without begging insurers to change, listen all the way through. Subscribe, share this with a practice owner who’s fed up with PPOs, and leave a quick review with your biggest question about membership plans.
Registration Link for Diagnosis Codes on a Dental Claim Form Webinar:
https://dentiqhub-diagnosis-codes.vercel.app/
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https://www.dentalbillingdoneright.com/the-dental-billing-toolkit
Download "The Most Underused Codes in Dentistry - And How to Get Them Paid" checklist here:
Schedule a billing chat with Ericka:
https://calendly.com/ericka-dentalbillingdoneright/30min
Email Ericka:
ericka@dentalbillingdoneright.com
Email Jen:
jen@dentalbillingdoneright.com
Welcome And What’s Ahead
SPEAKER_02Jordan, welcome to the dental billing podcast. I'm so happy to have you.
SPEAKER_00So happy to be here, Erica. What's up?
SPEAKER_02Oh my God. We have so much to talk about. I think your company, Boom Cloud, is something that is so needed in dentistry and ever more so in today's market. And we'll talk about that in a little bit. But before we get started, why don't you tell my audience who you are, what you would do, and all the things. And then finally, can you tell my audience what was Jordan like as a kid?
SPEAKER_01Okay. I love that question, man. Okay. So my name is Jordan Comstock, the founder and CEO of a company called Boom Cloud, a weird name. But we we're a software company that helps practices create, manage, and automate patient membership programs to help them reduce dependence on PPOs and to generate recurring revenue to give them the confidence to do so. So I I grew up in dentistry because my my mom's an office manager. My dad and my grandpa own a dental lab, which still exists today. And how I got started is I I started pouring models as a kid to help my dad at the dental lab. Wow. That was my first job. So and then
Jordan’s Dental Lab Origin Story
SPEAKER_01as I became uh you know older, I I my goal was to take over the lab and I worked there for maybe eight years. And then I realized that a lot of practices were were talking to us as lab guys about their dental insurance problems. And often they would like call me up and be like, hey Jordan, we this this patient's on a certain PPO plan, and we just ran the numbers. We're not gonna make any money on this denture case. Any anyway, you you guys can give us a discount too? So, of course, like my dad was really nice and he did that a ton. And indirectly, we became a victim of the PPO contracts.
SPEAKER_02I was just about to say I was like, so you guys indirectly became a part of the platform, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that became my biggest frustration as I operated the dental lab, especially I'm I'm here in Utah, and it seems like every dentist signs up with every PPO under the sun here, and probably every umbrella policy under the sun. The it's kind of crazy. So I got really, really frustrated running the dental lab because our margins were being squeezed because of the PPO contracts indirectly and impacting us. And like one day I read a book called The Automatic Customer, and it talked about building recurring revenue and a new business model that was kind of evolving back then. And I I was fascinated by it. And one day I went into a practice we worked with, they were like a 10 location, and I noticed they like had a membership plan. Like, hey, we just launched our membership plan. I'm like, what is this? This is new. And it like was related to my the book I read. And I asked the doctor that owned the practice, I'm like, hey, what's this? He's like, insurance, all the things bad about insurance, he would say. He's like, it's the worst thing, it's the worst product in the world. We're we're trying to change that for our patients and for our practice. It helps our patients, it gives us recurring revenue. And then I asked him, like, what are you doing to like manage that? And he brought me back to all these cubicles that in in the headquarters. He had like eight, eight or nine people managing every location, just specifically for their membership plan. And at the time I was going to school and I studied marketing and web development. I dropped out.
SPEAKER_02You were I can see my brain was going, yeah, yeah. My brain was going 100 miles an hour.
