OrthoFX Director of Customer Success Holly Bledsoe Bennett, Customer Engagement Manager Elena Popova, and Provider Relations Senior Manager April Womack.
Webinar Transcription
Holly Bledsoe Bennett: Good morning. My name is Holly Bledsoe Bennett and welcome to OrthoFX, our learning seminar this morning. So we have learned a little bit about what makes OrthoFX so special. We are clear aligner manufacturers but what we are going to talk about today are some of our Services. And how we can help you and your team get faster conversions in patients – on the same day or in about a week. We will talk about what that looks like later.
I also have my leadership team here with me this morning. I have April Womack and Elena Popova with me. I am so excited to have our Management Team here. We also have a star guest with us today; one of our providers has graciously decided to go ahead and join us – Dr. Edly Destine from New York.
Services
So why don’t we get started again this morning with a little bit about OrthoFX? I think we are the best clear aligner manufacturers in the market. We have got the best technology. But what really sets us apart are our services. So let’s talk a little bit about how our services shine. We seamlessly connect a provider, a patient and our products through a lot of our services.
From the patient’s perspective, we have some of the lowest Financing rates available with 0% for 24 months and we can make that available to every single one of your patients regardless of credit. We have a fantastic insurance service called our Insurance Concierge team where we can do verifications with insurance for patients on your behalf. We also have our Patient Referral Programs and Tele-dentistry – and we are very much cutting-edge when it comes to connecting virtually with your patients throughout their journey.
When it comes to you, the doctor, we pay you within 5 days. There is never a lab fee here at OrthoFX. We actually manufacture the clear aligners here in the United States itself, so you are going to receive those aligners very quickly in your practice. Again with FXpay, we can help build your practice, as it’s one of the principles and policies of OrthoFX to be your partner in the growth of your practice.
Now Elena is going to talk a little bit about our Virtual Treatment Coordinator team and what that looks like for your practice; and then, also about the Patient Referral program. We also have a fantastic Bonus program that we can talk to you about as well. From a product perspective, we can do another whole learning seminar and I think we have one planned on our technology. Use the latest technology with clear aligner therapy and I think that is OrthoFX. Our FXtetra material is cutting-edge. Some of our products are FDA approved and we would love to speak more about that.
We also have Group Practice support so if you are in a Group practice or DS, we would love to talk to you about some of those services that can help support your team.
Now when it comes to our services, we will shortly go into them individually with Elena and April here. When it comes to Treatment Financing, we know that sometimes the biggest barrier to actually getting a patient into the OrthoFX therapy or into clear aligner therapy is cost. Our treatment plan with FXPay offers some of the best pricing and financing in the business for your patients. Insurance, April will be going a little bit more into that. The Remote Monitoring, I am going to touch on that for a minute. We want to make sure that you have a way to monitor your patients when they are not in your practice. So we have something called FXOnTrack which is a free service. We can monitor the patient with your chosen frequency. This has been a revolutionary service for your patients.
The other thing that we have and I don’t think anyone else is doing to our level, is Clinical Coaching. We have doctors doing treatment plans for doctors, so we have orthodontists and dentists that will actually help you set up your treatment plans, and that’s a free service. They are there for consultations with you along the way. And as you get going with clear aligner therapy, they are there to consult with you step-by-step throughout the journey.
Flexible
We are Flexible. I think I say this every single week. We want to work with your workflow. So we want to be that positive influx of cash into your practice. There is never a big lab fee at the end of the month. So if you are paying a lab fee to another manufacturer, we want to make sure that our model works for you and helps to build your practice.
What does that look like? You can absolutely do something that starts with us. We can show you how to do that. Or if you want, you can continue to maintain that traditional consult with your patient. However, once your office gets started with us, I think you will find that Elena and her team can take that off your plate, and that’s why we are converting patients faster than anybody else in the market. If you think about the time and flow of your patients through your practice – maybe they come in today and you plan to talk about clear aligner therapy with them at a recall appointment – you typically won’t see that patient again for another 6 to 12 months. But we are able to go ahead and convert that patient immediately. We have touch points with them within 24 hours and that’s why we are able to convert those patients so quickly.
