Innovation in Patient Financing: What Dental Leaders Need to Know

Dentist Entrepreneur Organization

Emmet Scott, CEO of Community Dental Partners, Jay Letwat, VP of Dental Sunbit, Andrew Sipes, VP of Marquee Dental Partners, Kevin Behjat, CEO/Owner of Sahara Dental Group Las Vegas, discussed solutions to reduce patients’ stress around paying for dental care and how a modern approach can better serve patients.

In this Webinar you will learn:

– Dental leaders’ tips to overcome cost objections and get more patients to “yes.”

– The current patient financing landscape and recent innovations to determine which may be most beneficial for their practices.

– Discover how Sunbit can grow your practice financing revenue by 25X and lift patient approvals by 100% or more

The full webinar transcript is below.

Emmet Scott:

Welcome, everyone. In today’s world, I think using the word unprecedented doesn’t work anymore because now we’re just using it all the time. Anyway, a little computer issue, but excited to be with you all and excited to be here with our guests. So, I’m going to start off by just giving you top level titles, and bios, but I really want to get into the meat of things quickly. So, first we have Jay Letwat, the vice president of Dental at Sunbit, and Jay oversees the adoption of Sunbit’s buy now, pay later technology in the dental vertical, and I’m excited to dig in on that, especially in today’s environment. So, we’re going to talk a lot about that, and we’ve got two individuals who are running groups, DSOs. First is Kevin Bejhat, CEO and owner of Sahara Dental Group in Las Vegas.

Man, I’m from Henderson. I should be able to say Sahara, and Kevin and his wife have owned and operated six dental practices in Las Vegas and currently own more than nine operatories, dental practices that employ 30 people, including six dentists. So talking about big groups, excited to discuss that, Andrew Sipes, who’s senior vice president of Marquee Dental Partners, and Andrew is VP of operations at Marquee Dental Partners, a 60 plus unit DSO headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.

So, thank you all for being on here. Speaking of unprecedented times, we are now trying to be as creative as possible to deal with inflation, and apparently, as of today, we are also in a recession. If you count recessions as having two down quarters, if you count recessions as having a slow job market, then it’s a recession. So, that’s what we as business owners are trying to deal with. I don’t know if you saw Apple’s gross profits down, but their sales are up. So, they’re trying to figure out that and so forth. So with that being said, I’d love to start off just talking through financing solutions, and how is that going to solve what we’re all dealing with today, and what are you all seeing in that? So Jay, maybe starting off with you, what got you into Sunbit and what problem would you say Sunbit is trying to solve in the marketplace?

Jay Letwat:

Sure, thank you for having me, Emmet. You do great work with DEO obviously and just happy to be here. In terms of why I got into Sunbit, I’ve been at Sunbit almost from day one, about five and a half years. The story that was told to me by the CEO and another founder was really a disruption story, and I think from grade school I like to disrupt things, probably not ideal in some certain circumstances in the classroom, but the idea is that it was a company that I felt that would challenge the norms of patient financing. So, that was a big reason why I joined, plus the technology proved that we had or we currently have as well is pretty stellar. So, that’s really the reason why I joined, but I think what we’re trying to do, I think at a high level when you break it down, is we are trying to serve as many patients as humanly possible.

And I say that and I’m making a bold statement, we want to serve 5 million patients over the next three years, and historically patient financing, there hasn’t been any innovation and I’d I’d love to get obviously Andrew and Kevin’s take on this as well, but basically what you see in the market are recycled solutions from 30 years ago that are basically the same thing what you see today. One of our co-founders walks around, literally everywhere he goes, with a paper credit card application, and if you look at the questions on that credit card application, are you married versus single? What’s your income? Do you rent versus own? This is an application from like 1968. I am not joking. These are the exact same questions that are being asked even today. So, what we want to do is streamline the process of use technology in machine learning to approve a lot more people in a way in which is not done today because banks are banks and they’re not really in the business of helping the average person, and that’s really what we’re trying to do as a company.

Emmet Scott:

So Kevin, let’s start with you. What got you interested in trying to solve the financing solution? Because I think that’s the first mindset is sometimes I’ve talked to dentists in groups and they just weren’t even trying to solve it. It’s like, “Well, I’ve got X solution and if they can’t qualify for that then, oh well, and then we move on.” But obviously you’re trying to be a little more creative than that, so I’m curious. Your thoughts?

Kevin Bejhat:

Sure, if you ask any front office person, they’ll tell you the biggest hurdle is financing, but leaving that aside, going back a few years, we’ve hired different coaches over the years and the obvious things they used to ask the patient was, if financing wasn’t a problem, would you go for this treatment? I’m sure you’ve heard this. So, obviously this was a hurdle that we needed to overcome, and we looked at different options. In fact, I think about two years ago we interviewed probably six or seven different companies and looked at what they were offering, both to us as providers and to the consumers, and narrowed it down to a couple of providers, and obviously Sunbit is one where we had a lot of good success.