SPEAKER_01It was going 100 miles an hour. I'm like, Dr. Mayo is was his name. I'm like, Dr. Mayo, I think I can build you a whole system to manage and scale this. Would you let me do that? And he's like, Yeah, sure. And that's how Boom Cloud got born, right? Based off my frustration with insurance companies as a dental lab guy. And then just trying to collaborate with one of our clients. So that's like my background. I grew I grew up in in dentistry on the lab side, so I so I know clinical from that aspect. And then my mom, you know, worked from home as an insurance coordinator. So I heard every phone call she had with insurance companies since I was a kid, and her office was right next to my room. I believe that's caused me some childhood trauma.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_01So that's that's how I kind of got involved in dynasty. That's my little story. How I was when I was a kid, I had which is a good question. I had a rock and roll band, and I was a party animal. I my personality type is I'm a red yellow from the color code. So I don't, if you're familiar with the color code, I love to have fun and I love to win. So that's kind of how I am. But yeah, I I I loved music growing up. I still do. I have really, really nice guitars hung up on my wall downstairs, and I still have a music studio. And I actually today with today's technology, I I launched an AI hard rock band.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_01And we we had we hit six uh we're we'll we'll hit seven million streams here soon.
SPEAKER_02No way.
SPEAKER_01And I I say we, it's just it's me and an AI band, right? It's it's nobody. So it yeah, so I I did that because I I love I I I've always been a songwriter. That's been one of my uh hobbies and skills, but now I've created it into a business because it's generating royalties. So but that's that's kind of when I was a kid, I I loved business too, like I do today. But I loved having fun, so the rock band was perfect for me. Oh yeah um and I in as a kid I read every music business book there there was back then.
Music Mindset And Building Businesses
SPEAKER_01And I understood that was the first time like I understood whole business, and I was probably maybe 15, 16. So I understood how like music royalties worked at a as a 15, you know, 16 year old because I I knew I wanted to do it one day, and I didn't realize that it was gonna take until you know my my late 30s into the 40s that I would I would actually start generating music royalties from AI music whole other episodes. That's a whole other episode. And I'm uh at the same time, like I've always loved business as a kid. I tried when I was 16 or 17, I went to the bank to try and get a loan because I wanted to I wanted to start a Hawaiian restaurant here in Utah. So I I've always loved Hawaii. I own real estate in Hawaii today because it's I'm very passionate about Hawaii. And but when I was a kid, I I wanted to create a Hawaiian restaurant here in Utah because I just love the culture. I love that. I I don't know why. That's just how I want that's what that's who I am. And when you fast forward today, it's like oh, I'm just a big kid that that's still playing in Hawaii, still doing music and business shit with a kid target. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So so that's me, Erica. Now you know.
SPEAKER_02Oh I know, I know. Oh my gosh. Okay, so talk to me about Boom Cloud. Like that talk to my listeners about my listeners are frustrated dentists. They are so they are frustrated with everything insurance, and they come here looking for tips and tools that can help the practice. And would you mind sharing, Jordan, the stat that you shared in in your podcast?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I I I'm a dental geek. We're both dental geeks. So I read about the industry all the time. And uh, from a financial standpoint, I like to analyze it and say, okay, how can we help solve this with our service at Boom Cloud and with people like you, right? Like, how can we help more practices solve these problems? So, yes, the stat is over the past five years, the revenue growth in the dental industry has been kind of flat, 1.4% revenue growth in five years. So if you divide that by five, you get your growth your yearly growth rate from a top-line revenue perspective. And then you look at the expense growth rate, and it's 4.9% over those four years. So it's like a one to one to four, one to almost five ratio in revenue growth to expenses. So what what we're seeing in the dental industry is somewhat of a stagflation type economic environment, which is really not good. The the good news is every problem is figure-outable, right? It's solvable. Yeah, it's figuratable. So how I look at that is is insurance companies haven't changed. It's it's finally catching up to us, right? The the low reimbursements, the challenges that that you, Erica, see every day, and your your clients see every day. It's finally catching up to the dental industry because it's not keeping pace with with cost inflation of running a practice. And that's probably not factoring, those numbers aren't factoring in, just general inflation that we that we are experiencing as consumers. That's just the dental practice business, right? So it's like, okay, how do how do we solve that? And how do we solve that? Because this is this is a financial strategy problem, how I look at it, which is what I love to solve. And so Boom Cloud is a we're a software that helps build patient membership programs. And some of the reasons why you'd want to build a patient membership program is one, you may be frustrated with insurance and and trying to figure that out. You may want to become,
The Stagflation Problem In Dentistry
SPEAKER_01you may want to drop PPOs, which is can be really scary if you don't have a safety net or or a financial strategy around that, which is where you know my company and my technology comes in handy. Where most practice are like, okay, we want to reduce some of the b PPOs or all of them, depending on you get a variety. Most want to rip them out as soon as possible, as I'm sure you've heard that.
