Texas Medicaid Dental
Introducing: The Invisible Patient

Your Medicaid panel includes patients who have never sat in your chair.
Claro turns them into billable encounters.

Auto-assignment gives you the panel, but the introduction never follows at scale. Claro bridges the gap — cleaning your data and turning passive assignments into the revenue your practice has already earned.

2 types
Invisible Patients are on every Medicaid dental roster.
Members
auto-assigned by the DMO and never notified — they do not know your practice is their dental home.
Both
are reachable. Neither will respond to a standard recall call.

Turning assigned rosters into active appointments.

The Invisible Patient Problem

Your roster has patients who do not know you exist as their dental home.

When a Medicaid member does not choose a dentist within 30 days of enrollment, the DMO uses a system-generated auto-assignment algorithm to designate a dental home. The assignment happens. The personal introduction rarely follows.

This is not a recall problem. Your front desk cannot reach these patients because most of them have never generated a chart. They are invisible to your system because they were never in it.

Because members can update their dental home assignment at any time by calling their DMO, the roster you receive on the first of the month reflects assignments that may already have changed. Claro solves both problems — stale data and the missing introduction.

Type One
Auto-Assigned. Never Notified.
Placed on your panel by the DMO algorithm based on geography, household history, or prior visit data. The system-generated assignment did not include a personal introduction. They do not know your practice is their dental home.
Type Two
Visited Once. Then Gone.
Had one or two encounters. Then stopped showing up. Still assigned. Still eligible. Sitting in your data with no systematic outreach reaching them.
The Gap
A Structural Communication Gap
Auto-assignment is a high-volume process built for scale, not for personal introductions. The patient does not know you. You cannot find them with stale data. Claro bridges that gap.
Texas Medicaid Dental Program

"Members who receive dental services through a Medicaid managed care dental plan are required to select a primary dentist who serves as the client's dental home and is responsible for providing routine care, maintaining continuity of patient care, and initiating referrals for specialty care."

In plain terms — most of these patients were placed on your panel through a system-generated process. The assignment happened. The introduction did not. They are not avoiding you. They simply do not know you exist as their dental home. Claro makes that introduction.

Source: Texas Managed Care Quality Strategy, Texas Health and Human Services Commission, September 2024

For FQHCs

Across Texas, 78% of FQHC Medical Patients Are Not Accessing Dental.

That is not a patient behavior problem. It is a connection problem. Your medical patients trust you. They show up. They have an active Medicaid benefit that includes dental. The introduction was simply never made.

Claro contacts your established medical patients, identifies open care gaps — dental, well-child visits, THSteps checkups, preventive screenings — and schedules as many as possible from a single call. One family trip to your site. Multiple providers. Multiple PPS encounters billed at your confirmed HHSC rate. Every gap we close in that call is revenue your organization was already entitled to capture.

Your HRSA UDS dental utilization ratio improves in the process. The EQRO Annual Technical Report for SFY 2024 identifies improving dental access as an active quality improvement priority across all Texas DMOs — which means your UDS improvement shows up in grant scoring and site reviews.

78%
Of Texas FQHC medical patients not accessing dental at the same organization
Source: HRSA Health Center Program Data, Texas State Performance Indicators, 2023
1.1M
Texas FQHC medical patients not accessing dental — already in the system, introduction never made
Source: HRSA Health Center Program Data, Texas State Performance Indicators, 2023
2PPS
Separate PPS encounter payments when a patient has a medical and dental visit on the same day at an FQHC
Source: TMPPM Section 4.3.1 and Texas Administrative Code 355.8261(c)(2)
Illustrative Program Economics

What a 90-Day Pilot Generates.

Program economics calculated using your confirmed HHSC PPS rate — specific to your organization. We calculate your actual revenue opportunity before any engagement begins.

3.4x
Illustrative return on Claro program investment — net of program management fee and estimated provider costs
Calculated using confirmed HHSC PPS rate at engagement. Realistic scenario.
35%
Relative improvement in dental-to-medical UDS ratio from a 90-day pilot — meaningful movement in one of HRSA's most-watched access metrics
Projected from pilot activation model. Actual results vary by site.
Same-day
Medical and dental visits on the same day at an FQHC generate two separate PPS encounter payments — each billed at your confirmed HHSC rate
Confirmed: TMPPM Section 4.3.1 and TAC 355.8261(c)(2)
90day
Pilot structure with documented outcome review at Day 60. Expansion decision at Day 90 based on confirmed encounters in your own system.
No long-term commitment before results are documented.