The other thing that I think is important or certainly for our business was important was you guys as DEO, what you teach is better systemization because for a business to be productive, efficient, profitable, scalable, and durable, it must be systems driven rather than people driven. And, the systems that Sunbit in particular have in place make life very, very easy for us to do this, where a lot of the objection that you would get from the patient are dealt with before they even actually come into the office. So, that was what was attractive to us, and that’s why-

Emmet Scott:

You mentioned a couple things on statistics. I’ll just throw them out there, and I know we repeat these a lot, but over half of individuals in America don’t get dental care on a consistent basis. So, we’re saying that we could double the entire industry if we could figure that out. The other piece is that ADA has looked and said, “Number one constraint is cost.” Now, I always argue that cost is really relative to the perceived value. So, we could say that part of the problem is we’re doing a bad job on value creation, but we’d also say that cost is now perceived as monthly cost, not total cost. When I think about buying a big purchase, which I would put dental and frankly an iPhone into that, we’re all asking ourselves, “Well, what’s the monthly amount? What can I roll this into?”

We’re not really saying, “I want to buy an iPhone for $1,500.” We’re saying it’s $39.99 a month. So, that’s where our mindset is, and there’s definitely been a disconnect. So, I think sometimes people run out when they hear cost is a problem. How do I lower my fees? But, I think what we really need to do is, how do we make this consumable to the consumer? So, that’s a lot of what… Now, Andrew, you’ve started to look into this and to measure it even, but I’m curious, and so we’ll get to that. You’re measuring the results of not using it, using it, which I think everybody would be interested in, but what was your desire to say, I want to get this problem solved? You’ve got 60 plus locations, there’s a lot of problems to solve. Why this one?

Andrew Sipes:

Absolutely. Well, fundamentally the dentists are in the business of treating patients. So, if we all identify as business people in any problem, we sit around and go, “We’re not getting the desired result, why?” Well, once we identify that that’s the reason, number one reason is financial related, well then it would behoove us to have to go out and try to solve that with a vengeance. And so, this was as a demand coming from our dentists and by being an organization as we are where we are dentist-led or we’re patient-centric, by not following in their request, would’ve led us down at path of hypocritical nature.

So instead, we drive it head on and we started to research and to educate the different ways that you can go about solving the financial problem, and we evaluated four different models. The third-party waterfall, making our own in-house waterfall, an in-house financing option or subscription option, that’s a capitation model, or finally one lender that could branch out and can go cover the spectrum of the patients that walk into our office. And so, we came at it from a need first, and then we threw at the problem and tested it with, well, what if we solved it in different ways? And, then we ended with unanimous decisions that Sunbit and its strategy, its technology that happens to be in the dental space is something we wanted to leverage.

Emmet Scott:

So, can you walk through those different options? Because I think it’s worth of mapping those out. If I’m trying to solve this financing solution, because a lot of us have gone through your different areas, so what was number one that you tried to solve?

Andrew Sipes:

A third-party waterfall.

Emmet Scott:

So let’s call that out, what it is, so when you’re using the term waterfall, you’re saying that from a financial perspective it’s a series of income streams coming in by using the third party.

Andrew Sipes:

Yes, and furthermore, we want to go aggregate a group of financing options and we want to start with the highest to qualify for. “Oh, you got denied. Let’s go to the next best option, let’s go to the next best option.” And, you can create your own. The experience of the patient is unique applications per denial, if you would. So, if I get denied on the first time, I got to fill out a whole new application by a whole new company and go through the whole new skinning process over.

Emmet Scott:

Even if you don’t do a huge waterfall, even if you do a two step waterfall like, “Hey, they get approved or we just do it in-house recourse,” what I found is the frontline employees hate it because they know that some percentage aren’t going to get approved and you would think they would just say, instead of saying, “You didn’t get approved,” they’d say, “You’re approved, and then we’ll just move you over to this one.” But, they don’t do that, and so they’re like, “You didn’t get approved, you didn’t get approved, you didn’t get approved.” And, what I found is then team members are like, “I’m not doing this. I ran them through and they didn’t get approved.” They just stop doing it. So, that was number one. Did you ever try that one, Kevin, where you had like, hey, here’s three different options you can… Or, were you smart enough to just skip over that one?

Kevin Bejhat:

We went through all of that and failed miserably. You’re exactly right.

Emmet Scott:

Well you get a little trickle. It’s not really a waterfall, it’s more like a spit on a couple of them, right?

Kevin Bejhat:

Exactly, that’s exactly right. And as you correctly point, after a while the product is… They start determining who the patient is before… How they’re going to pay before they even are asked, and then you’re so right about that.

Emmet Scott:

Emmet came in, his hair and his beard were a little messy, his shirt wasn’t clean, so we’re just not going to see if he has the money to do this.