SPEAKER_02Oh, all the time.
SPEAKER_01But I would say if you're you're trying to optimize your your revenue by cutting some insurance programs, a patient membership program is a very powerful tool and strategy to do that. I'll give you a story around it. One of my good my good buddies, uh the dentists up in Idaho, Dr. Hill, same thing. Insurance is the worst, insurance, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Choose your story, right? That's very similar pattern you hear across every practice. We're sick of insurance. We don't believe it's it's it's helping us build the best quality of dentistry for our patient base, so we're out, right? And this is a pretty extreme example. Not everyone, everyone can't go out of network, right? Which that'd be great. But before they cut a single insurance plan, they we ensured that they built their membership program to a certain level so that they can have a safety net of financial recurring revenue, which is what a membership plan does for a practice, right? So an all-membership plan is is is is a program that you create that helps patients pay a monthly or subscription uh a monthly or yearly subscription to your practice, and they get some discounts and and bait uh savings from the the from the practice, right? It's a good a good program. So this particular practice, they got to like 200 active membership patients, which was like, I don't know, 15 grand of monthly recurring revenue. They dropped a few, they dropped a few PPOs there. Then they got to 500 active membership patients, which is double the revenue. And then today they're over a thousand active membership patients, and and they're at what fifty, sixty thousand dollars a month in recurring revenue, whether they do dentistry or not. Which at that point I've seen that once you get between like 800 and a thousand, you can drop, they drop Delta this year. And they they they did it. Yes, they did it through a financial strategy via the membership program, where most people may think, like, yeah, let's offer a membership program and give it to you know 40, 50 people, it's cute, right? But these these programs can be extremely powerful and rewarding for the practice when you take it seriously, right? And then we've seen practices, some of the multi-locations that we we manage reach multi-million dollar membership programs, where it's generating you know millions in recurring revenue, whether you do dentistry or not, it's coming in, right? And what we found is when you have a really successful membership program, you can look at the three types of patients a cash patient, you can look at a PPO patient, and then you can look at a membership patient, and you can find interesting trends within those patient types, right? So, cash patient, most practices idolize the cash cash patient. Oh, my cash patients, they're so amazing. We love them. And you should. You should, right? But when you look at the data, it hopefully should change your mindset because cash patients accept less treatment than a PPO and less treatment than a membership patient. So when we did the analysis, we we found that cash patients accepted like treatment 22% of the time. A PPO patient accepted treatment like 30-ish percent of the time, 28, 30, something like that. And then the membership patient from a case acceptance standpoint accepted treatment at like 42% of the time, on average, when you looked at it, right? Now, of course, there's gonna be people above and below in any given moment. But when you look at patient in those types of co patients in those types of cohorts, it really makes you understand that the ideal patient profile is a membership patient because they're giving you recurring revenue. Yeah, they're committing with their wallets, right? I always pull my wallet out and say they're committing with their wallets. They are committing with their wallet and they take it more seriously, right? Right. And now there's some practices that are trying to become membership only, which I I of course love that mindset. Endorse that, yeah. Yeah, I endorse it. And there's some that will that will. I've seen it. Then there's the majority that will come like really efficient hybrids, where they're in network with some PPOs,
Membership Plans As A PPO Exit Strategy
