Remote front office for dental practices
Your front desk is with a patient. The phone is still ringing.
We run the front office work your team never gets to: phones and scheduling, benefits verification, claims and collections, handled by named agents who work your hours, in the systems you already run, on your call flow.
The problem
None of this is a people problem. It's a capacity problem.
Your team is good. There are simply more tasks in a day than there are hours at the desk.
Calls reach voicemail
The busiest hours are the ones nobody can answer. A new patient who gets voicemail calls the next practice on the list.
Verifications happen the morning of
Benefits checked in a hurry produce surprises at checkout, and surprises at checkout produce write-offs.
Claims age quietly
Nothing alerts you when a claim sits unpaid. It just stops being collectable, one month at a time.
What we do
Three departments, taken together or one at a time
Front desk & scheduling
Calls answered, appointments booked, recall lists actually worked.
Read more →Benefits verification
Full breakdowns entered days before the visit, not the morning of.
Read more →Billing & collections
Claims submitted, payments posted, unpaid balances chased before they age out.
Read more →Not sure which you need?
Most practices start with front desk coverage and add the rest once the schedule settles.
Why outsource
The cost of a front desk seat is not the wage
A job ad says twenty two dollars an hour. What leaves the practice account is considerably more, and most of it has nothing to do with the person doing the work.
No payroll to run
No employer taxes, no workers' compensation premium, no filings. One invoice a month.
No benefits package
No health contribution, no retirement match, no paid holidays and no accrued vacation.
No paid downtime
You pay for coverage, not for sick days, lunch breaks or a slow Tuesday afternoon.
No recruiting cycle
No job posting, no interviews, no training weeks, and no starting again when they leave.
No desk, no equipment
No workstation, no extra phone line, no equipment bought for a part time hire.
Scale without rehiring
Move from part time to full time, or add a department, at the start of any month.
One part time front desk hire
Northcrest, front desk part time
The in-house figure is an illustration, using a $22 hourly wage plus roughly 22 percent for employer taxes, insurance and benefits. Your own numbers will differ.
Services
Three departments, priced and staffed separately
Take one, take all three. Each is its own rate and its own weekly hours, so you're never paying for coverage you don't use.
Front desk & scheduling
Nobody reaches voicemail at two in the afternoon, and the recall list stops being the thing that never gets done. You choose the window your agent is on the line, and one agent comfortably carries about 100 calls a day, inbound and outbound combined.
- Inbound calls and new patient intake
- Booking, rescheduling and waitlist management
- Appointment confirmations and reminders
- Recall and reactivation lists, worked weekly
- Voicemail triage and message routing
Benefits verification
A full breakdown of what the plan actually covers, entered in the system you already run, before the patient sits down, so nobody is guessing at checkout. This is a full time seat, because breakdowns have to stay ahead of the schedule every single day.
- Full breakdowns, not simple eligibility checks
- Frequencies and service history
- Downgrades, waiting periods and annual maximums
- Entered directly into the system your practice already runs
- Exceptions flagged back to your team, not buried
Billing & collections
Claims go out clean, payments get posted, and someone chases what hasn't been paid. Unpaid balances sit with insurers and with patients, and the longer they sit the less of that money you ever see. Someone has to work them in order of age, every week.
- Claim submission with the right attachments
- Posting payments from insurer statements
- Chasing unpaid claims by age, before they expire
- Patient balance calls and payment plans
- A weekly report on what moved and what didn't
The operations behind it
The part most services skip, and the reason coverage stays consistent when someone is out.
- A call flow written around how your practice answers
- A verification template and a one-page SOP
- Weekly quality scoring on a sample of calls
- A named backup trained on the same documents
We bring no systems of our own. Your agent works in whatever your practice already runs:
See what this costs
Rates are published, by department and by weekly hours.
How it works
Onboarding, coverage, and numbers at the end of every day
One week to set it up properly, then live, with a named agent and a report you can check.
We listen before we answer
We sit with how your front office runs today, then build what your agent will work from: your call flow, your verification template, your reporting format, your SOP. Included, not billed.
A named agent on your line
They work your hours in the systems you already run, following your flow. A named backup covers sick days and holidays, so coverage has no gaps you have to staff around.
You see the numbers daily
A short handoff at close of business and a summary each week: calls handled, appointments booked, verifications completed, anything escalated to your team.
Availability
We work your hours, not ours
You tell us when your front office needs covering and we staff to it: early openings, late afternoons, lunch gaps, Saturdays. Coverage is built around your schedule, in your time zone, and it moves when your schedule moves.
Any US time zone
Pacific through Eastern. Your local hours are the hours we staff, and daylight saving shifts don't change your coverage.
Extended and Saturday cover
Open early or run a Saturday clinic? Say so and we schedule for it, with the same agent on an extended window.
Named backup, always
Every account has a second trained agent on the same call flow, so sick days and holidays don't become your problem.
About us
We came out of a dental service center, not a call center
Northcrest was built by people who spent years inside a service center supporting US dental practices, on the phones, in quality assurance, and running the floor of a 30 to 42 person operation.
That is the whole difference. A general virtual assistant learns your practice as they go. We arrive already knowing what a downgrade is, why a frequency matters, and what happens to a schedule when confirmations stop going out on Thursday.
It's also why we build the documentation before we take a single call. Call flows, verification templates, quality scoring and weekly reporting are how a front office stays consistent when a person is out sick, and they are the reason our coverage doesn't depend on one agent's memory.
We're a small team, bilingual in English and Spanish, working United States business hours. We take on a limited number of practices at a time, because the onboarding week is real work and doing it badly would defeat the point.