Kevin Bejhat:

His internet connection sucked, so he’s not-

Emmet Scott:

Yeah, exactly, that too. That’s right, he can’t pay his internet bill, so clearly he can’t pay this.

Jay Letwat:

It’s funny, one thing I’ll mention is, and it’s similar to what Kevin has said about this preselection, before we get involved, in a lot of offices, they will actually ask the patient, how’s your credit? Is it good? Is it bad? Which clearly is discriminatory and illegal, you shouldn’t be asking these questions. So if it’s good, well, we’ll put you here. If it’s not so good, well, you’ll be in this one over here, but I think what’s interesting about the waterfalls is that it’s a tacit acknowledgement that you don’t have a solution for most people, that it’s like that Flex Seal guy and those infomercials. You’re just plugging holes, but it’s not a real systematic-

Emmet Scott:

Not comprehensive.

Jay Letwat:

Exactly.

Emmet Scott:

You got pieces. All right, Andrew, what was the number two option that you had?

Andrew Sipes:

Our own version of that, an internal waterfall.

Emmet Scott:

Would that look like?

Andrew Sipes:

For the first one, there are companies out there that you can go to one company and you apply one time when they’ve solved what the pain points we just described. The second solution is what we just described, the traditional we go out and sign our own unique contracts, we aggregate them together and we’ve created our own. If you’re denied with A, you go to B, if you’re denied with B, go to C, and we’re offering A and B and C. The third one is the in-house subscription capitation model that everyone… It’s not everyone, that we can have our own unique brand for, we can have our own unique name, our own unique rules, have to still be compliant non-discriminatory, but then we become our own financing house, and so there were other pros in other cons and we just chose… That was actually the one we ran with the furthest in our testing environment, but we also chose to rule that one out as well.

Emmet Scott:

What was the issues you were running into?

Andrew Sipes:

Say again, please?

Emmet Scott:

What was the issues you were running into? What was the concerns you were running into?

Andrew Sipes:

What is our core competency? We are a dentist office. We are not a finance institution. So, we are not as rigorous in the appropriate elements in order to do that well, whether that be tracking, whether it’d be following up on it, and/or when you go to recapitalize in your venture capitalist, how are they going to look at the fact that you’re carrying all this AR in your books from a model that you are self-financing the patient? Are you in that model or are there people that do that better than you? And so, we chose to let the experts play in their arena, and we do what we do best, our core competency.

Emmet Scott:

Well, and what I find oftentimes happens is people who come up with this idea will give it to the billing team, who’s doing revenue cycle management, but what we don’t realize is the billing they’re doing has nothing to do with collection. It’s just different. It’s insurance company based, it might have some patient copay, but it’s nothing like some payment plan, and can you adjust this payment plan, and those elements. Kevin, any other thoughts on that you ran into?

Kevin Bejhat:

Well, we tried it, but it’s a really good way to, excuse the expression, piss a patient off, and break that relationship. As Andrew said, our core of competency is treating patients. To start getting involved with billing and it’s a whole new area of headache and underwriting, it’s just a nightmare. So, we quickly nipped that in the bud, quickly.

Emmet Scott:

Well, there’s, there’s PCI rules too. I’ve seen dentists who have… “I have all the patient’s credit cards right here.” It’s like, “Hey, you just entered a whole new regulatory realm to get sued over.” You thought PHI was bad, try PCI. So, all these different components too. All right, so those options, and then number four, was?

Andrew Sipes:

Lender.

Emmet Scott:

So Jay, walk us through, just so we have reference and so I can push on it a little bit, what tactically would be a Sunbit solution when they say that? What does that mean?

Jay Letwat:

Sure, it means one patient financing solution that covers every patient with a FICO score of 500 or greater. So, our technology approves between 85 to 87% of all patients that walk in the door. So, you know that eight and a half out of 10 people that walk in the office are going to be able to accept treatment that day. So, we do it via a technology process, via an iPad. It’s a 20 second process in which we scan a driver’s license, there’s no pen and paper. There is no hard credit check ever, again, very unique. Again, we’re relying on our technology and machine learning. There’s a lot of stuff happening in the backend that the patient doesn’t see and the office doesn’t see from a data perspective, technology perspective, but it’s super streamlined for the front office, so 20 seconds, you get approved, you see three to six different payment terms.

You can quickly go through within a minute or two the transaction, and then you can say yes to treatment immediately, get in the chair. There’s no waiting period. So, it’s a very much mechanized process that reduces friction for the front office, because again, it’s super quick, no hard credit check. And for the patient, a big reason why patients don’t apply for any financing is because they’re afraid of that hard credit check. People are pretty knowledgeable… They don’t necessarily know what a hard credit check entails, but they just know it’s bad. So, they just stay away from it, and the front office is also afraid to offer it. So, we eliminated that friction point, so that’s-

Emmet Scott:

Just to clarify, does a soft credit check ensure that they won’t have some deduction for having it checked?

