Dollars & Sense

Sponsored Content: onDiem

Keep your practice competitive and compliant with onDiem ClearPay.

Maintaining staffing costs while remaining competitive within the labor force is a prevalent struggle for dental practices across the country. Every practice strives to remain profitable and compliant—while providing a high standard of care to their patients. “Wage creep” has further complicated this problem.

The Department of Labor (DOL) reported that consumer prices rose 5.4% during the 12 months preceding September 2021. Inflation at a wholesale level climbed a staggering 8.3% from August 2020 to August 2021. Most notably, the Social Security Administration announced that beneficiaries will get a cost-of-living adjustment of 5.9% in 2022—the largest increase in decades. Inflation fears are not only substantiated; it’s already having an impact on employee wages in the dental field. 

Wages, and associated human resources costs, are usually the single largest expense for dental practices. Compounded with inflation and wage creep, these expenses are a foundational area of focus for dental practices to maintain profitability. onDiem’s CEO, Joe Fogg, observed these obstacles the dental industry is facing, and was driven to provide a solution that not only increases profitability and reduces costs for dental practices, but also addresses the need to attract and retain qualified dental professionals. 

The solution—launching in Spring 2022—is a patent-pending product called onDiem ClearPay. With increased labor transparency, practices will receive a line-item invoice for hired temp shifts. These line-items will include professionals’ wages (rate X hours worked), a breakdown of labor-burden costs (FUTA, SUTA, Insurances, etc.), and onDiem’s service fee. 

ClearPay is built to track individual professionals’ federal and state pay-ins, in addition to several other features. Once the cap has been reached, those savings are then passed on to the practice. onDiem will be the only staffing company (local or gig) to offer a pricing model like this. 

This radical shift in transparent staffing and evaluating profitability is a new way of thinking— one that onDiem believes is long overdue. onDiem ClearPay will help to educate practice owners and managers about the true cost associated with W2 employees (state and federal taxes, insurances, etc.) while clarifying the misconception that staffing agencies are padding their profits with inflated service fee charges. It is also important to note that each state has differing tax rates, pay in caps, and insurance rates. 

Additionally, as part of onDiem ClearPay, onDiem will be building a seamless and automated Invoicing and Payment Portal into the Practice User’s current onDiem account. This product will be available to onDiem practices. onDiem Service Fee will differ based on Subscription Enrollment status.