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.
Episodes
124 episodes
Protocol Vs Standard Of Care In Dental X Rays with Jen Lyman, RDH
Someone on the internet said it’s “no longer protocol” to take x-rays at recall, and that one word is where the real danger starts. Radiographs are not a habit we do on a timer. They’re part of a provider’s standard of care, and that standard o...
Ericka Aguilar Gets Interviewed (Finally)
A lot of dental billing advice online is loud, confident, and wrong and the cost shows up months later as denials, write-offs, and clawbacks. So we flipped the mic and let you meet Erica, the person behind years of dental billing education, rev...
Credentialing Do's and Don'ts with Jen Lyman - RDH
The fastest way to break a dental billing system is to assume the hard part starts after treatment. We sit down with Jen Lyman, now officially my co-host, and get honest about what really determines whether your dentistry turns into clean reimb...
How Membership Plans Help Dentists Drop PPOs
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 ...
27,837 Denials. Zero Appeals, make this make sense!
Delta Dental’s logo is everywhere in dentistry, but the numbers most practices never see are sitting in plain sight in a federal CMS dataset. We walk through the CMS Transparency in Coverage Public Use File and focus on the rarely opened tab fo...
What If We Called the Denial What it Really is: A Business Model Designed to Delay Payment
Less than 1% of denials get appealed in the real world, yet regulators have found appeal reversal rates that should stop every dental office in its tracks. We pull apart what that contradiction tells us: denials are not just “one-off mistakes,”...
Adjustment Slop: The Money Leak Nobody's Looking At
A huge amount of dental practice revenue doesn’t disappear because patients refuse to pay or because insurance “just won’t cover it.” It disappears because someone clicks an adjustment code and the money evaporates without a clear name, a writt...
Built to Get Paid Series - Part 6 - Denial Management & Escalation that Works
Less than 1% of denied dental claims ever get appealed and insurance companies are counting on you to be in the other 99%. I walk you through the denial management mindset shift that changes everything: stop treating the third appeal like the e...
Dental Billers Appreciation Day
Dental billing can look smooth from the outside, but that “smooth” is usually one person doing a mountain of detailed, high-stakes work behind the scenes. We’re sharing a quick, focused message about Dental Billers Appreciation Day and why it m...
Built to Get Paid Series - Part 5 of 6 - The 3 Metrics That Never Lie
Your insurance AR report is trying to tell you the truth, but most of us only glance at the total and walk away with more anxiety than clarity. I’m Erica Aguilar, and I’m breaking down how to read the story behind the numbers so you can tell, w...
Built to Get Paid Series - Bonus Episode -Documenting the Journey So You Don't Make the Same Mistakes
I want to share something with you this week that I don't usually talk about.For years, Jen and I carried an idea we couldn't shake. We knew dental billing better than almost anyone, and we kept saying the same thing to each other. Someb...
Built to Get Paid Series - Part 4 of 6 -The Dental Billing Command Center
Twenty browser tabs. Constant timeouts. Portals that never match your workflow. If you’ve ever felt like dental billing is less about skill and more about surviving fragmentation, we’re saying the quiet part out loud and giving you a clearer pa...
Built to Get Paid Series - Bonus Episode - Why Production Doesn't Always Become Collections -
A claim can be created in seconds, but a defensible claim takes verification and that difference can make or break your reimbursement. We start with a tough question: if a dental claim is a legal document, why are so many practices submitting c...
Built to Get Paid Series - The Workflow Engine (Part 3 of 6)
You can have hardworking people and still have a billing department that feels like a black box. Claims get submitted, denials appear, balances age, and everyone assumes follow up is happening, but nobody can point to where the work actually st...
Built to Get Paid Series - The Foundation (Part One)
Your billing should not feel like a surprise every month. When collections swing up and down, it’s rarely because “insurance is just hard” it’s usually because the foundation was never built correctly. I walk through the core projects I use to ...
Built to Get Paid: Introduction to The 6-Part Billing Framework Series
If your practice feels slammed but collections still don’t line up with production, that’s not “just insurance.” That’s a billing system problem, and it’s fixable. We walk through the exact framework we’ve used to help hundreds of dental office...
Denti-Cal Decoded: The Mistakes Costing You Time and Money
Prop 56 is on the way out, and if your practice depends on Denti-Cal reimbursements, the impact won’t be theoretical. I’m joined by Adriana, a seasoned dental billing pro who’s built her reputation on getting Denti-Cal approvals by mastering wh...
Medical Billing For Wisdom Teeth - with Jennifer Lyman RDH
Your medical insurance may be able to cover wisdom teeth extractions, and the reason most people never find out is painfully simple: nobody asks the right way. We sit down with Jen from Hygiene Unlocked and unpack a real, recent moment where a ...
90% of Patient Ledgers Are Wrong - Here's Why.
What if the number on your AR report is giving you false comfort and your patient ledgers are quietly wrong? We dig into a hard truth from dental billing and revenue cycle management: most practices have never audited their ledgers line by line...
How I’d Train a Brand New Dental Biller in 2026
Hiring someone with no dental experience can feel like a gamble, but it doesn’t have to. I walk through the same onboarding system I’ve used for years to turn true beginners into capable, confident front office team members without wrecking you...
How Dental Insurance AR Gets “Cleaned” Without Getting Collected
Your insurance AR report can look perfect while your practice quietly bleeds money. I’m Erica Aguilar, and I’m pulling back the curtain on the uncomfortable truth: “clean” dental insurance accounts receivable can be manufactured, and the pretti...
How Smart Dental Billing Boosts EBITDA And Practice Health
Profit doesn’t come from working harder or cramming more patients into the schedule. Real profit comes from running your billing department like a business within a business—and using it to lift EBITDA, create predictable cash flow, and make sm...
Worst Billing Case of 2025 - Part III - Harmful Habits that Feel Harmless with Jennifer Lyman RDH
A weekend meetup in Phoenix turned into a deep dive on the “harmless” shortcuts that quietly drain dental practices and invite compliance trouble. We compare notes from a brutal 2025 billing case, unpack the defensiveness that often surfaces wh...
Worst Billing Case of 2025 - Part II - End of Day Checklist
We show how chart prep sets expectations and end of day confirms reality, so money stops leaking and compliance issues get fixed the same day. A practical checklist, time blocking, and coaching turn chaos into a repeatable close that protects r...