Jay Letwat:

Correct, so what happens is a soft inquiry is just basically something that doesn’t impact your specific score. There is a marking on your credit file that just says you got a soft inquiry, very similar to a credit card inquiry that you get in the mail, but it has no impact on your credit, and then even if they decide to take the loan, we still don’t do a hard check, which is very, very unique.

Emmet Scott:

That is unique.

Jay Letwat:

And again, it’s because we’re a technology company, not really a finance company. Obviously, we’re lending money, great, but these other companies are finance companies trying to be technology companies, and that’s really why they need to get that additional information that essentially we’re able to deduce from the same basic information that we both get upfront in the process.

Emmet Scott:

Kevin, do you have any thoughts on… How long have you had Sunbit in and what’s been the results?

Kevin Bejhat:

Sure. I think our first transaction was October 2nd of last year, and what we saw was comparing to the other players. For the period to the end of June Sunbit… We grew our third party financing, by just under 29%. So, that’s how much as a whole we grew in that area, but compared to the others, these guys just washed the floor with them, and I’m not just saying because Jay’s here. I think 80% of-

Emmet Scott:

Kevin, hold onto that. So, 29% increase in total financing-

Kevin Bejhat:

In total third party financing, yeah.

Emmet Scott:

What percent do you think of that was they wouldn’t have done the treatment otherwise?

Kevin Bejhat:

Probably all that additional 30%.

Emmet Scott:

Oh wow.

Kevin Bejhat:

Our offices are in blue collar work areas, type people, an we kind of know our patients and we looked at historical data, and I did this on purpose before coming here, and we looked at historical data, and it’s just under 29%. We have had increase over this period of people taking up financing where they didn’t before.

Emmet Scott:

Yeah, that’s significant.

Kevin Bejhat:

Because we looked at the rejection rates as well and compared to the other players, it was a huge increase on them.

Emmet Scott:

Is this what happens with this is they start getting more approval, because you said the approval rate’s better?

Kevin Bejhat:

Sure.

Emmet Scott:

That means the treatment coordinator gets more confidence, because we talked about one of the problems, is the treatment coordinator starts saying, “I don’t want to deliver the bad news.”

Kevin Bejhat:

Exactly, but also the way the process works, the treatment coordinator is ready before the patient arrives because they know they’ve been or how much they’ve been approved for, and that’s a huge advantage.

Emmet Scott:

Oh, because you can pre-do this?

Kevin Bejhat:

Yeah.

Emmet Scott:

They’re not doing it there in real time.

Kevin Bejhat:

No, so the way we do it, and I’m sure everybody else does it the same way, once a patient comes, or makes an appointment, when we send a confirmation of the appointment, we usually ask, because we don’t want to assume people cannot pay for it, so what we usually ask, “Would you be interested in talking to our financing company? We just send a link. It’s a soft hit on your credit. They have great rates,” and so on. So, that helps. So when we send the link as part of a text, when the patient arrives, they’ve already been pre-approved, so it makes life a lot easier. So, our treatment coordinator is going there fully tails up and ready to go.

Emmet Scott:

Do you know the pre-approval amount?

Kevin Bejhat:

I think you do. Yes, you do. They’ll tell us exactly.

Emmet Scott:

The doctor does the treatment plan, comes over to treatment coordination, they can correlate and whether, all right, can we do the whole treatment plan today? Do we need to break it up into phases? All of that stuff is somewhat available with all the data?

Kevin Bejhat:

Yeah, and you can go back and try and increase if needs be. Usually they give you the top line, but we have tried and we have had success in increasing that. The terms change slightly, but we’ve had success there.

Emmet Scott:

Andrew, what have you noticed as far as implementation, as capability? Was it some percentage, have you tracked that yet?

Andrew Sipes:

We have tracked what percent of our visits apply, what percent of those that applied got approved, and of the approvals, which percent converted, if you will, or actually ended in a loan written. And, what we’re finding is our biggest opportunity is to offer it on the front end more universally because once we get through that, this is a good thing for the patient. That is an enabler for the patient and we are not used car salesman or salesman at all. In fact, we are just enablers connecting you between problem and solution and using this as a tool that we pulled out of the arsenal and introduced. When we get through that, we put it off on the shelf and now we say, “Well, if it’s a number one need, why are we pre-judging who we’re offering it to and who we’re not?” So, we have a huge opportunity to raise that initial percentage up from single digits into something much, much higher like Kevin is doing.

Emmet Scott:

It’s a little bit harder on scale to do that quickly, so with 60 locations, probably some of the data you’re able to see is if it’s anything like ours is some execute really well, really fast because if the technology’s good, then the humans and the change management becomes the real issue. So it’s like, “How fast can I get my team to adopt this and utilize it?” So, you probably have best practices and those just not implementing well, right? That’s just reality.

