AADOM Featured Company: Dental Menu
AADOM Featured Company is a 30-minute, interview-style presentation sharing the company’s mission, product/service, and best practices for office managers.
Video Description:
Dental Menu helps office managers run a successful membership plan. We understand the complexities involved with pricing, getting your team on board, and setting things up properly in your practice management software. Our software will help you run your membership plan smoothly.
We help offices properly account for their membership revenue by matching production with collections and eliminating the need to adjust membership services to $0. This ensures that your patient ledger is accurate with collections matching production when included benefits (exam, cleaning, x-rays) are received. This results in accurate KPIs, (numbers) accurate provider compensation, and increased confidence in your team.
Our services are all “White Labeled” which means patients are purchasing your plan directly from you and not through a third party. This allows you to leverage our software without sacrificing any control or patient relationships. We are happy to help and share what we have learned so don’t hesitate to reach out.
How to get more membership patients enrolled in your plans
Struggling to increase the number of patients on your membership plans?
Follow these five steps to increase enrollment.
1. Look at value/benefits from a patient’s point of view
When we look at membership plans, we usually see them set up as discount plans. These types of plans cover two exams, two cleanings, a set of x-rays, and a discount on restorative treatment. If a patient needs treatment, the plan is a great value because the discount on treatment is often greater than what the plan costs. Patients will easily buy this style of plan for a year because it’ss easy to see the value.
The challenge with these types of plans is that patients don’t renew them consistently. They purchase them on an “as needed” basis when they come in for treatment and preventive, but only if it is a better deal. Discount style plans help close treatment, but they don’t get patients consistently coming in year after year. If your enrollment numbers are stagnant, this could be the culprit.
Check out this short video on the difference between a discount plan and a true membership plan: https://www.dentalmenu.com/discountvsmembership
2. Analyze pricing from a business owner’s point of view
It drives me crazy to hear practice owners and administrators complaining about insurance companies but then turn around and give their un-insured patients (their best customers) the worst deal. Why would any business give their lowest paying, pain in the butt, customers the best pricing?
Take yourself out of the dental office and imagine you are going to start a service-oriented company. How would you price your services, what types of clients would you want to attract? How would your pricing strategy affect the types of clients you would engage with? Would you give a client a better price if they committed to a long-term relationship for several months or years? Or would you prefer to charge a one-time fee and then go back out and find new clients every month?
If your plan isn’t offering a better deal to the patient for included services (exams, cleanings, x-rays) they aren’t going to purchase it on a consistent basis. They won’t commit to you long-term and will bounce around or be inconsistent in their care. As a business owner, it is short sided to consistently charge your best patients high fees and not expect there to be some churn. Many doctors think their patients are going to be loyal to them no matter what because “their work is better than any other dentist”. While this may be partially true, patients don’t like to change dentists and if you do a great job they won’t want to leave, most people have a budget and will be prone to wander if they don’t feel like the value is there.
3. Internal Marketing
Are you consistently marketing your plan to your patients that are past due for recall? Pull these three lists from your practice management software:
- Patients with insurance who are past due 12-36 months.
- Patients without insurance who are past due 12-36 months.
- All active patients
Send an email and a text message to each group explaining the benefits of the plans and how you have made it easy to access care. For those patients past due for appointments, follow up with a phone call to get them scheduled. When you make the call explain that you can get them scheduled for their preventative care for a low monthly amount when they join your membership plan.
One of our services is executing internal campaigns like these for offices that need more membership patients. It isn’t uncommon to activate and schedule 20-40 patients in a 60-day period. This is the cheapest way to get a bump in membership enrollments.
4. External Marketing
Once you have a solid plan built, consider engaging with a marketing firm to help you attract new un-insured patients to your plan.
5. Get your team behind the plan
Does your entire team understand the value of the plan? Can hygienists, assistants, doctors, and front team members explain the basics of the plan, or does it all fall on you? Consider surveying the team to ask their opinions on what they think an ideal membership plan looks like for your practice. After you have made changes to your plan, schedule a lunch with your team. Explain the plan details and why a patient would want to purchase the plan, role play sales situations, and have some fun games and prizes to get everyone on board. Realize that many team members don’t have your knowledge about insurance and fees and why a membership plan will benefit your patients and the office.
In addition, you may want to have some team incentives as people promote and sign-up patients on the plans. One easy way to get members, is to have your hygienists and assistants post something on their personal social media accounts about the membership plan. Have a contest or offer an incentive for each person that signs up from their posts.
Hopefully these five suggestions can help you improve your membership plan and get more members enrolled. If you need any more information or would like to have the experts at Dental Menu take a look at your plan, don’t hesitate to reach out.
Learn about the presenter:
Paul Lowry is the co-founder of the Dental Menu. From 2008-2017 Paul helped dental offices generate thousands of new patients. After analyzing the data, he found that people without dental insurance were more difficult to attract and retain. Many of the offices he worked with had membership plans, but they failed to provide an adequate solution. In 2017 he co-founded the Dental Menu.
Paul earned a bachelor’s degree in Marketing Communications from Brigham Young University and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Utah State University. When Paul isn’t immersed in work, he enjoys spending time with his family, dirt biking, fishing, and being outdoors.
