427: It’s That Time of Year

Guess what time it is? It’s end-of-year benefit time! Meaning you need to start blasting your practice’s benefit programs. Kiera describes exactly how your office can touch base with patients (letters, emails, fliers), when and how to inactivate patients, and why end-of-year benefits are so important. Hint: You get more production and more patients.

Maximize those efforts to get your patients the best bang for their buck.

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Podcast Transcript:

0:00:05.8 S1: Hey everyone, welcome to the analyte podcast. I'm your host, Jordan, and I had 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 in dental is a treatment coordinator, schedule filler, office manager, regional manager, practice owner and I have a team of traveling resultant, or we have traveled over 165 different offices, coaching teams. Yep, you 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... 18 will go to the dental team podcast.

0:00:50.3 S2: So low generally, Team listeners, this is Kara and you guys happy happy, happy dental 18 podcast day. I hope you guys are just rocketed out, massive, massive, massive shout out to all of you who have been leaving reviews, you guys honestly, that is the best way you can give back to this free podcast. It does take a lot of time and I love doing it, and I do it because I want you guys to grow, but I just wanted to give a shout out to those of you who have helped us out who are sharing, who are leaving reviews for us I just wanna say how much I appreciate you, how much I just respect you for taking the time to do it, we just had one that said, it's a must listen to podcasts, I listen to care and the dental team for a while and put their actions into play very well-formatted podcasts, incredibly informative and fun to listen to, I highly recommend this podcast for anyone and everyone in the Donovan, shout out to you. Thank you. We also had another one of fantastic carbines helpful nuggets with in your practice to make your day-to-day more engaging and fun, her quick podcasts are energetic and keep your attention truly obsess with Kara and her team, keep up the amazing work.

0:01:49.7 S2: Thank you, pin gates. I don't know who you are, but thank you to you. And then the last one I love this podcast, I've been in the dental field over 20 years. Every podcast I listen to, I learned something new that I can easily apply. Thank you, thank you, because that's a huge, huge, huge compliment that within 20 years of being in the dental industry, you're still finding nuggets and gems to take from this podcast, and I believe that that's how life is, no matter how much time we've invested in something, there's always something new to learn. I love the quote, you guys, you know me and my quotes, I just say, I give the credit to whoever wrote this, it was not me, but they say that this man never walks in the same river twice because that man is not the same... Nor is that river the same, and I love that mindset because you guys, we are ever growing students and people, and I think if you have that mindset, one, you're more humble to, you have a lot more fun in life, and three, you're able to help way more people in this world realizing that there are better ways to learn, there are better ways to enhance, so thank you guys, if you haven't left us a...

0:02:49.7 S2: Please do so. It feels good. We appreciate it. And if you want, will happily really review for your practice as well. So just email hello at the dental team dot com. Let's do... Let's help one another out. Let's lift and make the best of the best. The best. Alright, you guys, today's topic. Don't worry, I really do have a topic... I know it felt like I did it, I almost felt like I did it. I do, this is something that I feel is just gonna be a short, quick tactical... It's like blasting to the world right now, you guys eat... You remember it's end of year. What does end of your mean? It means get those letters out to your patients, letting them know it's end of your benefit time, and put it on the TVs in your practices and have it a check out and maximize membership programs. Okay, did you hear all those? And I was in an office the other week... Yes, we fly to practices, we come in, we help you, we assess you guys, this practice was struggling with patients... Struggling with patients, and I'm like, I don't know, I guess ramp-up marketing, I feel like I was on detective slow, so shout out to the office manager, her and I went to Detective sloth mode.

0:03:54.5 S2: And this is why I love going into practices, it ties in the end of year, don't worry guys at all times, and then you were struggling with patients, well, lo and behold, they were averaging about 30 new patients, their... We call this 16 people on the recall is you guys are probably scratching your head too, like, who's that good? I was wondering the same thing. I'm like, either they're really good and you get them on the podcast or something feels weird, be you guys... Those are the things I can't do virtually. These are reports that I'm not going to think to tell you, Go run this, but you guys, guess what, you can... You can use my knowledge, go implement it, or flies into your practice, we love to... That's our platinum offices. So if you've been thinking about it, let me just tell you this quick success story that ties in the end of year, so 16 people on recall, unscheduled treatment, about four treatment plans, they see an average of 300 patients a month. They bought the practice about two years ago, I was like, What is going on, do we need to put more marketing in here, get more new patients, land behold, we found out they were in activating patients.

