Patients who come to your dental practice expect to be treated with a basic level of care and dignity. Knowing the most important ethical principles for dentists can ensure you emphasize ethical care within each patient interaction. 

Learn more about dental ethics and how your practice can go above and beyond to uphold integrity for patients. 

Why Are Ethics in Dentistry Important? 

Upholding ethical principles in dentistry is crucial to your practice’s compliance, reputation, and overall success. Patients need to feel confident that your practice prioritizes their safety and health every time they step foot in your office, and maintaining dental ethics is an obvious sign that you care about your patients. On the other hand, failing to uphold these principles could leave your dental practice liable for mistakes, leading to malpractice claims and a serious hit to your reputation. 

You may have gone into the dental industry for many reasons, but no matter your motivation, the patient should always be your top priority. Taking care to maintain ethics within your practice will ensure that patients have the best possible experience and walk away better than when they arrived. 

Basic Ethical Principles for Dentists

Below are a few basic principles of dental ethics and tips for how your practice can support them.

Ensure Patient Autonomy

Patient autonomy is a basic principle in the ADA’s code of ethics for dentists. It refers to upholding the right of patients to make informed decisions about their treatment. 

Your dental practice can support patient autonomy by: 

• Clearly laying out several treatment options for patients without giving preference to the most profitable options
• Ensuring patients understand the individual stages of a treatment 
• Documenting a patient’s informed consent to a specific treatment 
• Listening to patients’ anxieties and answering questions thoroughly 

Promote Patient Well-Being

Everything you do should be in the patient’s best interest. The principle of beneficence refers to prioritizing patient welfare to maximize the benefits they receive from your practice. 

Your practice can uphold beneficence by: 

• Providing recommendations tailored to each patient’s needs
• Staying attuned to patients’ emotions and offering solutions to ease their physical and emotional discomfort
• Taking the time to thoroughly assess a patient’s condition and determine the best treatment option

Avoid Intentional or Unintentional Harm

It may seem like a no-brainer, but the principle of non-maleficence is another core component of dental ethics. It means avoiding intentionally or unintentionally harming patients by weighing the risks of a treatment against the benefits and choosing the treatment that poses the most benefits to the patient. 

You can practice non-maleficence by: 

• Collecting all relevant medical history to assess the risks of a treatment for a patient’s health needs
• Sanitizing and cleaning all equipment thoroughly to prevent the spread of infections
• Following adequate safety protocols during procedures to prevent harm 
• Participating in continuing education to improve safety measures for patients

Treat Patients Fairly

Avoiding bias within your dental treatments is another important tenet of dental ethics. You should treat all patients equally regardless of their race, class, background, financial situation, or other diversifying factors. 

Your practice can prioritize the fair treatment of patients by: 

• Giving patients the same amount of time for similar appointments 
• Treating patients with respect at all times
• Making accommodations as necessary for patients with different cultural backgrounds or disabilities

Maintain Confidentiality and Privacy 

As a dental professional, you probably have HIPAA laws ingrained into your psyche. Confidentiality and privacy are two huge ethical principles that every staff member must maintain. Failing to comply with HIPAA could cause your licenses to be taken away, preventing you from practicing dentistry. 

At a minimum, your practice should do the following to uphold confidentiality and privacy: 

• Safeguard patient records against unauthorized users
• Only use high-security software, including in your patient loyalty program, and practice automation systems
• Practice data breach response plans so you can quickly resolve security issues
• Conduct HIPAA training regularly to ensure that all staff members understand and stick to these guidelines

Dental Intelligence Can Give You Time to Prioritize Dental Ethics

Using a full-scale dental practice performance solution like Dental Intelligence can give you more time in the day to prioritize dental ethics and improve the patient experience. Even better, Dental Intelligence includes numerous features that can help you uphold ethical principles, like secure privacy measures, streamlined consent forms for dental treatment, and customizable treatment plan templates. 

Request your free Dental Intelligence demo today to learn more about this end-to-end practice performance solution. 

In the day-to-day chaos of running a dental practice, it’s easy to overlook some tasks that may not seem as important to your practice’s success. But your staff should be doing everything you can to create a positive, comfortable patient experience.

Creating checklists that help improve your office’s image can ensure you don’t lose sight of one of your most important goals: helping patients have a great experience from the moment they walk through the doors until they leave. 

Here are a few mini dental office checklists your practice can use to enhance the patient experience. 

Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Cleaning Checklists

Does your dental office have a hired cleaning crew, or do you clean the office yourself? Either way, you’ll want to ensure specific cleaning tasks get done regularly. Thorough, detailed cleanings are vital for your office’s hygiene and infection control but also impact your reputation among patients. 