Andrew Sipes:

Yeah, and we have to keep that in mind when we do any analysis later. To continue to affirm, let’s look at best in class. What are the results that they’re getting? And, almost using that as motivation for those that are under-utilizing to say, “You’re leaving opportunity on the table, and if you use this tool, you’ll get results that look like these offices.”

Emmet Scott:

Have you been able to do any measurements on some of the metrics?

Andrew Sipes:

We have. Being a larger DSO, numbers is how we drive the business. So, we’ve looked at about nine different KPIs that we know are indicators to our ability to succeed in the marketplace. For example, production per visit, production per doctor day, same day starts, unscheduled treatment plans, things of this nature. When we look at those nine, we have found the following correlation, six of them, high correlation between top Sunbit users and favorable outcomes on those nine key performance indicators, six of them. Two, marginal correlation, and then one of them is not correlated and we are still investigating this to why this one is not.

Emmet Scott:

So, talk through the six because if you’re just looking as a whole, that’s high correlation statistically.

Andrew Sipes:

That’s exactly right.

Emmet Scott:

What’s the six that it’s very correlated with?

Andrew Sipes:

So, we have seen high correlation between production per doctor day, production per visit, treatment plan acceptance, total production overall, same day starts, and a decrease in unscheduled treatment plans.

Emmet Scott:

Those are all pretty powerful ones to see a correlation. So when we say correlation, to be clear, we’re saying you’re looking at a practice and you’re saying, how much are they using Sunbit? And then they’re saying, did it uptick these metrics and is there correlation? So, if they’re using it a ton, and it’s not moving the needle, they’re using it a ton and they’re doing better than the other practices on six of them and those sound like all pretty high level revenue-producing metrics. Also, ones that frankly the doctor would be excited about. I’ve already had him in my chair, I’ve already done the treatment plan, can you guys get it done where they could actually do the treatment, right?

Andrew Sipes:

Yes, absolutely, and so when we found that, we are using that as a…

Emmet Scott:

Oh, did he freeze? It wasn’t me this time.

Emmet Scott:

Andrew, you just froze there, but I think you’re back.

Andrew Sipes:

To double click for a moment, what we found is we took the top 10 Sunbit using offices, and we said for those nine KPIs, the result they got in that specific KPI, same period last year, same period or the trailing 30 days or 90 days prior to going live with Sunbit, we looked at it both ways, and that’s when we’re saying it’s those that are high usage of Sunbit, strong correlation and improvement in those six key performance indicators.

Emmet Scott:

Got it. I got some questions that have come in here, so I’m looking at these. Some of the these you might have answered, but what’s the max amount approval.? These are just going to be a bunch of random tactical questions I can tell.

Jay Letwat:

I can answer that, Emmet, it’s $20,000.

Emmet Scott:

What is the minimum amount approval?

Jay Letwat:

$60.

Emmet Scott:

That’s awesome, you guys finance 60 bucks.

Jay Letwat:

I see the transactions every day. There are many, many sub $100 transactions.

Emmet Scott:

Wow.

Jay Letwat:

And, that’s great with us. We look at things, if it’s $60 it’s great, $500 it’s great, if it’s $15,000 it’s great too because we know someone at that sub-$100 or sub-$200 level, there’s needs there, clear needs.

Emmet Scott:

For sure, that’s awesome. What’s the typical terms?

Jay Letwat:

So, we go up to 72 months.

Emmet Scott:

Wow.

Jay Letwat:

So for the larger dollar amounts, $15, $20,000-

Emmet Scott:

Not on the $60 ones, but-

Jay Letwat:

Correct, $60 ones would be a bit hard pressed to do 72 months.

Emmet Scott:

80 cents.

Jay Letwat:

There you go, but on average I would say it’s about 18 months on average, give or take.

Emmet Scott:

The shortest ones would be your sub-$100 types. What are those typically… Is that-

Jay Letwat:

Those are typically like six, 12, 18.

Emmet Scott:

Oh really? Great, I thought it might even be shorter than that, like two months. Let’s see, you mentioned the credit, so lots of questions around what’s the experience like for those with lower income, or with bad credit, or things like that? They have to have a driver’s license, right? Any other thing that they need? So if they say, “I don’t have a driver’s license,” then that’s not going to work, but they have to have a credit score. If they know their credit score and it’s below, what did you say, five-something?

Jay Letwat:

So, they need a driver’s license and a debit card, but that’s basically all you need, obviously phone number, email address, that’s basically what you need.

Emmet Scott:

If someone has an in-house solution that they’ve been using and they want that as a backdrop for the sub-500, can they do that?

Jay Letwat:

Absolutely, we need to be primary, if there’s someone that we decline, that does happen 12, 13% of the time, if they wanted to take the declines, more power to them.