0:04:49.5 S2: We found, I wanna say over 3500 patients. I actually think it was more than that. In the last two years, 700 patients had been inactivated, well, guess what, that all of a sudden became an opportunity that we realized we didn't have a protocol of when and how to inactivate patients, so we had a team meeting, got everybody on board in one day after I left, they reactivated 10 patients, 10. So just think about it. They felt they didn't have enough patients, they were struggling, doctor was doing great on diagnosing, they were doing great on scheduling their patient's amazing value, amazing experience, 10 patients came from that list because we realize they were archiving patients, we came up with the whole process of when do we archive? How often do we need to call? We created codes that they were then putting in, so we know how many times these patients have been contacted, came up with a whole letter process, so they call, then they send letters, then once they've been inactivated for so long, and then we do another process, the whole thing came, you guys, I would never have in my wildest dreams thought that that's what they needed to do, we were able to reactivate 10 patients in one day.

0:05:53.6 S2: Guys has been, gosh, almost two weeks now since I've seen them, shout out to them. That was huge, huge, huge kudos. So share with your office how proud I am of you guys... Hey, dental Team listeners. We decided to get a little unconventional and come to all of you guys, because guess what, the dental a team is hiring the best of the best for traveling consultants. So if you know of somebody that you work with, that you've worked with in the past, that you think would make an incredible dental team consultant, please email us. Hello, at the Delta dot com. We do not hire people working at offices that we work with, so we're just putting that out there, but we do want you guys, if any of you know of anybody who you think would be an incredible consultant that would love to positively impact the world of dentistry, that they've worked with the front office as an office manager, treatment coordinator, a scheduler of pillar, and they have back office experience senior way... Hello, at the dental team dot com. And guys like you, we're looking to hire our unicorn, and thank you all for helping us out, here's an cheers to hiring all of our unicorns and making this year are you to build our most incredible teams.

0:07:03.6 S2: But the reason this all came up is because we were looking at in here, we were trying to figure out, Okay, what can we do, how can we get more patients in... Let's think of something different before we found this whole inactivated list, which by the way, that should be another podcast of how and what to do, have you... Do you have a reactivation process? Does everybody follow the same? Are you possibly inactivation in activating patients that might not want to be an active hit and maybe you just need to be top of mind with them. So newsletters, letters, communication, I've shared the story so many times that I was contacted 10 different times before I signed up for something and I was not bugged or bothered or ignored, and that was within a two month time period, and I ended up signing up... They were friend of mine, I was just inconvenient timing for me, and that's why I hadn't signed up. So with that, we were looking at how do we get more any patients into this practice, what could we do? And we realized it's end of year. So with end of year, you guys at the prime time, this is a great way to get more production, help more patients and able to maximize benefits because if you don't know, you should know this, and if not, welcome to the dental team where we don't...

0:08:08.6 S2: Ditch, we take you where you're at and we grow you into the next level, and if you already know this, share it with somebody else, because a lot of times people don't know this and they don't think about it, so first and the foremost, Put this on your calendar for next year, so you don't forget and let's get it done. And I... It's a great time to one, help patients maximize their benefits, because like I said, if you don't know this, you should know this, your insurance runs out at the end of the year, it doesn't roll over for you, so it's basically his money flush down the toilet and that's not what we wanna do. Number one, we don't love insurances purpose, I think they're great coupon, but I mean, hey, they're giving out money, why don't we maximize those benefits versus just letting you flush... So we need to let our patients know that they need to maximize those benefits, and then we tie it into also possibly switching over to our membership plan because it's becoming open enrollment time, open enrollment means that employers are switching, insurance plans are looking for the best rates they're offering to their employees which plan to choose, how much they wanna spend for their premiums, so it's a really good time because it becomes a time where people decide what they wanna spend their money on for their benefits for the year, sometimes it's through their employer, other times we can convert them to join our membership plan, you guys better believe I was a little walking magnet for membership plans during this time of year, my favorite membership companies are clear.

0:09:26.0 S2: Do you guys have not connected in with clear, go take a demo schedule, tell them the dental team sent you... I love clear, that's K-E-E-R. They have an incredible, incredible company, I love their customer service, and they make it really simple, they send you all the material for your membership plan, get you up and running very, very quickly, it's very easy and it's very patient-friendly, dental menu, another great company. Tell them the dental team sent you... I like both of them. I think they have both. Perks for different reasons. Go try them out. Check them out, email me, Hello at the dental team dot com. We'll get you connected to them, we have direct connection and referrals for you, so if you're looking for a membership plan, you haven't implemented it, you want some help, those are my top two companies right now that I'm recommending, there are other ones out there. They're great, those are just my two favorite ones at the moment, so with that, I have a walking magnet at this time of year, because people don't realize that their employers might not be giving them a great deal on their dental insurance, nor do they really understand what dental insurance actually is...