SPEAKER_01but then they still have a very strong patient membership program. Yeah. Right. So we're seeing a lot of that right come out in the industry. But the the the smartest thing that you can do if you're wanting to reduce dependence on any PPO is build that safety net up first with recurring revenue from your patient membership program, and then cut the PPO, right? In addition to that, as you grow your your your practice, your patient base, and eventually, as you, if let's say you want to sell your practice one day to a dentist or maybe do a DSO or whoever, right? Whoever's gonna give you a good amount, the practices that have patient membership programs and a healthy stream of recurring revenue, one, they sleep better at night. Two, revenue comes in typically on the first and the 15th, so they don't have cash flow problems, they have cash flow infusion that that comes in before payroll periods and big, big expenses. Yeah. And then they valuations, when you have recurring revenue in any business, it's worth more to the next buyer, right? Earlier today, I was talking a practice, uh, I was talking about practice, they're getting ready to sell. The dentist is on, I think, Delta Premier, which is not being passed to the next generation of dentists, right? That program. So you know what happened to uh this particular practice? They had a really strong revenue stream, right, from their their dental premiere and their their practice. But when the the buyer found out that that that dental premiere was not going to be get passed down to the next dentist, guess what happened? The valuation decreased. So the, yep, so the the dentist that was selling didn't get nearly as much as he was hoping for. For all those years of building with a PPO, that's what happened, right? He had to decrease his his the cost of his or the the sale price of his practice. And it's not really good for the next doctor, too, because that creates patient churn and all that stuff, where like a membership program transfers the value, the value from the from the seller to the value to the buyer, right? So it's a really good thing. Like another story is one of my good buddies from high school bought a practice, a fee for service practice. And same thing happened on on a patient churn standpoint. After the new doctors or the old doctors sold and left and he took over, he experienced a lot of patient churn. But he bought it at a higher valuation when those patients were active, right? So a membership program will help with that, those types of transitions as well, if you're thinking about it. That's the long-term benefit of a membership plan for the practice. But really, patient benefits because it's a win-win. They get savings, they get everything included in their hygiene appointments. The practice wins because they get recurring revenue and a higher case acceptance and longer valuations and a strategy to reduce dependence on PPOs if they want, right? You don't always have to do that, you know. So that's kind of how it works. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Would you say that adding a membership plan is kind of like it's another asset of the business, right? So it becomes like a living asset.
SPEAKER_01Yes, assets put money in your pocket, liabilities take money away. If you've read the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I love that book.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah. Love that book.
SPEAKER_01He talks a lot about assets and yeah, exactly. That's exactly how I look at when when a practice chooses to sign up for Boom Cloud or technology and build a membership program. I'm like, congratulations. You are building one of the best assets for your practice. You may not see that today, but when it's generating $50,000, $60,000 a month of recurring revenue or more, depending on your practice size. Whether you do dentistry or not, you can go to Hawaii and go hang out with Erica at her at her event in your next event, which will be in Hawaii, I think. That'd be really cool. You can do that, and revenue is still flowing in your practice. And one one of the biggest things I hear from practices is they say, Jordan, we what wake up on the first of every month, and we don't start at zero dollars in collections anymore. We start at $25,000, $50,000, $60,000, whatever your recurring revenue is from your membership program, because they collect it on the first of every month, sometimes the first and 15th. But they know you no longer start a month at $0 in collections, which is really challenging. When I manage the dental lab, that's how our cash flow was. Every month we started at zero and we had to work our way up to break-even to cover all the costs of all the employees, and then hopefully we did enough by the last end of the month to create a profit. Your dental practice operates the same way, and that is stressful. That is probably why you don't sleep well at night, because I know that's how I was when I operated the dental lab. So that's another huge benefit, is when you when you grow and commit to growing a patient membership program and making that an asset and business model in your practice, you eventually live a different life than the dentists that are running on too many PPO treadmills.