Emmet Scott:

What kind of training for office employees? So, as much as you-

Jay Letwat:

I’ll give that one to either Andrew or Kevin because they can do that a lot better than I can.

Emmet Scott:

Kevin or Andrew? You have to come off mute, Kevin.

Kevin Bejhat:

Andrew, you take that, you clearly…

Andrew Sipes:

It has been one of the strengths of Sunbit, and here’s why. There’s a pre-activation call, took about 15, 20 minutes from our office leader, office manager’s time to understand concept of a quick demo. Then there was an in-person trainer that came on site, almost like a mini account rep, and they walked through… They brought breakfast, so it was an engaging and exciting, and they had a little gimmick… Not a gimmick, but little things they hand out to keep engagement, and then they walked you through, from start to finish, why Sunbit, why they’re different, how it helps the patient, oh yes, and here’s a 20 second on how you actually use Sunbit. It is that quick to learn how to use it. There isn’t a learning curve to this, there isn’t paperwork to this, there isn’t a long application process to this. So, there’s not this glass wall or glass ceiling between comfort and ability to apply it in your day-to-day.

Emmet Scott:

How’d you integrate the email out to the patients, that link?

Andrew Sipes:

Go, Kevin.

Kevin Bejhat:

I was going to say, this is what I mentioned about system. I’m a great believer of systemization. This is why it’s so easy. Systemization is great, but you need tools to be able to manage that process, change that process, watch people do it, and actually until it becomes a habit, and it’s become a habit because it’s not very difficult. You copy your link, stick it into… We use Swell for patient communication. It’s a very simple process. You just copy the link, stick it in the text, and off it goes to every new patient that you made an appointment for, and the same with email and it makes life very, very easy and it becomes, as I said, a system. Everyone knows when… First thing in the morning, in the morning huddle, once that’s over, they look at who’s got approval from Sunbit and they’re all ready to go. It’s just very simple.

Emmet Scott:

You said when the patient comes in you can see that they’ve already gotten approved. So, is it a unique link for every patient?

Kevin Bejhat:

They get emails. You get an email per patient, so in case so-and-so got approved, then we open the email and you can just take it from there to see how much and so on. Again, it’s self-explanatory. The good thing is on our end, when a patient applies, it alerts us that, “Hey, so-and-so applied from your office. Here it is, and this is what they got.”

Emmet Scott:

How does it work on scale, Andrew? Do you log into each location or are you able to see this on an enterprise level?

Andrew Sipes:

You can see it on an enterprise level, but each location is their own link.

Emmet Scott:

You can segment them out.

Andrew Sipes:

Yes, sir.

Emmet Scott:

Awesome. I guess that’s my point, if you want to centralize some of the conversations or whatnot, you could do that as well.

Andrew Sipes:

Yeah, and we do, we have centralized communication platforms that we’ve used in marketing blast. Tools, I know Jay mentions one.

Emmet Scott:

Does Sunbit connect to practice management software or what does it connect to or does it need to, how do you guys think about that?

Jay Letwat:

Sure, I can take that one. So, we have an integration team and we’re working on integrating with key partners, such as Weave as a partner. The press release just came out on that yesterday, also Simplifeye as well. The idea is that we want to use our APIs in every customer communication platform, so that really the financing piece of things shouldn’t be at the end, when you’re about to pay, it should be throughout the patient’s journey. So every point along that way, we will be integrated with various solutions that take care of very specific issues related to that journey.

Emmet Scott:

Got it. And I’m not real knowledgeable on this, but on the practice management software side, you’ve got the treatment plan there, you’ve got to book this, et cetera. How does that work? I don’t know-

Jay Letwat:

Sure, so how we do it today is basically is part of the iPad. When you close out the transaction, basically you put in the patient number, the chart number, the patient’s last name, and then when we send the reports or you look on the portal and you see this data in real time, usually the accounting folks can then slice and dice the information, do the reconciling on a daily basis. We are working on integrating into various platforms.

Emmet Scott:

Got it. So Kevin, do you have someone that then just goes through and then just inputs these into the practice management software?

Kevin Bejhat:

Yes, we do, and then they print it and we use Eaglesoft and uses smart copy uploaded in the patient’s chart. That’s exactly as Jay described.

Emmet Scott:

Andrew, what about you? Same thing, which practice management software are you using?

Andrew Sipes:

A ton of them.

Emmet Scott:

Conversation for a different call, huh? You got a lot you’re managing there.

Andrew Sipes:

That should be a whole new topic.

Emmet Scott:

So, each one of them then is inputting these in, just like any other third party solution, approval, and you almost treat it like an EOB that you got the money in and then you just post it to the chart.

Andrew Sipes:

And, then we have a centralized reconciliation process for a monthly report that is sent at the enterprise level.

