Aspire Oral Surgery scales up with DCS: An aspiring dental case study

9 minute read

Aspire Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery had big ambitions: expand into new locations, serve more patients, and build a practice designed for long-term success. Clinically, they were ready. Operationally, they were growing fast. But their office systems couldn’t keep up with their growth. That’s when they turned to DCS.

This is the true story of an oral surgery practice who prepared to open a third location, but their leadership team faced a common challenge for growing OMS practices: their billing paperwork was increasing faster than their internal capacity to manage it.

That OMS practice is our client-partner, Aspire Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery of Michigan City, Indiana, who was happy to share their success story. We spoke to Sarah Christ, Aspire OMS’s Finance Manager, to get the full scoop.

If you want to grow your dental business but don’t have the staff or bandwidth for expansion, then you’ll want to hear how Aspire OMS hopped over their growth hurdles with the help of our RCM services.

You can download the full case study here (no email address required)

Key takeaways from Aspire OMS’ success story with DCS:

Scalable billing enables growth. Daily claims filing and consistent follow-up eliminated timely filing denials.
Outsourcing stabilizes operations. DCS improved collections while relieving the dental team’s paperwork burden.
Streamlined systems drive sustainability. Specialized RCM workflows and processes outperformed staffing alone.

Picture this: An overwhelmed 1-woman OMS billing team with a mountain of work to climb

On paper, Aspire Oral Surgery was thriving. Strong production. High demand. Expansion plans in motion.

In reality, just one lone insurance coordinator was responsible for all the dental billing across two locations. She was handling it all on her own: dental and medical claims, pre-determinations, pre-treatment estimates, submissions, appeals, and follow-ups.

Adding a third location would only intensify the paperwork and the performance pressure. Sarah Christ, the finance manager of Aspire OMS, saw trouble on the horizon:

“She was doing all the billing for two offices, and we were growing to add a third. To have one person doing all of it while also doing pre-determinations and also pre-treatment estimates for dental and medical — it was just piling up.”

Production growth can quickly become a liability when administrative processes aren’t able to scale alongside it. It’s great to have more patients and more revenue, but if you don’t have enough administrative support to sustain that growth, it’s going to have a negative impact on your staff, your patients, and your dental business.

For Aspire, the cracks began to show in their accounts receivable.

As Aspire OMS started to grow, so did their challenges

In November 2020, their accounts receivable (A/R) over 30 days had crept up to 75% of their overall A/R, and timely filing was becoming an issue.

This wasn’t just a numbers problem, it was also a human one. The emotional strain on Aspire’s billing staff of one was mounting, and leadership knew that simply “working harder” wasn’t a viable solution. As the number of claims multiplied, so did the risk of errors, missed revenue, compliance exposure, and burnout.

Imagine it: As soon as she got a batch of new claims submitted, she had to appeal previously denied claims, then get back to submitting new ones, then circle back to her appeals pile. That would be a huge, never-ending workload for one person at one location, and she was doing this for 2 locations—and soon, there would be 3!

Stacey Westbrooke, Aspire OMS’ practice administrator, saw the toll this was taking on their one-woman insurance billing team, and it was disheartening. It was high time to bring more hands on deck.

What they tried first: Hiring more staff. (That should fix it, right?)

It was clear that Aspire Oral Surgery needed more team members to help with the massive and growing administrative workload.

Aspire OMS had to get a larger insurance billing team ASAP, and they started by building their own in-house. But like many healthcare organizations, Aspire’s hiring efforts ran headfirst into the nationwide staffing shortage, high turnover, and lengthy training curves.

“As you grow, it becomes difficult to keep hiring people who check every box while also filling your needs as quickly as possible.” —Inc. Magazine

The pool of trained and qualified healthcare personnel is shrinking, while simultaneously, the demand for experienced staff is increasing. Still, Stacey Westbrooke was able to hire more team members, and while it helped to spread out the workload, they still struggled to keep up due to the practice’s fragmented and inefficient billing workflows.

Stacey was already dealing with staffing issues and high turnover, so hiring, training, managing, and paying an even larger insurance team was adding more challenges than it was eliminating.