All financial projections are illustrative. Revenue calculated using each client's confirmed HHSC PPS rate at time of engagement.

How It Works

Three Reasons Your Invisible Patients Stay Invisible. We Remove All Three.

Standard outreach fails because it does not address the root problems. Claro was built specifically around removing each one before a single call is made.

The Problem: Static Roster Data
Your DMO roster is a snapshot. Your Medicaid population is in constant motion.
Members update their dental home assignment by calling their DMO on any given day. Wrong numbers, old addresses, disconnected lines — the roster delivered on the first of the month may already be outdated when you open it.
The Claro Activation
We clean and verify your panel contact data against current carrier databases before outreach begins. We work from validated, current lists — not the static roster as delivered.
The Problem: The 9-to-5 Gap
Medicaid families do not answer during your office hours.
Your front desk closes at 5pm. The families on your Medicaid roster are reachable in the evenings and on weekends — the exact hours when no one from your practice is calling.
The Claro Activation
Our bilingual outreach specialists work evening and Saturday hours specifically — reaching families when they are actually home, in the language they are most comfortable in.
The Problem: Logistical Friction
Patients say yes. Then do not show up.
Transportation is the primary barrier to show rate in Medicaid dental. A patient who agrees to an appointment but cannot get there becomes a no-show. The introduction was made and then lost.
The Claro Activation
We give patients their MCO transportation benefit line at the moment they say yes — before the call ends. The logistics question is answered at booking, not left to chance on appointment day.
Fee Structure

You Pay for Verified Encounters. Nothing Else.

Fixed program management fee invoiced monthly against completed encounters confirmed in your own system. Not a percentage of Medicaid reimbursement. Not tied to claim submission or claim payment.

No technology to install
No staff to train
No workflow changes required
No upfront cost or retainer
No long-term contract before results are documented
HIPAA-compliant BAA executed before any patient data is accessed. All outreach conducted under your organization's name with patient consent.
Anti-Kickback Statute personal services structure. Fixed fee set in advance. Not tied to volume or value of Medicaid referrals.
Monthly reporting on activations, show rates, encounter revenue, and Invisible Patient panel closure by location.
Program Structure
Pilot Duration90 Days
Upfront Cost$0
Fee TypeFixed Monthly
Invoice TriggerVerified Encounters
Revenue BasisYour Confirmed Rate
Day 60 ReviewDocumented Outcomes
Expansion DecisionDay 90
Our Team

We Spent Decades Measuring This Gap From the Other Side.

We built Claro to put payer-side intelligence to work for providers — because we know exactly where the Invisible Patients are and why standard outreach never reaches them.

Michelle Miller
Founder & CEO

Michelle spent 25 years on the plan side of Texas Medicaid — including as CEO of a statewide Texas Medicaid dental plan. She tracked assigned panels, measured utilization gaps, and worked with dental providers across all 254 Texas counties to understand why members who had a benefit and a dental home were not showing up. She knows exactly what your Invisible Patient problem looks like from the other side of the table. She built Claro to ensure providers finally capture the full value of the panels they have worked so hard to earn.

Luis Estrada
Director of Provider Strategy & Network Performance

Former Associate Director of Provider Strategy & Network Performance for Texas Medicaid. Spent his career as the central point of contact for dental and medical practices across Texas — negotiating APM contracts, tracking encounter data, and seeing firsthand where the gap between assigned panels and actual utilization lives. Has seen the Invisible Patient problem from both sides of the table. Native Spanish speaker, San Antonio-based, with deep community relationships across Bexar County and the Rio Grande Valley.

Start the Conversation

How Many Invisible Patients Are in Your Panel?

We start with a free Panel Opportunity Report — no commitment, no pitch. Just a clear picture of how many assigned Medicaid and CHIP members have never heard from you, and what bridging that gap is worth to your organization.

Request a Free Panel Opportunity Report

No upfront cost. No commitment. No technology to install.

HIPAA Compliant
Anti-Kickback Safe Harbor Structure
Fixed Fee — Not a Percentage of Medicaid
BAA Required Before Data Access
Texas-Based Operations