Emmet Scott:

How fast is the approval denial process? You got to fill out the-

Andrew Sipes:

You would’ve just gotten one.

Emmet Scott:

Just by asking that question, I would’ve already… It’s that fast?

Andrew Sipes:

Yes, it’s less than 10 seconds.

Emmet Scott:

Really?

Jay Letwat:

The application process, Emmet, is about 20 seconds. The actual decision, once you press the button, it’s a millisecond.

Emmet Scott:

Wow. So when you say 20 seconds, is that because I’m just scanning my ID card in and-

Jay Letwat:

Basically you have an iPad.

Jay Letwat:

You have the iPad, you basically scan the driver’s license. Once you scan the driver’s license, automatically that information is on the next screen. So, the front office staff doesn’t have to type stuff in. Then, basically you type in your phone number, your email, click, and you get the approval.

Emmet Scott:

So, literally phone number… Email is the only hand input stuff?

Jay Letwat:

Phone number, email, and the address is taken directly from the state ID or the driver’s license.

Emmet Scott:

And, then when do I give you my ATM… You said there’s like an ATM card component?

Jay Letwat:

Yeah, the debit card comes later. Once they’ve been approved, once you’ve decided which term you’re going to choose, the debit card is the form of payment because we’re an installment loan, not a credit card. There’s an auto debit coming from your checking account every month, so it’s also healthier for the patient. They don’t have to lick a stamp and figure out when they have to make a payment.

Emmet Scott:

Just an auto withdrawal for them?

Jay Letwat:

Exactly.

Emmet Scott:

Great, so they need to have a bank account, need to have a driver’s license. I think we’ve gone through that. Let’s see… What questions have I not asked you? I think we’ve talked about there’s some questions around, how are you better than this or that? I think we’ve hit on the different solutions. Any other questions you all think that you asked or you were curious about that I haven’t asked? Andrew, you have some?

Andrew Sipes:

Yeah, I have one more nugget. One of our concerns with the aggregator, in my mind it’s kind like a general contractor conceptually. I could go hire all my subs or I can hire a GC, and typically there’s a cost for the GC. You would think there would be an incremental cost with Sunbit compared to competitors, and what we have found is we have found that our patients are getting about a percent on average better, 100 basis points, interest rate from Sunbit than they were from any of their other competitors, number one.

Emmet Scott:

Wow.

Andrew Sipes:

Number two, we are getting charged the same or 1% better… Let me say it differently. On an average basis, we are the same, but if you have apples to apples, the same patient, we have a lower merchant fee with Sunbit than we did with our competitors as well.

Emmet Scott:

Andrew, there’s a question from Facebook for you. Are you doing any kind of incentive for staff to offer this? And I guess honestly, Kevin, you could answer that too.

Kevin Bejhat:

Actually, I think this is one probably for Jay to answer. I’m not sure because there is something I’m sure Jay was going to talk about. I was actually going to continue with what Andrew was saying if you don’t mind, and Jay, you can take… Look, we use a terminology, which is mugging old grannies. And as I told you, when we interviewed five or six different companies, what was attractive about these guys was we are not here just to rip people off. I think I mentioned to you that there was a company who wanted to charge us 220 bucks a month just for this scanner to take payment. Whereas these guys, what we find is we have as one part of our rules is you have to be 100% legal, ethical, and moral. Who is moral? So we say to staff, to doctors, would you offer this to your mother? And, that’s our very simplistic metric for this, and most of our staff agree that this would be something they’d offer their own mother, so I agree-

Emmet Scott:

It’s a good measurement because-

Kevin Bejhat:

Not your mother-in-law.

Emmet Scott:

I don’t feel like I’m ripped off paying $39 a month for my iPhone.

Kevin Bejhat:

Sure.

Emmet Scott:

I think to your point, if it’s built in and it seems fair, but to your point also is if somebody’s having you pay 220 bucks just for the scanner, that doesn’t work either.

Kevin Bejhat:

But, I’ll let Jay talk about incentivization because that’s a good point.

Emmet Scott:

We’re starting to get a bunch of questions in, so all right, start hitting on them.

Jay Letwat:

I’ll tell you what, Andrew, should I defer to you on the incentives? I’m happy for you to talk about it.

Andrew Sipes:

Go for it.

Jay Letwat:

So at Sunbit, we have an appreciation program for all the front office team members. So, they earn points every time they do part of their regular job, which is hopefully trying to get more patients to say yes. So every time there’s an application, every time there’s actually a loan consummated, they get points. They can then trade in those points for gift cards, Venmo, et cetera. So, it’s something that we fully fund and it’s something that quite frankly, the front office staffs love it. And again, they’re doing this anyway, and as a side note, these front office team members, they’re working so hard and in many cases very much underappreciated. So, this is something I think is really part of our mission to help the team members who essentially are helping Sunbit and also obviously helping the patients first and foremost. So, that’s a program that we’ve rolled out in dental nine months ago, and it’s been very, very successful.