SPEAKER_02So I've been a partner in two practices and we infused membership in both. And now after my conversation with you, I realize we did it all wrong. I'm guessing that a lot of offices that are listening to this episode are saying, Well, I already have a membership. There's a lot of offices that try and do it on their own like we did and disabled miserably, or you know, if you would ask me previously, I would say they don't work. So talk to me about from that aspect because I'm I'm sure I mean I have a client who just implemented her own membership plan and it's just a little document that they put together, and you know, they're like, oh, you get 40% off your UCR fee, and you know, you just pay $350 for the year.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_02So that's not generating the monthly income the way I would want it to. So talk to me about those offices and what the transition looks like.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that that is an excellent question. Yeah, the the biggest problem there is if you're managing it manually, system scale manual things don't, right? So that's where you like where I see when practices are struggling. To grow it. Like typically when they come to us and they're managing the membership program on their own manually, they they don't have a lot of members, right? So I've only seen a very small handful that do, and I'm shocked, but they're in a lot of pain. Meaning they're like, this is a nightmare to manage.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01Like, cool. Well, the the the purpose of this
Case Acceptance Data And Practice Value
SPEAKER_01is not to be another PPO plan where you know where you're you have all this administrative work. That's typically what happens when you manage it on their own. It becomes a problem and and a nuisance because what happens typically if they're doing like a 350 a year, patients churn out, especially with the yearly plans, more than the monthly plans, and they forget to bill, they show up, they come in for free cleanings and get free work done because the the proc the practice typically forgot to bill it, or it uh there's a lot of issues there when we what we see when it when it gets a little bit bigger, right? But then it just becomes another headache when the the purpose of these types of programs is is it's a volume strategy. You need hundreds to thousands of patients to make this a safety net for your practice, whether you're just trying to stabilize cash flow or you're trying to reduce dependence on PPOs, whatever your goal is, you need hundreds of thousands to make this work, right? And then the biggest thing is the tracking, like they may track that, you know, manually, but the the revenue tracking, the doctor doesn't know what's going on. How much revenue did our patient membership program generate? We don't, we don't really know, but we have a hundred members on it, but we don't know what it's yielded us. That's that's another thing I see when they come to us and they're managing it manually. They just simply don't know. But big the biggest thing I would say is they're not automating their subscriptions and it's it's becoming an admin headache. And that's not what this should be. This should be a very enjoyable, fun process.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's kind of what Boom Cloud has solved over the years is we make it really fun. A cool thing that we're doing, Erica, for all of our practices that are on Boom Cloud that are, you know, managing their membership plans, because it's still your membership plan. It's not mine. It's just you're using my tool, my system, right? But and and we we like to have fun. Because back to rewind back the clock of what Eric Erica said, how is Jordan when he was a kid? I like to have fun. So right now, like our our our customers log in to Boom Cloud, our office managers, and they they there's a there's a little banner in the app right now that says if you sign up a hundred members in in this next quarter, you're gonna get put in in a in a in a raffle, and I'm gonna send you to my uh my Hawaii condo.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. You enter me into that raffle.
SPEAKER_01So that's what we're doing for all of our customers because we like to have fun and we do things like that to make the program to incentivize because a lot of practice owners don't really incentivize their their team members as good as they should be. I know there's some our top customers do that really well. That's a and inside Boom Cloud, we have like a a rewards management system where you can like set up a point system or a bonus system for your team members to if they grow your membership program and sign up a certain amount of patients, they can get points to do to earn something in your office, or you can reward them through bonuses. So that's that's one thing that we help a lot with. But I love creating incentives, and that's like the the the Hawaii program. And we do like gift cards and things like that to just to help mode help our practices with an incentive plan. So there's a lot of benefit using a technology because one, the the simple thing is we we automate it, we help it be just super seamless. You know, we can integrate in the practice management system, we integrate into the website so patients can sign up online, and we have thepatientmarketplace.com. It's a listing website that we built that is attracting patients that are searching for, like, hey, I don't have insurance, how do I get a crown? Stuff like that. There's millions of patients a month searching for this. So we built thepatientmarketplace.com and we connect it to all of our Boom Cloud users that have active plans. So when they type in a patient types in their zip code, we route them to our our practices. So that's another that's another reason why like you you want to use a system like Boom Cloud is because there's a lot of power in our our group of practices that are doing this. And when we do that, because us as a software product, we're we're working as as a collective, right? It's not just software. We're we are all working as a collective to make Boom Cloud better and our system better. And it benefits everyone as a group, right? That's what's so cool about using it, using Boom Cloud, and at least how I look at software in the practice. It's like this is a collective group of practices that we all believe in building membership plans through a system. And when we do that, we learn, I learn, and I talk to our our our customers, and we continue to improve our system and make it fun while we're doing it, right? Go to Hawaii when you sign up a hundred members, your membership plan.
SPEAKER_02Here's a fun fact that I don't think you you you know, but you'll probably search your database. The I had a practice that I was partnering probably back in 2021, 2022. And I believe
Why DIY Membership Plans Break Down
SPEAKER_02I spoke to you because I was so fed up with our internal membership. It was frustrating that I just remember hearing about it uh somewhere. I don't remember.
SPEAKER_01Probably on a podcast just like this, yeah.
