DENTISTS
Dental Practice Increases Treatment Acceptance by 35% with Phase Two’s Proven Process!
Treatment acceptance is the holy grail of any dental practice. My client – a downtown Chicago based dental practice, had tons of new patients! However, it was of limited overall value, as patients were not proceeding with the treatment recommended in significant numbers. The key to the success of any practice lies in getting this piece of the puzzle working well. It determines whether or not the practice reaches its true full potential. Of course, there are lots of factors that influence the success of treatment acceptance and this practice had actually been working on some of these – such as having a private space to discuss treatment and finances with patients, having staff reinforce with patients the need for treatment, visual aids etc.but they weren’t addressing the main area in the process that was the weak link. For each practice this can be different but zoning in on and addressing what it is, per practice, brings about a rapid increase in treatment acceptance.
In this particular practice, they could not handle the money objection. As soon as it came up, the financial co-ordinator made some suggestions but then politely backed off and left it at that. When trained on exactly how to address this objection, without being salesy or pushy, there was an instant increase and large treatment plans were getting accepted instantly – whereas previously they were taking patients months – sometimes years to act on. This caused an immediate surge in production with an average increase in monthly revenues of 35% for Sept, Oct, Nov & Dec 2016.
The key here is — that while a practice can improve many things to encourage treatment acceptance, finding out where the weak link really is and focusing all energies – training etc on that one point, brings about the best results.
3X Gross Revenues
Dental practice doing 1.2 million a year when he started with Phase Two Management Consultants in March 2016 went to 2 million in 2017. The really key area – was “to fix” his schedule – he wasn’t scheduled properly so he and I came up with what “an ideal day” should look like and went over this with his scheduler - who was fairly new to dentistry. Once trained on this, the staff really started to get on board and saw how this schedule change could help them reach a bonus that had thus far been out of bounds. The doctor is not working any more hours – but with a more productive schedule & a staff very much supporting him, his income went up by 70%.
Insurance based Dental Practice Stagnant Growth, gets a Lift!
This dentist has a full schedule for 6 weeks out when we first started working together-- but her practice had been stagnant, - no growth for the previous three years, We got the doctor to see that her day was not scheduled correctly – she was seeing too many in-network insurance patients. After we implemented a policy with her scheduler limiting those patients on her schedule and implemented some marketing to attract out of network patients– her practice started growing again and very quickly doubled, requiring the need to add an associate within one year of her implementing the changes.
Dental Practice Growth Expert Drives 25% Increase in Production via New Patients for a New Jersey Dr
This dental practice was actually growing at about 5- 10% a year but mostly via working longer hours and new patients were staying at about the same level, each year. The owner had revamped his website, had signed on for SEO services and was getting more new patient calls as a result. He also did well with patient referrals of family and friends. But for the most part, his approach to marketing was very passive - if they come, they come! This is very common in many practices, most of whom don't track new patient calls. They only track the caller when he/she actually schedules an appointment. When we trained the Scheduler on how to turn callers into new patients and how to effectively get patients to refer more than they would when left to their own devices, the schedule filled up and the practice reached a whole new level, well exceeding the owner's one-million-dollar goal. This is an often-overlooked factor when it comes to increasing new patients, I.e. - the conversion rate of callers to appointments and the role that the staff play in generating more than the usual number of referrals from existing patients.
New Patient calls are often way higher than the dentist realizes and unless the staff are not only trained but primed to really want more new patient appointments, no amount of new patient marketing will that much difference to the practice growth.
Dental Practice Growth Expert Drives Revenue by Moving to fee based, & away from Insurance-driven
An insurance driven practice, that causes the doctor to work like crazy but at the end of the day, have very little revenue to show for it - not to mention have his treatment plans dictated by what insurance companies will and won't cover, is a very non-optimal situation - for both the doctor AND the patient. In this particular practice, the schedule was booked out for several weeks and there was nowhere to put any more patients during that period. But because about 60% of her patients were on insurance plans, her income was set up to be very low for this period. Most doctors want a full schedule and the fear of letting go of insurance plans or limiting the number of patients from them, is a major factor in keeping the practice tied into this sub-optimal model of dentistry. The strategy we used was to cut back on these insurance plans – allowing no more than 30% of available slots in the schedule for them. This opened up a lot of appointment time and we went to work on filling it with higher paying patients both from her existing patient database and additional marketing actions. Even initially when the practice could not completely fill the slots reserved for better paying patients, they were still generating more income, than previously.
The shift must be done very strategically and to overcome the dentist's fear, we always have clients do it initially on a "trial basis" - so they can see it enough to believe that it will benefit their practice. It is very important that before you cut insurance patients, you get a strategy that is tailored to your practice, as it is done more gradually for some practices, than for others. But once the strategy is implemented, the owner can finally have the practice that meets his/her standards of dentistry in terms of procedures, materials used in the mouth, length of appointments, as well as of course financial rewards.