Emmet Scott:

Well, I think all of us have dreamed of putting different point systems together and different ways to incentivize and so forth. So, that’s awesome you guys just do it, and then we don’t have to manage that. Are there any plans to increase the funding limit to over 20,000 at some point? I’m sure that’s asked by someone who’s doing all in fours kind of thing.

Jay Letwat:

It’s something we always look at. Five years ago when I started, true story, the highest loan that we ever gave was $1,500. Right now we’re at $20,000. So, we base it on technology, we base it on learnings. So, I think in the future it will go up. When and how much, I don’t know at this point, but it’s likely to go up.

Emmet Scott:

All right, awesome. We talked about incentivizing. When you say systemized Sunbit into your practice steps, and Kevin, this one was directed to you, what does that systemization, I guess, look like?

Kevin Bejhat:

Well, as I said, everybody knows as part of the making an appointment, the schedule is: When the calls come in, one of the questions you ask is, would you be interested in third party financing? Because initially when you send confirmation text, we just used to send the link, and we got one or two people who got slightly offended by this, if we actually had a man on the phone, they were rather upset about this. So, we just asked this, and it is part of everybody’s… As part of we train new people, ask would they be interested. They’re great company to work with. So we send the link, and so soon as an appointment is confirmed, that goes with it, and then in the front office, the team get emails and they all know, soon as you get your emails, you look, you check, make sure all those things are ready. So when the patient comes in, everything that the patient needs to do, the 30 seconds it takes, is ready. So, that’s how it works, and it’s great.

Emmet Scott:

For same day treatment, maybe whether someone walked in or whatnot, you could just ask the same question and then say, “Hey, fill in this iPad.”

Kevin Bejhat:

Exactly.

Emmet Scott:

This is another question. As interest rates rise, do you see it more challenging to finance patients? How do you think that’ll impact patient financing?

Jay Letwat:

So, I’ll address the interest rate, but I think what’s interesting is this inflationary environment. We see it in the data. There’s more and more people that are asking for financing, that need the financing, but obviously Kevin and Andrew can clearly talk about that a lot better than I can, but in terms of interest rate environment, clearly it’s something we monitor, but it’s a dynamic model that we use, but basically the rates and the offers that we do right now are essentially the same as what they were three, four, six months ago. In fact, during COVID like May and June and July of 2020, we still had 85, 86, 87% approval rate, and that’s something we’re very, very proud of, while others said, “Okay, we’re not going to take the risk. We’re going to just decline everyone.” We decided not to do that, and it’s paid off well because folks tend to like paying back for products that they deem value, and I think that’s the big thing that we’ve learned over the past several years.

Emmet Scott:

That’s awesome. Any other closing thoughts? These have been great questions. Thank you everybody for the questions you’ve asked on Facebook here on the live webinar, others have just fed right into me, so I appreciate it. This is crazy times where I think at the end of the day, our job is to take care of customers and figure out how to move these friction points out of the way, and I guess the good and bad news is that dentistry has a huge opportunity that they’ve never fully solved and now we’re starting to solve it and that is, how do we create financing solutions for the products and services that we provide? And if we do that, then hopefully at some point when ADA does their survey, they say, “No, cost is not the issue. Now, they want something else. They want better quality here or faster service there,” something like that, but cost being the issue, again, good and bad news, we can solve that. That’s something that absolutely should be solved. Andrew, anything that you want to say in closing here?

Andrew Sipes:

No, I appreciate the opportunity to share our real experience.

Emmet Scott:

Andrew and Kevin both, thank you for being on because it’s nice to see on a tactical basis the implementation and the thoughtfulness that you guys went through, all the train wrecks we tried first. So anything else, Kevin, you want to say?

Kevin Bejhat:

No, thank you for having me on. It was great, thank you.

Emmet Scott:

I appreciate it, and Jay, thank you so much. Last words?

Jay Letwat:

Thank you, Emmet, for hosting. You do a great job, and of course, Andrew and Kevin are valued partners and just I love the open and honest dialogue. That’s I think what the listeners want to hear and see.

Emmet Scott:

I appreciate DEO coordinating and curating this level of information for the industry because definitely you’re out there on an island. It’s nice to be able to see, “Here’s the pieces that are really rising to the top for best practices.” So, thank you DEO for that. Jay, I will put out there, if anybody wants to dig deeper into this, maybe have initial call, see if they’re a right fit for this, what’s the best way to contact you?

Jay Letwat:

The best way is to go on sunbit.com/dental, or you can send me an email and I’ll make sure we take care of you quickly, [email protected], pretty simple, and we’re here to serve and we’ll get back to you quickly and happy to help in any way we can.

Emmet Scott:

Hey, thank you all so much for being on this evening and providing this resource and the feedback, so I appreciate it.