Below are daily, weekly, and monthly cleaning checklists your office can utilize: 

Daily Cleaning Tasks

• Clean and refresh the bathroom. Wipe down surfaces, clean the toilet and sink, and replace amenities to prepare for the next day. 
• Disinfect high-touch areas. Wipe down the reception desk, waiting area furniture, patient chairs, dental equipment, keyboards and mice, faucets and sinks, and any other frequently touched surfaces to prevent the spread of germs. 
• Empty waste bins. Take out the trash daily, even if trash cans aren’t full, to maintain a sanitary and professional image. 
• Dust and vacuum everywhere. Removing dust and debris from every corner of your dental office daily is important in showing patients you care about their safety and comfort. 
• Mop the floors. Clean and disinfect hard flooring to remove dirt and bacteria that patrons track in on their shoes. 

Weekly Cleaning Tasks

• Clean windows and glass surfaces. Use Windex or another glass cleaner to leave all windows and other glass surfaces sparkling. 
• Disinfect trash bins. At the end of each week, take out the trash and wipe down each trash bin with disinfecting wipes to prevent odors and kill lingering bacteria. 
• Dust ceilings. Higher areas of your office may not be as visible as those at eye level, but they accumulate dust and dirt just as fast. Don’t neglect to dust the ceiling and any high surfaces weekly. 
• Clean out the refrigerator. While patients may not see the insides of your office refrigerators, they can certainly smell when food begins rotting. Make a habit of removing old food from the fridge weekly. 

Monthly Cleaning Tasks

• Clean the window screens. Remove dirt and dust from window screens monthly. You can’t assume patients won’t notice these details.
• ‍Check and replace lightbulbs. You may have overlooked lightbulbs burning out in minimally used areas. Check each lightbulb monthly. 

Waiting Room Features Checklist

Keeping your office clean and sanitary is a bare minimum requirement for running a successful practice. But your office can go above and beyond by creating checklists for tasks that enhance patients’ experiences while waiting for appointments. 

Here are a few dental office checklists you can use to spruce up your waiting room and enhance patient comfort levels: 

Educational Resources

Your office can add some educational materials around the waiting room to help patients stay informed about their care, such as:

• Pamphlets about common dental issues, like cavities, chipped teeth, root canals, etc. 
• Televisions tuned in to dental resources, like the American Dental Association TV channel 
• Posters with engaging graphics about dental hygiene or introductions to your dental office staff

Comfort Measures

Dental anxiety is a significant concern for many patients, but your office may implement a few strategies to ease their stress before appointments. Consider the following checklist of comfort measures to include in the waiting room:

• Relaxing music that helps patients stay calm as they anticipate appointments
• Virtual Check-In, which lets patients check in from their cars if they feel more comfortable waiting in a familiar environment
• Soft lighting that helps patients relax 
• Books and magazines for patients who prefer a distraction before their appointments

Boost Your Patient Experience with Dental Intelligence 

While a commitment to your practice’s cleanliness and a reconsideration of your dental office design can do wonders for the patient experience, they’re not the only measures your office can take. Are you looking for more ways to enhance the patient experience? Dental Intelligence lets you check more tasks off your dental office checklist while creating an optimal experience for every patient.

Schedule your Dental Intelligence demo today to see what our practice performance solution can do for you.

Managing a dental practice with multiple locations is no easy feat. It’s a lucrative venture but requires extra planning and consideration to master. 

This guide breaks down a few essential tips for managing multi-location dental practices. 

1. Clearly Define Roles in Each Location

As the owner of multiple dental practices, you can only be in one place at one time. So, how do you ensure that each location operates to your standards and provides an exceptional patient experience? 

Creating and defining clear roles for each staff member is crucial for keeping your dental practices organized and ensuring they operate successfully, even when you cannot check on them in person. Each dental practice location should have its set of management professionals dedicated to the success of that practice. These roles may include:

• Regional managers
• COOs
• Associates
• Partners
• Accountants

Along with designating these roles in each location, ensure every staff member knows their responsibilities well. You won’t have to worry about micromanaging every person across your locations; instead, you can rely on trusted employees to handle such management-related tasks. 

2. Establish Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) Across the Board

Standard operating procedures (SOPs) provide step-by-step instructions for different tasks and processes within your dental practice. They may cover topics like submitting insurance claims, billing patients, creating schedules, and more. 

To ensure consistent quality across your multi-location dental practice, create SOPs each practice can use for training purposes. Doing so will streamline the training process for new hires, improve the efficiency and productivity of current staff members, and ensure each practice follows the same standards. 

3. Create Clear Communication Channels

Each of your dental practice locations shouldn’t exist in a bubble. Instead, creating easy communication channels between locations can ensure that all staff members collaborate well despite working in different physical locations. 

