The Dentist's Network #49


	Management Myths Patient Retention Automated Reminders

Louis Malcmacher
DDS MAGD
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Practice Management Myths in Dentistry

Last month I shared with you some of the most common clinical dental myths I encounter as I lecture around the country. This month, I want to uncover some of the most common practice management myths and misinformation that I hear and hopefully debunk them for you.

Referral services don’t work. Referral services do work when you are using a reputable company that is really dedicated to your success. Also, you need to be able to work with your referral service as opposed to just signing up and waiting for the referrals to come in. This is probably the most common mistake that dentists make—signing up for a program and then never evaluating the results or working to optimize the them. I have successfully belonged to the following services and have been very pleased with the results:

1-800-DENTIST is the best in the business for patients looking for a dentist. They can really help you and your front desk develop a system for making sure that referrals feel welcome; they also help you through their various programs for developing a referral into a genuinely long-term patient. 1-800-DENTIST offers the Patient Activator System, which keeps you in touch with your current patients who are the source of most of your income. Many times we only focus on new patients, forgetting how important our current patients are to the productivity of our practice. Check out their new website on marketing—www.goaskfred.com—where Fred Joyal, CEO answers marketing questions based on his years of experience marketing to millions of consumers every year.

The Lumineers Smile Discovery Program is a specialty system for patients looking for minimally invasive veneers. The program includes referrals, in-office materials and scripts to strongly motivate patients to evaluate their smiles and accept treatment. No company in the history of dentistry has done a better job than Denmat in branding the name Lumineers to consumers. Your office should tie into that national campaign and branding. The patients referred by the Lumineer Smile Discovery Program typically have done their homework already; they know what Lumineers are and are highly motivated to do some esthetic treatment. This program is more than a referral service—it provides your office with both internal and external marketing methods and materials for getting new patients as well as motivating your existing patients to explore what non-invasive Lumineers can do for their smile. Lumineers is probably the hottest dental topic to consumers right now, which is why this program has worked so well.

High accounts receivables are a sign of a healthy practice. I hear this often from dentists and this completely blows my mind. If you have high accounts receivables, you have a significant problem on your hands. You want low accounts receivables and you want that money in the bank when you produce it. In-office financing is a losing proposition for any dental office. You are trying to be a bank and you are doing a very poor job of being a bank. If your local bank had the accounts receivables that your office may have, it would be out of business in short order. You are losing valuable personnel time in making collection calls, which costs you money and makes patients hate you and your office (and likely never to refer to you again). Learn how to use financing in your office. We have used CareCredit successfully for years, as have thousands of dental offices. The patient applies online in your office and you get an answer in literally seconds! Your office collects the money for treatment and the patient gets no-interest financing for up to 18 months. If need be, they can even stretch out the payments longer than that. This is a huge win-win for everybody involved and will significantly increase your cash flow immediately.

A 60% overhead is just fine. With the national average for dental office overhead at 70%, I guess 60% is ok, but it certainly can be a lot better. Because your dental office is a business, one of your goals should be to be as profitable as possible. The way to do this is to achieve the lowest overhead possible. Although fixed costs will remain a constant until such time that they are renegotiated, your variable costs can decrease significantly if you understand that your selection of products and techniques in your office can change. Aim for an overhead of 50% or less, which should be attainable for most dental offices.

Let’s try to break through the barriers that we ourselves have created in our minds and expand our practices past some of these clinical and practice management myths that I have presented. Many times the only thing holding us back from success in our offices is what we see in the mirror.

Dr. Louis Malcmacher is a practicing general dentist in Bay Village, Ohio, an internationally known lecturer, dental consultant and author, and consultant to the Council on Dental Practice of the ADA. Interested in knowing more about how to truly enjoy dentistry? Click here.

Interested in having Dr. Malcmacher speak to your dental society or study club? Click here.

To reach Dr. Malcmacher, email him at DrMalcmacher@thedentistsnetwork.net or call 1.800.952.0521.

Sally McKenzie, CEO
McKenzie Management
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Better Patient Retention Starting Today

Do you have the uneasy feeling that patients are quietly slipping away, getting lost on the way to their next appointment, wandering somewhere between the subprime mortgage crisis, inflation woes and general economic angst? You try to reassure yourself that though it does seem there are more appointment failures and cancellations, it’s probably nothing too serious. Unfortunately, it’s likely your instincts are spot-on and your patient retention is, in fact, in a downward spiral.

Time to conduct an active patient inventory! Answer these four simple questions:

How many inactive patient records are taking up space in your files or are tucked away somewhere in storage?
Are you converting 85% of emergency patients to comprehensive exams?
Have you increased hygiene days per week in the last year?
Are your hygienists’ salaries more than 33% of what they produce?

If the number of inactive charts is enough to open a second practice, or if you answered “no” to question two and three and “yes” to question four, your patient retention is weak.

The good news, however, is that you can take steps to strengthen it immediately.

First, keep in mind that patients seldom make a conscious decision to leave a practice; more often they simply drift away. They come in for a routine appointment and depart wondering if they should have taken time out of their busy schedules for it. They book the obligatory six-month cleaning and quietly question if it’s really necessary to keep it. They pay the bill and ask themselves if the visit was actually worth the money. Meanwhile, dental teams lament the fact that many patients don’t appreciate the need for dental treatment, yet seldom take advantage of opportunities to reinforce the importance of ongoing care at every “routine visit.”

