Challenge:
As Vice President of Revenue Cycle Management at Imagen Dental Partners, Sam Champagnie oversees RCM operations for a rapidly growing dental partnership organization (DPO) of 130 practices across 17 states. With consistent growth in excess of 20% and same-store sales growth at 2 to 3 times the national average for general practice dentistry, Imagen required a scalable, automated revenue cycle solution that could eliminate billing backlogs and unmask "dark" A/R without inflating administrative overhead.
Rapid enterprise growth revealed that traditional, manual collection workflows could not scale effectively across new acquisitions.
- Heavy Patient Financial Mix: Patients account for over 40% of total A/R balances across Imagen's practices. Relying on local front-desk teams to manually call and send statements to thousands of patients created severe capacity limits that couldn't keep pace with Imagen’s rapid growth.
- Audit Reveals Inconsistent Billing: Imagen’s pre-acquisition diligence process revealed a significant billing opportunity for practices. While 100% of practices reported to bill patients monthly, audits showed 60% billed infrequently, and 100% billed only partial balances.
- High Volume of "Dark A/R": Diligent analysis revealed that over 20% of Imagen’s patient A/R was completely "blocked", meaning that patients received zero billing engagement due to outdated contact data or other location-specific factors. These balances sat un-billed, aging quietly into bad debt.
Solution:
Sam Champagnie made automating patient-portion billing through Pearly an absolute, non-negotiable business standard across all 130 locations.
- Enterprise Standardization: Standardized the billing software and outreach workflows across all practices while preserving clinical autonomy for partner doctors.
- Structured Change Management: Equipped front-office teams with scripting, training, and role-playing to ensure smooth patient communication during the transition from paper to digital billing.
- Root-Cause A/R Diagnosis: Leveraged Pearly’s data to move beyond surface-level 90+ day A/R metrics. Imagen diagnosed root causes of blocked A/R and deployed targeted recovery strategies.
Impact:
By layering automated digital outreach on top of standardized workflows, Imagen transformed its patient billing performance while protecting staff time, cash flow, and EBITDA.
This case study draws from the conversation held in the Becker’s Dental webinar: The Multi-Location A/R Framework: Grow Revenue, Not You Front Office – Watch the full session on-demand here.