0:10:22.1 S2: You guys, my husband has dental insurance opportunity through his work, I am a fee-for-service patient, because I think dental insurance is junk, but guess what, had nobody ever educated me on that, I would have said, Hey, Jason's... Jason's company actually gets insurance, so why don't we just sign up for it. It's a lack of education. So step by step number one, we need to get letters out to our patients and let them all to use our dental benefits before the end of the year, you guys can run reports and your software to find out which patients actually have balances of credit available. So you could 100% do that, you can also just mass loss it to your entire patient base, so I would say quite a few letters, I'm literally talking two to five letters. Again, guys, you have to think about this, we are bombarded, so we need people to continually remind us, so we don't forget, does it mean more being annoying, it literally means we're reminding people, how many of you have seen something on TV on the billboard, on the radio, but you had to hear it. The new study is 14 to 20 times before you take action, so just do it as a service for your patient, honestly, I don't want patients losing money to go back to the insurance company, I wanna help them maximize their benefits this year, that way they didn't waste that money that they actually were given this year, so send letters, plan out 2 to 5 letters between now and the end of the year, minimum once a month to all these patients, possibly even all of your patients...

0:11:43.5 S2: I love lives like, Don't let your money go down the toilet... People usually will click on that and read that. Are you flushing your benefits, have you maximize your benefits this year, those are great email topics that you can take and execute on, so send at least two to five even more letters to your patients. I would do an email blast. I also might consider sending postcards or letters to your patients as well, yes, it is a cost of postage, but guess what, you get a few of those patients to come in that postage was taking care of, plus that patient was able to get their benefits to also let people know end of year fills up, you guys know that December mania or everyone's like, I'm trying to use my benefits, we'll guess about our schedules full, so let them know end of year, November and December are busiest times of the year, so be sure to schedule your... Now, that way we can maximize your benefits and we don't have to turn you away because we literally don't have space in our schedule. Patients need to understand this. Also tie that into, if you've got TVs and monitors in your operator is if you don't have them, put that as an actual M to get them, you will help way more patients with TVs and your operators, 'cause patients can see those inter-oral photos and you will definitely close a lot more cases because they can actually see what you're seeing, but on all those TVs within your practice, have it up there of those exact same lines, don't flush your benefits, make sure you get your appointments scheduled, now ask her for our office, they're happy to help you out, get those up on every single TV in your practice now and keep them up for the rest of the year, that way patients are seeing this, and right now you're able to get from September through the end of the year maximized on that.

0:13:21.8 S2: Then I also would you guys, to be sure that you talk to your patients about membership plans on these discussions, let them know about open enrollment time, you can also send a letter of... Hey, it's open enrollment time. We'd love to help you guys out. Have you consider our membership plan, oftentimes, patients like it better than injures, there are no maximums, there are no deductibles, there are no waiting periods. Those are huge perks. People know those buzzwords in dentistry, so be sure to let your patients know about it and don't be afraid to talk to your patients about it. I would suggest, if you haven't done so, maybe have a membership meeting with your practice, so everybody knows how to talk about membership programs, if you wanna help, we do virtual calls like this, we are happy to help train your team on how to talk to your patients about it, you guys, I literally walked around with my membership little post card in my hand to every single treatment plan. Especially at this time of year, it's a great time. Some people's benefits are mixed, which is why they can start to use their membership program, you cannot double dip, you cannot do insurance and membership program, but if they are mixed, you can convert them to a membership program, there are some legalities around it to make sure you're compliant, but these are all great, great, great ways to maximize end of year to help your patients, which will ultimately help your practice as well, I love when it's help our patients the best, and we at the end also get to have a massive benefit, so I just went to the pop on real quick, help you guys maximize your end of year, to help your patients maximize their end of year, if you want help, you have questions on an email, is Hello, the dental team to up become a client of ours.

0:14:56.9 S2: We love our clients, you guys, you get hands-on direct verbiage for your practice, things like that, and we have silver gold or platinum platinum, I fly to your practice, gold is full team immersion and Silver is one-on-one typically for startup practices. So take a look, we'd love to have you, we'd love to welcome you guys, if you wanted to change, if you put your goals, you're looking for your way to level up, join us, we'd love to have you. And as always, guys, thanks so much for being a listener of the dental team podcast, thanks for Isaac you next time in the dental team podcast.

0:15:30.9 S1: And that wraps it up for another episode of The Dental team podcast. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.