SPEAKER_02A couple of uh phone calls scheduled, and again, I was running the practice and I was just able to make those calls. But I have a personal experience in that where I was sick and tired of our internal membership plan. It wasn't we were giving away cleanings and I was like, we have to fix this. And at that time, I think I just pulled it. I was like, I'm done. We're not offering it anymore. Yeah, sure. Memberships, you know, like I was just over it. But after learning about Boom Cloud, I really wanted to infuse it. And then shortly after that, that mem that partnership dissolved. So but I personally have an experience like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's awesome. I'll have to go look and see if I can find if we had uh notes and stuff of a conversation. That's so funny.
SPEAKER_02Jordan, when an office starts a membership plan, right? So they sign up for Boom Boom Cloud. What makes or breaks a successful implementation? Because I'm sure experience with both.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we've seen this a lot. I mean, this is my 10th year running Boom Cloud, so we we see a lot of the same issues and we have we have evolved like how we solve it along the way. The biggest thing is like a dentist that signs up with us and then doesn't tell his staff, and then they're like, wait, what's going on? Right. So like just a basic leadership problem, right, is is what we see a lot, which is hard to solve, right, from our standpoint, other than, hey, does your office manager know you're on this? Like, let's have a meeting. Our our sales team does that a lot now.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And our customer success team will ask, who's your key champion? Let's get them educated.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01That's like one issue. The big issue is practices are really busy because there's too much insurance admin work going on, right? As you know. So the the biggest you is finding time, but we we've made it really simple. Like we have a very basic checklist of things that they have to do, right? Like we now use AI to help design a plan based off of the household income in your zip code and the population density in your zip code. And over like over the years, I've created a formula that helps us give a systematic approach to pricing your membership plan based off of your zip code and your demographics. So we built an AI algorithm that once you once you create a Boom Cloud account, you enter your your zip code in, and the software will automatically go and and analyze and build the plan for you. So it used to be it took forever to build a plan. Yeah. Now it takes seconds because we are using data versus gut. And that was the biggest problem that I had in the early days is we were all using gut when we designed plans, even myself when I when I started the company. Uh but today we use data. So that's one thing we we have made easy in our checklist. And then, like, the rest is pretty pretty basic. We integrate into your practice management, pull all your uninsured patients. Some practices want to pull their PPO patients that they're targeting on dropping and seeing if they can convert some of those patients over to memberships. We uh we integrate into the website. So, and my team all helps with all this stuff now, right? And they they do that really well. And then the biggest thing is so plans, getting trained on the software, and we've kept it really simple and simple to uh to manage. And then really the biggest thing is after all those like technical checklist details, it's really getting the office comfortable talking about it, like verbiage tips. We have some trainings that they do and that my team gives and then a lot of resources on how to talk about it, how to present it, how to set up the pay the patient journey around it inside of your office. Like we we help all with that. That's the biggest thing. And if they don't do that, they struggle. And then the last thing is if they don't reward their team members somehow for helping grow it, they they struggle growing it. And and that's like when I look at our top practices, they have a rewards program, whether it be points, like I said, or like a bonus program. Reward your team because they're helping you build an asset that can be amazing, right? So that's that's kind of the the basics of of like getting it set up. And then like we recently had a practice. Where are they at? I don't remember where they're at. But my one of my CSMs keeps telling me about them because I'm highly interested in this particular one. Kind of like you, she was managing a manual membership program, was so sick and tired, but but she believed that it could really benefit the patients and the practice. And they had got it up to like before they called us, it was like maybe a little over a hundred. And today they they've launched, relaunched after year a couple years of like kind of like you. We just threw it away because it was just so much. They relaunched and now they're signing up like 40, 50 patients a month.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_01So at that rate, they'll be in like if we because when you look at this strategy, you should probably commit to this for two years. Yeah. And after that, like if let's just put up 40,
What Makes Implementation Actually Work
SPEAKER_0140 patients a month, that's 480 a year. So do that for two years, and that's 960, you can drop Delta Dental. If if you're confident with a financial safety net, is what I say around it. So because the average patient is paying 45 bucks a month, roughly. So that's about $43,000 in monthly recurring revenue for the practice. Whether they do dentistry or not, you can keep your PPO plans or not, right? And that just gives you it gives you optionality when you have that type of revenue stream to say, do I really want to keep doing this PPO thing? Or should I drop, you know, some PPOs and and see how it goes and keep converting them to membership patients? So that's kind of how I look at it. So it's like commit to like two years of growing it because it does take typically takes that time, but then mentally say, okay, this there are case studies out here that that that have grown amazing membership plans and they're normal practices. They're they're not doing anything crazy. They're not freak practices, they're pretty average practices, they're just passionate about getting away from PPOs. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02That's strategy. And I think one of the things you keep saying that like really stands out to me is like whether you do dentistry or not.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. That's the the cause not because the fear is that, well, I'm gonna sign up uh, you know, a thousand members, they're all gonna want crowns today. It's like doc, that's not gonna happen. It will never happen that way. And you the the the the the math is this not everyone uses their PPO plan too. Like it's it's the same concept.
