Episode 503: Gain New Patients, Retain Current Ones

Question: Do I have the right practice to start a membership plan?

Tiffanie is at the helm of this episode and she’s spilling secrets about membership plans (or discount loans or discount saving plans)! She touches on the following:

• Whether a membership plan fits with your practice

• How to have an impactful discount that doesn’t hurt you

• What plan fees look like to patients

• How to get started

The fantastic thing about membership plans is that they not only are attractive to prospective patients, but they also get your current patients excited — as long as you do it right!

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Transcript:

0:00:05.6 Kiera Dent: Hey everyone, welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. I'm your host, Kiera Dent, and I have this crazy idea that maybe I could combine a doctor and a team member's perspective, because let's face it, dentistry can be a challenging profession with those two perspectives. I've been a dental assistant, treatment coordinator, schedule filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner, and I have a team of traveling consultants, where we have traveled over 165 different offices, coaching teams. Yep, we don't just understand you, we are you. Our mission is to positively impact the world of dental, and I believe that this podcast is the greatest way I can help elevate teams, grow VIP experiences, reduce stress and create A teams. Welcome to the Dental A Team podcast. Hello Dental A Team listeners, this is Kiera and you guys such a great day. I hope you're having a fantastic day and I am so pumped because I have the one and only Tiffanie Trader here to talk about membership plans, I hope you guys absolutely love it.

0:01:04.4 Tiffanie: Hello Dental A Team listeners, this is Tiffanie, and you are here on Dental A Team consultant take over, where the traveling Dental A Team consultants take over the mic, and we share tips and tricks from hundreds of offices nationwide. Today, I'm actually coming to you solo to chat about membership plans, we've gotten a lot of requests, a lot of information being asked about membership plans, this is something that's spiking really big this year, and we thought it'd be awesome to give you some more information. So membership plans, you can call them discount plans, some practices call them discount savings plans, whatever it is that you call them, they're all the same. And there are a couple of things that are super important to understand about membership plans and things to look for for your practice specifically.

0:01:52.1 Tiffanie: Number one, is this something that's even gonna fit for your practice, is this something that would be a benefit for your patient base that you currently have and the patients that you're looking to gain? Is this something that your team could get on board with? Mostly membership plans are intended to help patient bases who do not have dental insurance, so that's a key piece right there, they either do not have dental insurance at all, or they're choosing not to use their dental insurance. So maybe their insurance is just a discount plan itself or maybe they just only get preventative coverage and it's really expensive, whatever the case may be, they're choosing not to utilize it. So here's a key piece for you to understand, you cannot bill insurance, and then also give them the membership plan discounts if you're in contract with their insurance. So uninsured patients or patients who are choosing not to use their insurance are the ones who are gonna benefit from these membership plans. Membership plans are built to provide patients with a discount, so a percentage discount off of your UCR, your usual and customary rates, they're in the practice. So you'd wanna take a look at your UCR fees, kind of see what they look like and then decide what kind of a discount could you provide these patients.

0:03:09.5 Tiffanie: Most practices are doing a 10 to 30%, maybe even a landing in the middle of that 20% mark discount off of most of their treatment off their UCR fees. So if a patient were to come in and they sign up for your membership plan they need a root canal and a crown. So then maybe they get a 10% discount off of the crown, 20% discount off of the root canal. Whatever that looks like, you've gotta look at your fees and see what would be an impactful discount that makes it worth having a membership plan, but doesn't end up biting us in the tail where it feels like we're just on a PPO insurance fee schedule. So you want it to be more than your PPO fees, but you want it to be something that the patients really feel like the amount of money that they put into having the membership plan is benefiting them in the long run with percentage discount.

0:03:58.0 Tiffanie: So on that note, talking about membership plan fees, what does that look like to a patient... There's a couple of different ways you can do it. You can do a lump sum payment, so maybe they get two cleanings, two exams, two bite wings and two fluorides every year, and maybe one emergency exam with a PA, and they pay $592. I'm just throwing out a number, and so they can pay a lump sum, they could pay $592 per person per person in the family, so not a family plan, but per person, $592 and they get all those things, plus they get a 10 to 20% discount off of your UCR fees. Or some practices will do, "Okay, it's gonna be 592 for this, you can pay the first three months up front, so splitting that 592 up over the course of a year, pay those first three months up front and then thereafter starting month two, you're paying just a small monthly portion towards the total 592 or whatever you have decided. So getting people to sign up on it is one thing, getting them to pay for it is another. We don't want to become a bank, I say that all the time with your treatment planning and making sure you're not having a lot of in-office payment plans because we don't...

0:05:14.2 Tiffanie: We're not here to be a bank, we're not here to provide services we're not getting paid for. So just make sure whatever you do, whether it's a lump sum and I pay that total that day, or if we're breaking it into monthly payments, you get at least the first three months covered with that monthly payment. So you're going to look at your patient base, you're gonna see how many patients with this benefit that I have now, and would this help, this is a huge question, guys, would this help attract more uninsured fee-for-service patients to my practice? Those are really, really great patients to have, because there's so much less work, your billing department, your office managers, they'll love you for it, because they don't have to build the claims to the insurance. It's all just straightforward. It's this is what you owe, this is what you need, this is what you owe, and this is how we're gonna pay for it. So would it benefit your practice to offer something like this, what percentage discount could you take off of your UCR fees, and then what would that lump payment look like? Is it a lump sum? Is it broken into monthly payments, what does that look like?