The Clinical Support again speaks for itself and I think Dr. Destine will touch on that. Lastly, our patients love this service. If the dog eats aligner number 4, they call us; they are not going to bug your scheduled day with picking up an extra replacement aligner, as all of those services are done by us. So for that, we get great reviews. Please check out our website on that.
There is Safety. We know there are a lot of clear aligner options out there in the market. We always want to keep our dental professionals in the hub, in the center of everything that we do. All clinical oversight will always be done by a dental professional. And with the Remote Monitoring tool, clinical oversights are fewer than you have been used to in the past. And I think what our patients also love is that we include whitening and you know they want straighter teeth, but they also want whiter teeth.
So in a world of clear aligners that are out there, I truly believe that OrthoFX brings in a little piece of all of those, to make it the best clear aligner option for your practice in the market.
Without further ado, let me introduce my team. I think we are going to start with April Womack. She oversees Insurance Concierge Services. I will just turn this over to you, April.
Insurance Concierge Services
April Womack: Good morning. So I am from the Insurance Concierge Services division here at OrthoFX and I just want to touch on all the wonderful things that we do here and how we can help your practice. Our services include (1) Personalized Patient Support where we can help explain some of those things that they obviously find difficult to understand, so we are there to help explain it to them. We also help do a (2) Verification, which is full details and very orthodontic-involved. As we also know that the details that you get are very generic, we make sure that we are very involved on the orthodontic side.
We also do (3) Electronic Claim Submission on your behalf, and then we also have (4) Complete Oversight of the Claims throughout the full treatment to make sure that you receive the full payment by the time treatment is completed. With all that, it can save you about $75 per patient because of the time, the effort and all the things that are done within the claiming process, including verification, the timeline and the staff and services that it would cost you. So that’s how we came up with the $75 per patient which is pretty substantial across the board. And all I can say is that insurance is the mission, something which practices might find cumbersome, so it’s really nice that we are here – as we are practiced at it and actually enjoy doing it! So our team at OrthoFX is here to help you deal with it all.
Insurance
As our team verifies the patients, we make sure that they provide all the right information. And with that, we will call the insurance company and get all the details and pass it on to Elena in the Insurance team. And we will still talk about that in a moment and how we move that sale on for you. Our team works together hand-in-hand, which is wonderful, and it helps move the sale along as quickly as possible.
One of the wonderful things that I found while working at OrthoFX, and which I found very surprising, was that 67% of adults actually have adult orthodontic benefits, which makes it feasibly more affordable for patients – and that’s obviously helping us get that stay off. Instead of us getting them to be ‘on hold’ or ‘not sure if they want to do it, we are getting a ‘yes’ more upfront, because we know they have the benefits! As we are basically doing the verification over the phone with the insurance, and making sure they have the benefit, we are done waiting for approvals, and just move everything along and get it going.
Next Step
The sheet that you are seeing on the right side of the screen is what we like to call ‘liquid gold’ for the practices. This is an amazing hand offer you would give to your patients. When you know there is an OrthoFX patient, this is what we call our Next Step for sure. This is the page used to explain the next steps to your patient. It also explains that you have this amazing (1) Concierge service through OrthoFX to help them move forward. It tells them that there is a (2) Insurance team and that there is a (3) Customer service team that will help them with all their questions and help with any other needs too – whether it is insurance premium, financial or just general questions. It’s just that extra step to show them that we partner with you and that we are part of your team. Because that’s what we want to be. We want to be a part of your team and be together on this.
Add-on Services
We have added this Add-on Services section recently to our portal and it promises to be an amazing asset. One of our dentists actually came to us and helped us develop it. This is one of the things here at OrthoFX that I think is amazing; though I came from the dental world, this is one of the things that I think is very valuable at OrthoFX. Here we listen to our doctors and in our practices, we listen to their ideas on how we can make our services better. And this is one of them. It’s all about how we can communicate with each other and how you guys communicate with us, so we built it into our services here.