What’s more, dentists often unwittingly minimize the value of dental care. Consider this common scenario: A hygienist spends time carefully explaining to Mrs. Jones that she is now showing signs of periodontal disease and her oral hygiene appointments may need to be increased. Then the doctor walks in, greets Mrs. Jones and marvels at the great job she is doing with her oral healthcare. The patient is confused and silently doubts both the doctor and the hygienist’s diagnostic credibility. Unfortunately, the value and importance of the hygienist’s message is all but lost, and the hygienist feels that her/his recommendations have been undermined. The doctor has probably lost a patient.

If your practice is not stressing the importance of the next visit to patients while they are sitting in the chair, you probably have many more broken appointments, cancellations and lost patients than you should.

Take a mere 10 seconds to avoid mixed messages and maximize your role as a clinical team. The hygienist tells the doctor what she/he found and subsequently discussed with the patient. The doctor immediately knows that the patient is prepared to hear a more detailed diagnosis and treatment plan. The patient, in turn, understands the value of ongoing dental care and sees yours as a clinically reliable team in which she can place her trust.

Next, try just a little harder with your patients. Research has proven that customers/patients respond positively and are willing to spend more if they feel like a business—in this case, a dental office—is making an effort to go the extra mile.

Tomorrow, instead of merely going through the motions, take some steps to shake up the routine and demonstrate to patients that you’re willing to put forth a little more interest and effort on their behalf.

Engage the patient in conversation about oral health goals. Many practices will do this during a new patient visit for the first and last time. If you’ve been seeing certain patients for three years and haven’t asked them lately how they feel about the condition of their mouths, you’re missing any number of treatment opportunities. Based on such conversations, educate patients about treatments that are offered in the practice to address oral health goals. Provide them with professionally written and designed materials that educate them about services and procedures. Don’t assume that patients know what you can do for them. Tell them.

Sally McKenzie is CEO of McKenzie Management, a nationwide dental management, practice development and educational consulting firm. Working on-site with dentists since 1980, McKenzie Management provides knowledge, guidance and personalized systems that have propelled thousands of general and specialty practices to realize their potential. Sally can be reached directly at 1.877.777.6151.

Interested in speaking to Sally McKenzie about your management concerns? Email her at Sally@thedentistsnetwork.net.

Dr. Lorne Lavine
Dental Technology Consultants
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May I Remind You One More Time?: Automated Reminders

Those of you who have read my past articles know I’m not one for repeating myself, but from time to time it makes sense. Some things just need repeating! This is especially true for technology. I’ve written about and recommended automated services that deliver appointment reminders. Companies such as Smile Reminder, Elexity and Demandforce have all been around for some time and all have established themselves with a group of loyal followers. For a monthly fee of $199 (and up), you can have one of these companies deliver appointment reminders by phone, text and email.

As consumers adapt to new technologies, so too must the dental office. We need to at least offer our patients new ways of communicating with them, ways they have grown to accept as “normal” and unobtrusive. What was once regarded as “not there yet” or “our patients would not like that” is now very much part of their everyday life. I am talking about emails and text messages. As we see consumers adapt to new ways of “talking” then we as dentists (business owners) need to revisit how we provide new culturally accepted ways of communicating.

With new technologies comes a new business model of offering those technologies (I’ll get to that in a minute). Let’s first look at why you may choose not to offer email and text message reminders.

The number one question I hear about the reluctance to adopting new technology is, “But will my patients want it?” The answer to that is YES. In almost every survey I’ve seen, more than 80% of patients prefer email for communication from their health-care providers. At least give your patients the option of receiving their reminders by email and text message. If a patient decides they don’t want to receive the emails or text messages you can select that patient not to receive them.

Number two is the cost. Yes, in a down economy, $199 or more a month (about $2,400 per year, minimum) is an added expense that many offices simply can’t justify. So even if the technology interests you, the cost for the service means that it’s another line item that you did not budget for.

Enter systems like Dental Senders. Dental Senders has a unique and novel approach to offering all dental offices this program email and text message reminders, along with a host of all other services, for free versus their competitors’ charge of $199 per month. There is a minor catch: in order for Dental Senders to offer this free service, they display a few sponsored ads on each email. All ads are dental related and are for companies that you work with or recommend to your patients every day. Is this sponsored model for every office? Maybe not, but it is definitely an opportunity for you to test a new technology without having to sign contracts or pay a monthly fee. The research I did on DentalTown suggests that their clients are very happy with the service.

Let’s now look at the services that the above companies provide to you. Outside of cost, they are all very similar in what they offer and, in my opinion, critical to the patient communication systems of your practice.

All of them integrate with your practice management software and all are automated, which means that once it is set up there is little or no work for you or your team to do. All provide daily reports that share with you what the software performed for you that day, such as a list of what patients received reminders, etc. Here’s a look at the type of services you can expect:

Automated appointment reminders
Re-care/recall
Overdue patients reminders
Birthday greetings
Surveys
Newsletters

The good news is that software evolves and these companies continue to release new services that will add new benefits to your practice.

Looking into the future, it is only a matter of time before we use social networking sites as a way of communicating with our patients. Consider Facebook and Myspace, the market leaders. I believe in time your dental software will “talk” to these portals and update patients’ respective calendars or email their Facebook or Myspace accounts. We know how often young people check their Facebook and Myspace, so it’s only a matter of time before this too is automated.

This is the fastest growing area in dental technology. Don’t blink—you might miss something!

Lorne Lavine, DMD is the Founder and President of Dental Technology Consultants. Dr. Lavine holds two prestigious certifications, the A+ Certified Technician designation and the Network+ Certified Professional. These designations demonstrate proficiency in computer repair, operating systems, network design and installation. Dental Technology Consultants provide dentists a full range of services relating to the implementation of technology.

Dr. Lavine can be reached directly at 1.866.204.339 or drlavine@thedentistsnetwork.net.