At the same time, the teams at Aspire were navigating:

A practice buyout
A practice rebrand
Pandemic disruptions
Acquiring that third location

When the added team members didn’t resolve the billing backlog, they realized they needed better systems, not just more hands.

What they tried that finally worked: Sarah and Stacey from Aspire OMS called DCS

That’s when Sarah and Practice Administrator Stacey Westbrooke reached out to DCS and learned more about what a full-service dental billing company can do to support their business.

But the leaders at Aspire Oral Surgery had questions and some doubts about making changes.

Questions Aspire needed answered before outsourcing their insurance billing

Where were their practice’s workflow bottlenecks?
Which billing shortcuts were smart and which were compliance risks?
How could they simplify their insurance billing without sacrificing accuracy or control?

Along with helpful answers, what they found in DCS was an OMS-specialty billing team who understands the nuances of oral surgery billing. Aspire initially partnered with DCS for core insurance billing services, including:

Insurance claims submission
Appeals management
Insurance payment posting
A/R management

After their questions were answered and DCS joined in…

The relief to the team and the practice was immediate. Claims were filed daily. Appeals were handled consistently. Timely filing denials disappeared. They even added automated Patient Collections software to their suite.

Sarah Christ explains:

“We did not blink an eye when we found out that DCS also had a patient billing software that could piggyback on top of the insurance billing services. We know that we can leave it to DCS to handle the filing of the claim. And we know that with our team working with you and us working with our patients, it’s just going to be an overall pleasant experience.”

Thanks to DCS’s daily claims filings, write-offs due to timely filing denials are no longer an issue. Aspire banks every cent it’s owed instead of leaving money on the table for insurance companies to keep.

Plus, Aspire can add that third office without overwhelming their in-house staff, who are now hyper-focused on providing an amazing patient experience.

The 4 big wins for DCS and Aspire OMS

DCS has now been partnered with Aspire Oral Surgery since 2020, and we have been honored to be a part of their growth.

Here are 4 big wins we made happen with Aspire:

Timely filing denials eliminated. Daily, disciplined workflows ensured nothing slipped through the cracks.
Improved collections and cash flow. Aspire captured revenue that previously would have been delayed or lost.
Reduced strain on internal staff. Through improved processes and outsourced remote support, the in-house team could focus on patients instead of paperwork.
Confidence to open and support a third location. Growth no longer increased office chaos. Daily operations could remain calm, controlled, and sustainable—and be scalable.

With the Aspire team focused on their patients and DCS focused on collections, success was inevitable and ongoing.

Was DCS a quick fix or a solid solution for Aspire Oral Surgery?

Today, Aspire Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery operates three profitable, smoothly run locations, with DCS managing the billing process for all of them. The partnership that started in 2020 was built for the long haul.

Sarah sums it up best:

“Billing can be time-consuming, and it can get complicated and muddy. The knowledge they all have at DCS is just top-notch—and we love it. We love everyone that we’ve had to work with, and we’ve never had an issue. It’s just clear and easy. Which is good, because a lot of times, billing is not easy.”

Ready for some real numbers? See Aspire’s collections in dollars and percentages on pages 4 and 8 of the case study PDF you can download here (no email required).

DCS can make growth easier for your oral surgery practice

To recap:

Growth requires a scalable billing infrastructure
Staffing alone can’t solve systemic OMS billing challenges
Strategic outsourcing protects cash flow, office culture, and patient experience

Aspire Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery didn’t scale by pushing their team harder or accepting billing chaos and write-offs as the cost of growth. They scaled by recognizing a hard truth early:

Ambitious practice expansion demands a billing infrastructure that can keep up.

By partnering with the DCS OMS Business Unit, Aspire gained more than outsourced billing support. They also scored:

Predictable, disciplined insurance workflows
A safeguard against compliance risk and revenue leakage
The operational calm needed to open—and sustain—a third location
A long-term partner invested in their practice’s success, not just their claims

Book a free 30-minute consultation with DCS to explore how our OMS-specific revenue cycle management services can support your next phase of growth without sacrificing your team, your patients, or your cash flow.

Dental revenue resources from Dental Claim Support