When you go into adding a new patient down here at the bottom of the sheet, you can actually add the information and tell us that. So here you can actually click and add in the subscriber information for me and that lets our team get the information; and I can have that verified even before they call us or before we even call them back. So now we have avoided one of those extra calls or one of those extra steps. So again, it’s all about conveniences and all about time.
And then we also have these other extra steps on the sheet as well which Elena will talk about. This is again helping us communicate with that extra concierge to communicate back-and-forth and help our team communicate with your team to help with the patients. It’s pretty neat that we have all these steps to help with the patients. And this has all been developed with the help of our doctor who came up with this idea.
So I am done. I will pass it on to my wonderful colleague and good friend Elena Popova. She is our actual Customer Success Concierge division. We work hand-in-hand together here at OrthoFX and I am going to hand it over to Elena.
Virtual Treatment Coordinator
Elena Popova: Thank you so much April. It’s a pleasure being here. My name is Elena. I am the Virtual Treatment Coordinator here at OrthoFX. Put simply, the main purpose of this team is to help our providers get more patients into the clear aligner treatment as quickly as possible. We all know that everyone can get this treatment done somewhere or another. We treat this service as a partnership with our offices and we would love the provider offices that opt-in for this service to consider us as an extension of their practice and their team.
The ideal scenario is that when the patient leaves the office they will know that OrthoFX will be reaching out to them and going over their treatment package and over their next steps. So we really strive for high conversion rates and we do this through optimal workflow and consistent follow-ups with our patients. Our Virtual Treatment Coordinators use the best patient practices to convert pending patients to case starts.
We keep it very personal from the start with our friendly virtual assistants. We use all types of technology, including text messaging, emails and phone calls, as well as Zoom meetings in person to really have amazing discussions with the patients and get them excited about the treatment. Prior to their appointment, we always work with the insurance team as April mentioned, collecting the insurance information before the meeting even happens, so we have the information available and this clearly helps us with the high conversions. One way of converting is by discussing the value of the product and the second way that helps us is really the affordability factor. Like how many patients that you have had out there that actually had walked away from being excited, because they simply could not afford it, due to our product costing too much.
FXPay
So that brings me to the next slide on FXPay. We can finance 100% of our patients at zero cost to you. The payments that the patient has to make are really very low. We have $150 as the down payment for someone who has excellent credit and just 10% for someone with more of a low credit. Regardless of the credit score, we really, truly believe that everyone deserves the gift of a beautiful smile. So it’s really a game-changer for our patients and our providers. On average, we increase your practice revenue by 30% with OrthoFX services and this saves about $20,000 per practice. So these are really great numbers and patients get really excited that they can finally afford the clear aligner treatment.
Virtual Coordinator Tool
And the last part I would like to discuss with everybody is our Virtual Coordinator tool. It’s an amazing way of creating that warm transfer from the office over to the OrthoFX team. You can see here from this tool about the level of interest that each patient has with clear aligners. If you have a patient who is super-interested, who wants to move forward and wants to be contacted right away, we can indicate that in this tool and we will reach out to them within 24 hours.
If you have a patient that told you they are somewhat interested, but they are going away on vacation and won’t be available for three weeks, you can indicate on the tool that they are just somewhat interested and we shouldn’t be calling them just yet. We can also indicate in the notes that once three weeks are over, we can contact them.
So this tool has been built for our practices to make sure we have that unique sense of communication that allows our patients to feel comfortable knowing that we have all the information, and for your practice to feel that OrthoFX will communicate properly with your patients as well. And with that said, I am going to hand it back to Holly.
Holly Bledsoe Bennett: April, Elena, thank you so much.
So, in summary, the Concierge Services are truly one of the things that set OrthoFX apart from any other product in the market for your practices. We continue the conversation with your patients after they leave your chair when they are still excited that they want to get started, and we help with giving that little extra push.
We also assist with insurance, and for my general practitioners listening in on the phone, sometimes the secondary level of orthodontic benefits too – that your team is not used to going after, and then submitting on those narratives. Let us take care of that for you. We are experts in insurance when it comes to orthodontic benefits, so we are able to take on that extra service for you. Again it’s an optional service that costs you nothing.