FAQ
The questions practices ask before they sign
How do we give your agents access?
We do not bring systems of our own and we do not ask you to buy any. Your agent works inside the systems your practice already runs, using a named user that you create and credentials that you provide, through whatever remote access you already use. You set the permissions, you see the activity, and you can revoke it in a moment. We never ask for a shared or administrator login, and we never ask you to change how your practice is set up.
What happens when our agent is sick?
Every account has a named backup who has been through your onboarding and works from the same call flow and SOP. That's the point of building the documentation first, because coverage then doesn't depend on one person's memory. You're told who is covering and when.
How do you handle patient information?
We sign a Business Associate Agreement before any access is granted, and we bring it to you rather than waiting to be asked. Handling patient information is part of the job, so every agent is trained on it before being assigned to an account, and access is named and revocable by you at any time. Our agents work from secured company equipment in our own controlled office, never from personal computers at home, and the business is completing formal HIPAA compliance training and certification through an independent provider. If your practice has its own security requirements, we work to those as well.
Do we have to take all three departments?
No. Each department is priced on its own and you can start with one. Most practices begin with front desk coverage and add verification once they see the schedule settle. If you want all three on a light workload, the small practice bundle is usually cheaper than three separate blocks.
How do you know when we need a second agent?
Each department has its own signals. On front desk we track average talk time, staffed time, average wait time and abandoned calls, and one agent handles roughly 100 calls a day, inbound and outbound combined, while still booking and working recall properly. On verification we watch how far ahead of the schedule the breakdowns are running and whether any are being finished on the day of the visit. On billing we watch claims worked per day, how quickly rejections come back around, and whether balances are moving out of the older brackets or piling up in them. When any of those turn the wrong way, the work has outgrown one seat, and we bring you the evidence rather than letting service slide and hoping you do not notice.
Why are verification and billing full time only?
Because the work is continuous rather than tied to your opening hours. Breakdowns have to stay ahead of tomorrow's schedule every day, and claims, posting and aging do not pause. Staffing either one part time does not halve the work, it just moves the backlog to the start of the following week. Front desk coverage is different, which is why you set those hours yourself.
How long does it take to start?
One week of onboarding, then live. That week is spent listening to how your front office runs and writing what your agent will work from. We don't shorten it, because an agent who starts without the call flow is the reason remote coverage gets a bad name.
Packages
Packages, staffed by the seat
You are paying for a person, not a ticking meter. Each department is covered by a named agent on one flat monthly rate, so nobody is watching a clock instead of finishing the work. Write to us and we will send the rates the same business day.
Front desk & scheduling
PART TIME OR FULL TIME
- Pick the window your agent is on the line
- Calls, booking, confirmations, recall
- You set the hours the agent is available
Benefits verification
FULL TIME SEAT
- Breakdowns run ahead of the schedule
- Entered in your system, exceptions flagged
- Staffed full time, so the day ahead is always checked
Billing & collections
FULL TIME SEAT
- Claims, posting, resubmissions
- Unpaid balances chased by age
- Staffed full time, because claims do not wait
Combined coverage, for smaller practices
One cross trained agent, full time, working across all three departments. Built for single location practices whose combined workload fits inside one seat. Once any one department fills a seat on its own, a dedicated agent is the better fit and we will say so before you ask.
What the rate covers, and what it replaces
One monthly figure per seat. These are the costs that stop existing.
- No payroll taxes, no workers compensation, no unemployment insurance
- No health benefits, no paid holidays, no sick days, no accrued vacation
- No overtime, because the rate does not move with the hours
- No recruiting fees, no job postings, no interview time
- No training weeks on your payroll before someone is useful
- No cost when an agent leaves. Finding and training the replacement is ours
- No workstation, no extra phone line, no equipment for a part time hire
- Onboarding included, no setup fee, one invoice a month with nothing on top
The wage on a job posting is never what a front desk hire actually costs a practice. A seat with us is.
Capacity
How we know when one agent is no longer enough
A seat has a limit, and pretending otherwise is how remote coverage quietly gets worse. We watch the numbers and tell you before your patients notice.
About 100 calls a day, per agent
That is inbound and outbound combined, and it is the honest ceiling for one person who is also booking, confirming and working recall properly. A practice running well past it is not short of effort, it is short of a seat.
Every department has its own signals
Front desk is measured on average talk time, staffed time, average wait time and abandoned calls. Verification is measured on how far ahead of the schedule breakdowns are running. Billing is measured on claims worked, how fast rejections come back around, and whether balances are leaving the older brackets or collecting in them.
Front desk flexes
You decide the window an agent is on the line. Start at twenty hours a week and extend it as volume grows.
Verification is full time
Breakdowns have to stay ahead of the schedule every day. We watch how many days ahead they are running, and part time coverage just moves the backlog to Monday.
Billing is full time
Claims, posting and chasing balances are continuous work. We watch what is moving out of the older brackets, because part time here is how balances quietly pass ninety days.
Not sure what your volume needs?
Send us a week of call numbers and we will tell you how many seats it actually takes.
Contact us
Tell us what your front office needs. We'll take it from there.
One email is enough to start. We'll ask what your front office looks like on a normal Tuesday, where the calls are going, and what isn't getting done.
If remote coverage isn't right for your practice we'll say so, because it is the fastest way to find the practices we can actually help.
Write to us
Tell us what your front office looks like on a normal Tuesday. We answer the same business day, and we can set a call up from there.
Talk to usDirect
silvio@northcrestps.comSilvio Lopez, operations lead.