SPEAKER_02So true. Well, yeah, I mean, and just a fun stat that I like to share with everyone is that the it's not the insurance companies that haven't raised the maximums because they're trying to to punish us. It's the fact that I think it was like six percent of people with PPO benefits hardly ever use their benefits or something like that.
SPEAKER_017% use the max, like the $1,500 to $2,000. Only about 7% of the United States uses ma the max amount.
SPEAKER_02And and that's exactly that that data is telling the insurance companies that they don't need to raise the maximums.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. The insurance companies are looking at that, they're like, oh, we're doing really well for the for the for Americans, right? But it's like it's kind of funky, you know. So yeah, uh, that's the same thing that's gonna happen I mean, the the good news is you want patients to say to come in and and utilize the membership plan because they s say yes more to treatment. They they say two to four times more, they say yes than a PPO or cash patient. Yeah, and cash patients are the worst, yeah, to say yes.
SPEAKER_02That's an interesting stat.
SPEAKER_01Jordan It's very interesting, and it's kind of alarming because it's like you get these practice, like we had a practice call in today, and they're like, I don't want to offer this to my cash patients. And I'm like, the cash patients aren't generating recurring revenue for you right now. So what happens if another COVID recession hits or whatever? Because that was a big deal in COVID. Our our practices with healthy membership plans were really thriving because that cash flow is coming in, whether they did dentistry or not, whether the government forces you or whether you go on Hawaii, you know, it's like choose choose choose the business model that that supports your practice, whether you're in a good or bad economy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it is absolutely just a no-brainer to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I could talk to you about all the things we're just dental geeks, yeah. Speak out on everything every time we talk. This happens. Like it's we carry on and on and on.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So, Jordan, where can uh my listeners find you? I know you have the navigating dental insurance podcast.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Which I have to get with us there.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02The automatic patient podcast, front office formula podcast.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02You're all you're everywhere.
SPEAKER_01We do a lot of podcasts. Yeah, I'm not on, I'm on, yeah, I do navigating dental insurance the most and then automatic patient. I do that with our top customers. And then the front office formula is our our customer success team. They they bring on our successful office managers and they highlight them and they interview them on what works, right? Because the office managers need to be highlighted because they're they're and the team behind it, right? Where that's kind of why we've we've created the the three types of podcasts. But
Where To Find Jordan And Get Started
SPEAKER_01yeah, you can you can hang out with me on podcasts all the time or go to boom cloud apps.com. You could either schedule a demo to see how Boom Cloud works, or you can start for free. We do a 30-day free trial, which I recommend my because my team will actually look at your practice, set up your plan, and help you try to get your first member or two, and then, you know, and then before we even bill you. So that's kind of how I think I want to we want to provide value first before we start charging people. So that's I recommend starting a free trial and getting my team, my coaches on my team will will schedule a call with you and and help you get set up. So it's pretty easy.
SPEAKER_02I can share if you want to share the link to schedule a demo or schedule a call with you. I can share that in the show notes as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. You can and then everything's just going to boom cloud apps.com and there's you can there's a schedule, or you can sign up for our software right from the website. We make it really easy.
SPEAKER_02That is easy. Okay.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_02Well, Jordan, thank you so much for being on the dental billing podcast. It's a pleasure, and I'm sure you'll be back.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Thanks, Erica.
SPEAKER_02Bye, everyone.
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