FXPay has been a game-changer for so many of our practices. If you are seeing that as a barrier to getting your patients on treatment, I can’t wait for Dr. Destine to get live here and tell you a little bit about his experience! We hear this every week. So if that has been a concern, then FXPay can change your practice and change that revenue value immediately too.
Customer service is available to your patients. We have a fantastic team that is also under Elena and can help with any kind of customer service for you as a provider, and for your patients. We are available in all time zones from 9 am to 5 pm. We want to support you, your practice and your patients throughout their smile journey.
Here is our contact information:
Phone number: 415 936 0006
Email: support@care.orthofx.com
With that, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce one of our favorite providers, Dr. Edly Destine. He is out of Mt. Vernon, New York. I have had the pleasure of really getting to know him and his staff over the last year and a half.
Dr. Destine, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Edly Destine: Hi all. Good morning. Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure. Just want to add on to this that everything that April, Elena and Holly have said is 100% correct. As a provider, I was previously using Invisalign aligners, which were the choice of aligners that I had, the only option available. And it was after having a conversation I had with Holly that I went back to my Invisalign folder to check and see how many cases I have had over the last four years or so. And then I realized it was only 26 cases, out of which 4 of them were family members.
My Clear Aligners Experience
So the final story is that as soon as I started with OrthoFX, my first month was about 25 cases! So, I realized one thing real quick. Patients want the aligners, they need the aligners, but a lot of them just can’t afford it. They just can’t see themselves putting down $2500 as a down payment towards an aligner. And then OrthoFX was able to demolish this whole barrier of the entry form.
And ever since then, it’s just been me selling cases and telling patients exactly what they need, and why they need it and explaining it to them – just as how I would have done for any other aligner company. And the patients understand it now. And even when the patient has the money, I explain to them that if you can use somebody else’s money to get your treatment plan done, why would you even want to put up your own money? And that just resonates with them 100%. So that has been the game changer to my practice. I have gone from 24 cases in four years or so, to 25 cases in my first month. It has changed my practice, it has changed everything.
The thing about the whole payment plan which actually changed the whole practice was not just dependent on that one part. It was also about the technology, the advantages of the technology that I am using right now. It has made it so much easier for me as a practitioner, to be able to get in touch with anybody at any time that I want to. And I keep going back to the contrast of the previous companies that I have worked with, and Invisalign specifically – and that if I needed to speak about a case, I would have to set an appointment with someone, don’t know who the person would be, and if I missed that appointment, I would have to reset that appointment again at a later time, which God knows when it would be.
It was really frustrating trying to get any work done; it might have been one of the reasons why my caseload was so low with this group. So add on to that, it’s just been fantastic switching over from Invisalign to OrthoFX.
Payment Plan
I want to add again about the payment plan that Elena was talking about earlier with everyone having to put down $500 as a down payment. My line is actually like this: hey, I know you want clear aligners and I know you want to make your smile better. So how about this? – I have actually got the best payment plan out there in the country somewhere. All you need is $500 and $150 a month for 2 years if that’s what you want. And if you want to pay it off all upfront, that’s up to you also. But I don’t think you would want to do that, because you don’t want to use your own money if you can use somebody else’s money.
They love it, they laugh, and so they move right on with the treatment. So this has been like the easiest thing for me and made my workflow so much easier, because once the patient says, ‘yes, I think I want to do that – that is the moment when I always say that the payment plan is $500 and $150 dollars a month for two years. As soon as I say that, they will say ‘sign me up and as soon as that happens, I alert my team that we have an OrthoFX protocol and everybody in the office knows exactly what to do.
OrthoFX Protocol
The next person will come in, scan the patient’s jaw with my different digital scanners and the scan goes straight to OrthoFX, and we will talk about that later. And the next person will come in and take the internal and external pictures, and all this information will get uploaded to OrthoFX within a short period of time. And as the patient now sits on the chair, he will scan a loan Q card that we have, and they will fill out all their information – their phone numbers, email addresses, etc., and this makes it error-proof as they are the ones actually writing the information down. And mind you, this is all happening within a 10-minutes workflow. So they fill out the information and it is also sent off to OrthoFX and later on that night, we will upload this prescription onto the portal. These would include the photos and the x-rays because the actual scans are already on the portal.
