Why Financial Coordinators Burn Out — And What To Do About It

While most patients might not realize it, their dentist’s business would grind to a halt without a critical (and often underappreciated!) role operating behind the scenes: the financial coordinator — or the FC, as we’ll refer to them here. The back-office work that these individuals do is essential in keeping the entire dental practice running. But for a number of reasons which we’ll get into, FCs are also at high risk of burnout — a concern that most dental practices don’t have the resources to manage. 

In this article, we’ll cover the causes of FC burnout, the impact this has on their dental practice’s business, and the ways in which Wieldly’s AI-powered revenue management software can offer FCs the tools they need to overcome burnout.

The Issues Causing Burnout For Financial Coordinators

Financial Coordinators Are Constantly Underwater

The role of a financial coordinator encompasses a number of key functions, including: 

• Confirming whether a patient has insurance coverage

• Submitting claims to various insurance companies using the proper codes unique to each provider

• Calling insurance companies to sort out any issues with filed claims (a time-consuming process that involves waiting on hold for long periods of time)

• Tracking each insurance claim and associated payout from the insurance company 

• Coordinating with patients if they need to pay out-of-pocket (including setting up and tracking payment plans) 

• And much more!

As if juggling those responsibilities weren’t enough, FCs also need to do a serious amount of information-gathering and manual data entry at each step of the process. The result is that FCs are often underwater from the moment they start work in the morning, and they never manage to dig themselves out, no matter how much they try.

Financial Coordinators Have No Time To Be Proactive

When an FC starts their workday, they might have a list of items that they plan to get through. But most days, FCs end up having to react to high-urgency tasks that come across their desk — which can often take precedence over other work they had planned to do. 

By the time an FC finishes firefighting critical issues and tackles their normal day-to-day work, they often have no time to do the proactive, strategic planning that could improve revenue management for their dental practice. Critically, they also aren’t able to dedicate time to patient or insurance relationship management — which is a meaningful loss to the practice overall.

Financial Coordinators Have to Work Across Disconnected Systems

On top of the feeling that there is never enough time in the day, financial coordinators also have to work harder just to manage the numerous tools and workflows required for their role. Each dental practice tends to have their own suite of tools they use — from Patient Management Systems to payment processors to old-fashioned paper notes (and much more!) — and often, none of these tools are integrated with each other. FCs also often need to manage their workflows through handmade processes, like manually tracking every claim and payment in a spreadsheet. 

This setup makes it hard for FCs to easily scale their work and more efficiently coordinate with patients and insurers. In addition, it makes it hard for dental practices to hire additional FCs, since the role is so specialized to each practice. That puts even more of a burden on each individual FC at the practice — increasing the likelihood that they might burnout. 

How Wieldy Helps Mitigate Burnout for Financial Coordinators

The Wieldy platform was built for Financial Coordinators: it’s meant to serve as a trusty co-pilot for all the tasks that go into an FC’s day. And it specifically helps overcome some of the main factors that contribute to burnout. 

Wieldy’s AI Reduces The Need for Manual Work 

One of the reasons that FCs are always underwater is that they need to gather information across multiple sources and then do repeat, manual data entry to keep everything current. With Wieldy, that manual work is greatly reduced. Through the power of AI, Wieldy is able to pull data out of insurance carrier websites and PDFs and input it all into one single platform for FCs to manage.

Wieldy’s Tooling Keeps FCs Organized

FCs can create to-do lists in the Wieldy platform, as well as set reminders for specific dates. This allows them to bring everything they need to do into one platform, listed alongside all the information about particular payments and patients. With Wieldy as their copilot, FCs don’t need to manage as many manual workflows, freeing up mental energy and time for more proactive work. 

Wieldy Layers On Top of Existing Systems

Best of all, Wieldy works with the existing tools and software already in use by a dental practice, consolidating information across systems and bringing everything an FC needs to action on into one place. This makes it easier for the dental practice as a whole to function, and can also make onboarding and hiring additional FCs an easier process.

Conclusion

The role of an FC is both multi-faceted and critical — so the risk of a FC burning out could potentially lead to a dental practice’s back office grinding to a halt. To help manage that concern, there’s Wieldy: an all-in-one software solution that uses the power of AI make the lives of FCs so much easier. 

If you’re interested in learning more about Wieldy, sign up for the waitlist here and a member of the team will reach out with information.