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- Hello everyone, and
thank you for tuning in

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to the Becker's Healthcare podcast.

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My name is Mariah Mohammed,

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and I'm thrilled to be joined
today by Paul Bernard, CEO

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of inside Desks.

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Paul, thank you so much
for joining us today.

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It's always a pleasure
speaking with you. How are you?

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- I'm well, thanks Mariah.
Thanks for having me.

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Excited to be here. Yeah,

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- Yeah, of course.

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And to get us started,

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would you mind please
introducing yourself,

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sharing a bit about your
role and organization?

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- Sure. Thank you Mariah.

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Uh, Paul Bernard, I'm
the CEO of Inside Desk.

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Um, been with Inside Desk
since, uh, late 2022,

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um, and we sell RCM Optimization

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and Automation software, uh, to DSOs.

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Prior to that, uh, I've been
in dental since about 2017.

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I spent almost five years at
Smile Brands running their,

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their RCM and a few other
different operations there, um,

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and was also Chief Operating
Officer at Dental Exchange.

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- Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Thank you so much for sharing.

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And to jump right into
today's conversation,

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the first question I wanted to ask you is,

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what specifically in dental
did we learn from the change

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healthcare data breach?

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- So, o obviously I
think the, the importance

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of effective security
processes is the, the thing

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that will jump out at, at most people,

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but I'm gonna, I'm gonna
actually leave that portion

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of the topic for, for other
experts in cybersecurity.

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I'd rather talk about it

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and think about it from an
operational perspective.

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Um, I think this,

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this event is a really important lesson in

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enterprise risk management.

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So the idea that proactively
assessing areas of risk

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and doing scenario planning

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and having mitigation
plans in place should,

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should be something that,
that we do as an industry

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and that DSOs and, and other,
uh, providers do all the time.

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So, I mean, simply put, um,

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and maybe to use a football
analogy, we, we have

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to be audible ready as an industry.

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We have to understand our blind spots,

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and then we have to build in
redundancies and mitigations.

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So, you know, those of us
that, that were in DSOs

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during covid got a firsthand
lesson in, in risk management.

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You know, for example, the supply chain

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for PPE got very tight

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and practices who used

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to buy all their supplies from
a single source suddenly had

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to figure out how to multi-source

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and, and do it very quickly.

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That was a very expensive lesson.

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So the change breach in my view, um, is a,

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is a another opportunity for us to learn.

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And quite honestly,

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it was a fairly predictable
surprise in my view.

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We, we could have predicted
this was going to happen.

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- Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you so much

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for sharing that take.

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And, um, now, now that you
talked about blind spots,

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where are the blind spots in
dental that you can share?

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- Yeah, great. Great question.

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I think first off, I, I really,
you know, as an industry

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and, and personally for me,
I have to give full credit

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to the teams at Dental Exchange

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and Vine for, for stepping into the void.

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And, and they worked
ungodly hours, um, on behalf

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of the industry as a whole.

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So kudos goes to them.

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That said, I'd like to see
us as an industry learn

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to get better going forward when it comes

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to understanding the risks
associated with single sourcing

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and the importance of process redundancy.

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I think we have to think about
the, the end-to-end system

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as a whole and,

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and ask ourselves, really,
why is it not as simple

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as being able to flip a switch from

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one clearinghouse to another?

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Now that may be, you know, sort of a, a,

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a gross oversimplification,

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but it, I don't think it needs to be.

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I also think as an industry, um,

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we've got a blind spot on
system interoperability.

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So the ability for, uh,

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and ease of which systems
can, can safely, quickly,

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and effectively talk to each other.

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You know, on the medical side,

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there's the HL seven standard,
which has been in place

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for a very long time.

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It's not great, but at
least it recognizes the need

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for the ease and speed
of, of data sharing.

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Uh, among, um, IT, and,

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and HIT en, uh, entities in
the, in the medical space,

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we have nothing like that in dental.

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I think the last point I'd make is,

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is really from the perspective of, uh,

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A DSO blind spot to, to watch out for,

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and that is, um, better
advocacy for easy access

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to its core RCM data.

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In the end, you know, when
something like this happens, um,

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it's really the docs

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and the patients who ultimately
get impacted the most.

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And so I think DSOs, um,
really have to be advocates

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for their ability to get
their hands on their data,

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um, as much as possible.

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- Yeah. Yeah, that's
very, very interesting.

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I'm glad you are aware
of these blind spots.

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Um, and, and being mindful of them,

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what are Inside Desk solutions

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and how were you able
to help your clients?

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- Well, so on the product
side, um, inside Desk is,

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is purpose built to automate
the ingestion of unpaid

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or open insurance claims from the PMSs

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and match it to payer status
and adjudication data.

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So, uh, for A DSO, think of
it as a central hub regardless

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of your PMS and your payer, et cetera.

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But equally as important for
our business from a cultural,

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uh, perspective and how we operate, um,

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it's really important to
understand how we behave.

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And when we say that we're,
we're insiders, it's a word

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that, that we use to describe ourselves

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and our customers, it really,
it's got nothing to do

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with having a catchphrase,

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but it has everything to
do with how we behave.

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And so, uh, we take our DSO
clients' results personally,

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um, and being an insider
drives every action we take.

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So the, the first thing for us to do,

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when the breach occurred,
the first thing we did was

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to make sure our clients
understood all the possible

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outcomes, uh, with respect

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to payment delays so they could prepare.

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Um, and we, you know, when it
happened, we were proactively,

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our customer success team was
proactively reaching out, uh,

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very quickly to, to customers,
um, one, to, to sort

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of give them some perspective,

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but two, to help them start
thinking about what this means.

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Um, and I'd say secondly, the, the,

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because of the analytics that
we run, uh, so, you know,

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analyzing the data on the backend,

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we could help our clients
understand all the possible range

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of payment delays outside
of normal processing times.

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Um, we also really understand our users,

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and so we very quickly
put in product messaging

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and alerts, uh, in the
right places in our product

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to make sure that they would understand

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how the breach was impacting,
uh, what they were seeing.

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- Thank you, Paul, for explaining

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that very important information.

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How does Insight desks
fit into this picture?

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- Well, we're, um, we're data agnostic.

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Um, which means as a business,
we, we strive to capture

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our DSOs RCM data, regardless
of the PMS that they're using,

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and also, regardless of the payer,

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that their contracted risk.

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And, and also regardless of
the method of submission,

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whether it's paper or digital, et cetera.

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So all of our, our DSO clients
use multiple PMS systems

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and have more than one clearing house.

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Um, and the truth is that RCM
data can be obtained from,

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you know, we can get it
from a variety of sources.

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You can get it on paper, you
can get it over the phone

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electronically, directly from payers, uh,

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from clearinghouses, et cetera.

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So our goal is really to
provide our DSOs with a comp

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as complete a picture, uh, as we can.

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- Wonderful. Wonderful.

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Well, I wanna thank you so much,
Paul, for sharing your time

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and insights with us today,
as well as inside desk

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for sponsoring today's content.

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To our listeners, thank
you so much for joining us,

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and please make sure to check
out other Becker's podcast.

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Have a wonderful rest of your day,

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and thank you again, Paul.

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- Thank you.