And again, all of this is happening within half an hour of the appointment. Once that’s done, then it’s basically all up to OrthoFX, Holly, Elena and April to close it in. This has lifted such a heavy load off my back because patients feel like they are in control of their treatment because now they too can reach out to OrthoFX and speak to them directly. And as I always said that the last aligner that I was using, I couldn’t even get in touch with the company, and now you can get in touch with OrthoFX if you want to right now. It makes them enjoy and appreciate that they are in control. That someone will be there for them at any time throughout the day and they can get an answer, and so on and so forth.
So, it has made my workflow very, very efficient, it cleans out my schedule for me, and I just can’t speak enough on it. Like the sheer amount of time I would be spending on it and questions that patients will have for me like ‘how do I clean this aligner?’, ‘how do I do this or that?’. Instead, they can just text it right away to OrthoFX and they will have all these answers much faster than if they were texting me, to try to get these questions answered.
FXOnTrack
And the most beautiful part about this is the FXOnTrack, where the patients literally stay at home and take pictures of their face and send them back. They are sometimes very funny as they are really enjoying it as they are completely in control of their treatment. So they take pictures of their mouth and send them on the software OrthoFX provides them to be able to see how those trays fit in. If OrthoFX decides the trays are not fitting properly, then they send an alert to me and also talk to the patient about sending them a tray to get back on track. Patients don’t even have to come back to my office for that specific thing or all sorts of problems that arise. And again, that’s less headache for me as patients don’t have to contact me for these kinds of problems when they arise.
And it could just be just something like the patient not wearing the trays properly that week. They help out so much and keep the treatments as predictable as they should be to start with. And then regarding the predictability of the aligner material, I have talked to several of the OrthoFX doctors’ team to explain to me exactly how the product is and what makes it different from the other products. And that part, I think Holly will be able to break it down and tell you about the material that we are using right now, and the generation of the material being used which is so much more advanced as compared to the previous aligner company that I was using. So it makes the whole process such a win-win situation by every means necessary and the patient really enjoys it.
In terms of teams, my team has been working with me for a little while and they understand the whole mission, and it’s really not that much different from whatever work that we were doing with the previous teams before. It’s just that it’s so much easier now. It just reduces all the added weight from the things we were doing before with the team and it just makes the whole process that much easier for you. So my team is actually very excited about it. Everyone gets to try the clear aligners too. One day Holly came in and just scanned all my staff and now they are all wearing the clear aligners just so that they can actually speak to the patient and show them what it looks like. Just forget about everything else, it’s just so much fun; it’s fun for the doctor, fun for the office and clearly fun for the patient too as they are so much in control.
So now it’s just one of the best things to have happened to my office since its inception, and this has been a fantastic experience! So thank you for actually having me as part of the OrthoFX team and as a provider, and I look forward to many more years with this great product.
Holly Bledsoe Bennett: Thank you so much. I think the greatest compliment that you have actually ever given us has been your referral of other providers to OrthoFX. So it’s always a pleasure to work with your team, getting all that entire workflow solidified at your practice and getting patients very quickly into treatment very quickly, so we really appreciate you, your time and your team.
Dr. Edly Destine: Thank you, we all appreciate you too.
Holly Bledsoe Bennett: And here is a clue that you actually gave to us Dr. Destine:
“If people like you they’ll listen to you,
But if they trust you
They will do business with you.”
-Zig Ziglar
Dr. Edly Destine: So that’s exactly what’s happening today and that’s exactly what’s going to continue happening at my office. As long as there are people like you, they listen to you, they trust you and they want to do business with you. And I think OrthoFX has engaged even more of a trust relationship with my patients by putting them in control. The truth is that it becomes a trustless relationship because they don’t need to trust you. They are in control. So it just makes it so great, it really does. OrthoFX is a great addition to my office.
Holly Bledsoe Bennett: So again, to learn more, we are very tech-savvy here, we like our QR code. So please scan the QR code provided on the screen to fix an appointment with us, and one of us will let you know what kind of experience it takes to become our provider. It’s seamless, it’s very easy and we can get you on board today and you can start submitting cases today itself as we can get all that done very quickly.