0:06:20.1 KD: Hey Dental A Team listeners. You guys have heard the early bird gets the worm, right? What does that even mean? Well, it means that the early bird is the person who maximizes on benefits, optimizes their practice and they take advantage of great deals. So guys, right now this week, last chance to save on Dental A Team's, virtual team summit, it's all about optimization and execution with an emphasis on full team, and then Saturday is all about leadership. So guys, don't miss out, you know you're going to come, so you might as well pop on over to thedentalateam.com, snag those early bird tickets, because once they're gone, they're gone, and you'll be paying more for the same event. So head on over to thedentalateam.com, snag your early bird Virtual Summit for April 22 and 23, and I'll see you there.

0:07:05.9 Tiffanie: In conversations about membership plans, like treatment planning and talking to your patients, it's really, really easy because it's just a discount plan. So it's very similar to insurance discount plans or very similar, even to the discounted rates that they get with insurance, and really just talking about it as this is a benefit for you, something that we offer to our patients who maybe don't have insurance or just want another option, it's a plan that will provide a discount on services here at our practice because you're a member of our family here, it's a membership plan, so making sure your team knows how to talk about it, this kind of a plan is, like I said, fantastic. Because it's going to gain new patients, you're gonna gain more fee for-service, new patients, it's gonna help retain patients. So when patients lose their insurance, one of the first things they do is cancel their cleanings. They lose their insurance, or their employer says, "Hey, we're dropping dental benefits", and they call you and they say, "Hey, I don't have insurance anymore, so I'm gonna have to call back and reschedule once I get new insurance."

0:08:09.4 Tiffanie: Well, if we have a membership plan in place that team member can say, "Oh my gosh, you know what, I have actually some fantastic news, what we can do is we can chat a little bit about our membership plan. Do you have a minute? I can explain to you what that looks like. We have a lot of patients in our practice who don't have insurance and they find this to be really fantastic for them." And they have that conversation, so it's gonna gain new patients who don't have insurance and maybe are just those fee-for-service people. It's gonna help you retain patients, and it's a great option for any practice who, especially those who are moving more towards a fee-for-service model, may be kind of dropping some of those PPO insurances. I know we've had a lot of practices this year dropping a lot of those smaller PPO insurance fee schedules and moving towards the membership plans that they can offer it to their patients.

0:08:57.7 Tiffanie: So in a nutshell, membership plans are fantastic because I do think that they add an added value and benefit to your current patient base, and again, it's gonna help you attract more new patients. The bits and pieces to really think about are gonna be, "What is gonna come with your membership plan, what does that look like, what are those two cleanings? Maybe it's for perio maintenances, what do you want that to look like? What percentage discount will you take off of your UCR fees and how impactful would this be for your patient base or for your practice? Is this something that the team can get on board with?" So we know, you know, we always leave you with action items, there are always action items, and I gave you a lot of information today about membership plans and I have some action items for you, I want you to maybe pull some reports from your system.

0:09:47.5 Tiffanie: What is your patient base made up... Do you have a lot of fee-for-service patients already, do you have a lot of patients maybe that could benefit from this, are their lower fee schedules and within the PPOs that you've got, that maybe could benefit from a better discount? Look and see from your current patients, how impactful would this be for them, is this something that might help them? And then also talk with your team about it, talk with your team. Ask them, "Do you think that this is a benefit? Are you excited to talk about this? Are you good to implement it?" Have that conversation and just see how on board are they with it, and then also look at your fees, what would it look like to take 10 to 20% off of your UCR fees? Is that something that would be easy to do? Does it take you all the way back down to a PPO fee schedule. What does that look like for you?

0:10:37.4 Tiffanie: And then last but not least, I want you guys to reach out to us, you can email us at [email protected] for anything, and especially for this. Like I said, we have so many practices moving towards membership plans, we have done this, we've built it out, we have been using them ourselves, utilizing them in offices. I've used them in practice while I was in practice for years. There's so much info, we have a wealth of knowledge on it, so I utilize us. Also, we have really, really close communication and contact with companies like Clear who help you with it, and we can get you in contact with them, companies that are kind of a third party, and they actually do the collecting for you on the monthly payments, and they help you to set up what your membership plan would look like.

0:11:21.5 Tiffanie: They help you come up with fees, they look at your UCR fees, help you determine what that discount is going to be, they take you through the whole process, so if this is something that you feel like, "You know what, my practice will benefit from this", reach out to us, we'd be happy to get you in contact with the right people or get you more information just from us, so... That's it. Membership plans. It's so simple, right? What are you gonna do today about... Tell us what are you gonna do today? What are you gonna take away from this? And how are you going to impact your practice with membership plans?

0:11:52.0 Tiffanie: Alright guys, that's a wrap. I wanted this to be quick, I wanted it to be to the point, I wanted you to get all the membership plan information, so if you liked it, if you hated it, if you loved it, 'cause I know you did, drop us a review, we would love to hear your feedback. We always want people to know that we're here so share it, if you've got other colleagues looking for membership plans or people asking you about it, share the info, share the wealth, just send them this podcast. Hey, leave us a review. We can't wait to see that five star pop up on our emails here. We get notified and I just can't wait to see it. So that's a wrap, guys. Thank you.

0:12:32.4 KD: And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental A Team podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.