BD Silverman Consulting (BDSC) is one of the leading consulting organizations in the country focused solely on the Dental Benefits Industry. Bruce has spent nearly 40 years in the industry working at companies such as American Dental Examiners, US Dental Plans, Group Health Inc., Delta Dental of New Jersey, and for the last 5 years, as CEO of BDSC.
Customer Engagement
SUCCESS!
1. Beam Benefits (formerly known as Beam Dental) has raised over $208 million in venture capital funding. In 2017, before the Series C round (just under $11M had been raised to this point), Kleiner Perkins hired BDSC to perform an internal review of current operations and the business plan prior to making their investment. In summary, KP “didn’t know what they didn’t know” and was looking for a knowledge expert to render an opinion as to whether their long-term plan was realistic and achievable.
BDSC completed the engagement and provided a detailed report to KP. And, as they say, the rest is history.
2. Beam Benefits also hired BDSC in 2021 to facilitate discussions and provide knowledge transfer with their internal operations and service teams regarding dental insurance industry administration / servicing of their policies. As a young and up and coming organization in the industry, Beam was looking for some grounding and a forum for its leaders to expand their knowledge. Areas of discussion focused on “What does great look like?”
· Claims processing, customer service, enrollment, and other operations areas
· New client implementation and renewal processes
· Organizational structural designs and frameworks used in the industry
· Capabilities of the various adjudication systems being used by others
A long-serving Chief Operating Officer announced her retirement, and the CEO of Delta Dental of Oklahoma requested an independent analysis to determine if the organization was optimally structured to achieve the three-year strategic plan. And if not, what changes need to be made.
The engagement consisted of the following:
1. Interviewing fifteen key staff members.
2. Reviewing the current organizational structure, job descriptions, experience levels, and skill sets of key employees.
3. Reviewing workflows, systems edit tables, outsourcing arrangements, performance reports, and established benchmarks.
4. Identify any opportunities where the efficiency and quality of processes and services provided could be improved.
5. Identify any opportunities where administrative cost reduction could be achieved.
BDSC successfully completed the engagement and produced a report which included twenty-three overall findings and recommendations.
DentiScope has created a smartphone attachment device that enables individuals to take quality intraoral images of their entire mouth, individual teeth, and periodontal tissue (gums). They are an early-stage company and have retained BDSC to assist in raising funds during their Seed Round.
EDI Health Group (EHG) / DentalXChange
EHG/DXC created a Credentialing Software Application called DDS Enroll which was used by dental offices to submit information to dental payers. The payers at that time received the information via paper or fax as there was no vehicle for them to receive the information electronically.
BDSC was retained to do a deep review/analysis of the application and then establish the requirements for the DDS Enroll Payer Module, enabling providers to send and payers receive all required credentialing and re-credentialing documents electronically. In addition, BDSC was asked to develop the processes and procedures that would need to be built into the application for the payers’ internal credentialing application review and approval processes, including dashboard layouts and analytics. Lastly, BDSC was asked to assist in creating the go-to-market and pricing strategies and approach.
As a result of this BDSC engagement, EHG/DXC launched DDS Enroll to the Payer Community and has successfully onboarded many payers for dentist credentialing.
BDSC was retained by HealthPlan Services (HPS, later acquired by Wipro) to provide consulting support for their business development initiatives, including potential client networking opportunities for named target client accounts.
BDSC assisted HPS on this initiative from early 2017 – through 2019, bringing numerous prospects and business opportunities to the table.
Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey
BDSC was retained to work with the Horizon Project Lead and Project Team to develop the product concept for a stand-alone, value based, dental plan and help assess Horizon’s return on investment with the longer-term objective of aligning this product with their value based medical plans across all markets.
In performing the services, BDSC needed to make sure that the new Dental Plan achieved the following:
• Improve quality through improved outcomes
• Improve the member experience
• Reduce the costs associated with healthcare
• Establish a competitive price point at or below Horizon’s other managed/non-managed products
• Outline the requirements for Horizon to operationalize such a plan from TPA and Horizon internal perspectives
• Anticipate uptake of such a plan across all markets
• The ability of this plan to differentiate and sustain the differentiation of Horizon from its competitors
In addition, BDSC was asked to work with the Team to develop a strategic plan to integrate dental data into medical data repositories for reporting and other analytic purposes.
BDSC delivered to Horizon a comprehensive, multi-phased strategic plan that included:
1. Three potential new product designs
2. New Procedure Code Fees to support these plans with an outcomes success component
3. Requirements for procedures and services that dental offices would need to establish such as extended hours, documented plans for off-hour emergencies, specific Provider to Hygienist rations, amongst others.
4. New dentist Performance Measurements
5. An avenue for customer experience feedback
6. Administrative simplification features
7. Teledentistry and the Engagement of both dentists and physicians to electronically share patient information and be able to both contribute to and accesses a new, consolidated “top-level” patient health summary
MoO was experiencing extensive growth and forecasts the trend line will continue for the next several years. BDSC was retained to evaluate:
1. Whether the Claims Unit is properly structured currently to accommodate such growth?
2. What improvements can be made to the current processes and procedures to improve both the overall operations as well as the customer experience?
3. What Cost Savings opportunities exist where funds can be repurposed to improve products, benefits, & /or services?
BDSC completed the engagement in one hundred days and provided recommendations in the areas of Efficiency, Quality, Customer Experience and Satisfaction, Administrative Cost Reduction, and Claims Utilization Costs.
Northeast Delta Dental (NEDD) engaged BDSC to assist in the evaluation of a provider value-based performance software application which they were considering subscribing to for their clients and participating dental network. In addition, BDSC was asked to determine whether there was a strategic fit with a subsidiary risk assessment company, PreViser.
BDSC performed an analysis on:
1. The Strategic and Functional Review of analytics application.
2. How it could potentially be integrated into the Preiser risk assessment tool application.
BDSC reviewed the software application and met with members of the senior leadership team to discuss their strategic goals and objectives for the software and provided recommendations accordingly.
ToothPic
In 2017, ToothPic and their parent company OralEye, both based in Ireland, created a Teledentistry application and accompanying “virtual” dental network to offer to dentists and dental payers. ToothPic hired BDSC to:
1. Develop a white paper outlining the business case for Teledentistry and specifically OralEye products in the health and dental industry
2. Attend the National Association of Dental Plans (NADP) and other such conferences to make introductions and help facilitate meetings.
3. Perform business development activities across BDSC clients and network.
4. Assist in raising venture capital.
BDSC successfully engaged many stakeholders in the industry and acquired funding from two dental payers. After several years of growth, ToothPic was acquired by Quip.
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Health Plan
UPMC believed that the inclusion and scope of dental benefits in their Medicare Advantage plan is a key decision factor for potential new members as well as for existing members when renewing their coverage. As such, UPMC continues to look to attract healthy members and/or members whereby improved dental care can lead to improvements in overall health and related health care costs, all while achieving profitable growth. UPMC retained BDSC to accomplish the following:
1. Complete a competitive analysis on the organization’s Dental Medicare Advantage (“MC”) Plans, as well as their Special Needs Plans (“SNP”); and
2. Deliver recommendations, that if implemented, would make UPMC’s benefit plans more attractive and competitive in the marketplace and result in achieving their desired growth and profitability goals.
Due to the tight CMS timelines for filing plan changes for the new year, the analysis needed to be completed in a maximum of 90 days, which BDSC met! Eight (8) MA competitors were analyzed, and recommendations were made on various on several product benefit features, improvements on access to care, marketing strategies, and cost management.