Q & A
So we are now going to take a few minutes for a Q & A, so Julie, if you could lead this for us?
Julie Yeomans: Hi. This is Julie from the Marketing department. Sorry, we are a couple of minutes over, but do you guys have a few minutes for some questions?
Holly Bledsoe Bennett: Absolutely.
Julie Yeomans: Great. The first question is for Elena. ‘How often are you calling the patients if we opt-in for the TC support to help close the patient?’
Elena Popova: That’s a great question Julie. The goal of each reach-out is to book a consultation with the patient. Typically, if the patient doesn’t work in a meeting with us within two weeks or so, that’s when we reach out back to the office and let them know. It could have happened due to some wrong information being submitted, or maybe the patient doesn’t have that much of interest anymore as originally thought, but it’s just that we have a set-up of a 2-week follow-up and then a continuous follow-up with the patient.
Julie Yeomans: Great, thanks Elena. Holly, I think this is for you. ‘It’s unclear how a same-day starts work for using your services’.
Holly Bledsoe Bennett: Absolutely. So if you would like to do same-day work starts, we will work with your team to walk a patient through the entire process right there in the chair. FXPay pre-check takes about 30 seconds and we can process that patient very quickly. So a little bit of time understanding your workflow and we are super flexible to be able to do a same-day start. It’s not a problem, we love that.
Julie Yeomans: Awesome. April, I think this one’s for you. How does the insurance payment to our office work?
April Womack: Yes. So here at OrthoFX, we are a fair biller so as we do the billing for the practice, the actual payment will be sent directly to your office.
Julie: Awesome. Thank you. Dr. Destine, this question is for you. ‘How difficult was it to integrate OrthoFX into your practice?’
Dr. Edly Destine: It wasn’t difficult at all. OrthoFX was basically a continuation of what I was doing before, except that with OrthoFX my workload just basically decreased a whole lot. It made everything so much easier as the scanner that I am using right now is combined with OrthoFX, so I can send all the information straight to OrthoFX. This is unlike before when I had to do physical impressions for Invisalign, so that stage has been removed and it has now become seamless.
Julie: Great, thank you. Elena, another question for you. ‘How do you keep in the loop on the progress of converting a patient and the conversations happening?’
Elena Popova: Our communication with the patients isn’t available in the portal per seat OrthoFX; however, you can always check the status of each patient in the portal, whether they have purchased or not. And then if you want to know exactly what has happened, or what the status of the patient is, then you can always call the customer service line. We will update you. Everybody has been trained to read that information and of course, the regional manager can do weekly or monthly checkups with you and report back about the status of each patient.
Julie Yeomans: Great. Holly, I am having trouble accessing the chat and the other direct questions I got.
Holly Bledsoe Bennett: There are a couple of other questions about what is the deal. ‘What is the payment plan? What is the doctor’s reimbursement?’
What I am going to have you do is if we can reach out to you directly, we would love to show you what our doctor reimbursement looks like and our doctor payment. We can go through that. You always price the patient, we will never clue a patient. So that’s a little bit of the story there. Dr. Destine has always dealt with this with the patient, depending upon the complexity and what works for your area. So I would love to be able to address that one-on-one.
Dr. Mora, you have definitely got some fans out in the world. Dr. Mora does run our clinical team of dentists and orthodontists and she has been fantastic. We are getting a lot of compliments right now on just the collaborations that you have with all our doctors on their treatment plans. So I wanted to note that as well.
Julie Yeomans: Great, so I don’t want to go too much over the time limit. We have our email here for direct communication and we would love to talk to all the new doctors who have joined the webinar today. And we will individually address the questions that came through the chat as well.
April is also putting up her email here as well. And we will do a follow-up email with everyone who has registered for the webinar with a replay of this program. I think we should also go ahead and also include a replay of the FXPay webinar that we had before as it goes into more details of the program as well.
I sincerely want to thank the whole team here for this webinar. What a great webinar! I think this is one of the best that we have had, and I want to thank everyone and wish everyone a great weekend ahead.