First, with Team Chat you can establish an instant messaging system that lets staff members and dental professionals communicate with each other throughout the day.

Next, set up biweekly or monthly Zoom calls where the staff members in each location can communicate directly about challenges and successes. For example, you can set up breakout rooms where the regional managers from each location can communicate, the accountants can compare books, etc. 

4. Track Performance Metrics Closely

While trying to manage multiple dental practices, it’s easy to overlook small issues that could lead to bigger challenges down the line. You may focus more on keeping each practice afloat than optimizing performance. However, because any business can fail when even one aspect stops performing, it behooves you as a multi-practice owner to ensure consistency of branding, company vision, and operations across all locations. 

Make a habit of closely tracking performance metrics for each dental practice location. Set up programs that automatically track key performance indicators (KPIs) like:

• Number of new patients
• Number of returning patient appointments
• Frequency of no-shows 

DSO Scorecards allow you to compare figures across each dental practice location easily. You may notice that one practice has been seeing a significant number of new patients while another has been losing patients steadily. Knowing these figures can allow you to take a closer look at the factors impacting performance and roll out strategies to improve them. 

5. Use Technology to Streamline Processes

Managing multi-location dental practices may seem like a never-ending job. One way to lighten your workload is by implementing technology to streamline routine processes. For example, you can

• Implement automatic insurance verification systems to save time managing claims.
• Use Virtual Check-In to allow patients to check in from their cars or seats in the waiting room, freeing up time for your staff members. 
• Send automatic appointment reminders to patients instead of using manual reminder calls.
• Allow patients to fill out digital forms that they can complete before arriving at your office.

Look for new, innovative ways you can use technology to save yourself time and streamline processes for staff members. By cutting out rote tasks, you can focus more on high-level issues, such as enhancing the patient experience and running profitable dental practices. 

Dental Intelligence is a full-scale practice performance solution that can help you optimize communication, efficiency, and performance tracking within your multi-location dental practices. Learn more about how Dental Intelligence has helped produce profitable dental services by requesting your free demo today.

Practice growth isn’t easy in the dental business. You’re so focused on providing excellent patient care that your sales figures, profit numbers and other critical metrics may not be as high as you realize. If you want to boost the value of your dental practice, you’ve come to the right place. 

Dental Intelligence offers comprehensive software that helps dental practices streamline their internal and external operations for optimal efficiency. For example, the patient portal by Dental Intelligence empowers patients with simple access to digital health forms, provider communication and more. Below, we discuss seven strategies for raising the value of your dental practice based on our in-depth research. 

1. Empower Patients with Digital Experiences

Patients expect convenience in every interaction with your practice. By offering the most convenient patient experiences, you can bring more patients in the door and boost rescheduling rates to increase your practice’s value. So, what types of convenient experiences can you provide?

• Digital forms to streamline the check-in process
• Patient-provider communication tools
• Online scheduling options
• Appointment reminders
• Online payment options

Patient portals allow patients to access all of the above features and more. When new patients access the application for the first time, they’ll get a glimpse into the wonderful experience they can expect at your office. Digital experiences can boost patient engagement, satisfaction, and rescheduling rates, so you get more appointments on the schedule.  

2. Adopt Comprehensive Reporting Tools

You cannot increase your practice’s value if you don’t know where it currently stands. Comprehensive reporting tools allow you to track key performance indicators (KPIs)like patient scheduling rates, revenue figures, no-show numbers and more — so you know how to improve and which methods work best. The top KPIs you should track when increasing your practice’s value are as follows:

• Production figures
• Collections
• Profit
• New patients
• Fee-for-service versus insurance payout
• Patient retention
• Average practice review score
• Cancellation and no-show numbers
• Active patient rate

3. Streamline Wasted Resources

As you adopt new tools and systems for improving how your practice operates, you may find that you’re spending a lot of resources to provide an excellent experience. Spending funds on a dozen apps will only drain your practice’s value, not increase it. You can reduce your overhead with an all-in-one solution combining internal and external experiences for more streamlined, cost-effective results. 

4. Protect Your Reputation

Many potential patients will likely consider your practice’s reputation before choosing you over other dental offices. Investing in positive reviews is a great way to bring in more patient so you can boost your practice’s value. Positive practice reviews can increase scheduling rates and help your website rank higher in search engine results, so more people in the area learn about your office when searching for things like “dentist near me.”

You can boost your reputation with our online reviews tools that help you request positive patient feedback after a visit. Many platforms also make it easy to respond to negative feedback so you can resolve the matter and potentially remove the review. 

5. Make It Easy to Schedule Appointments

Appointment scheduling should be a simple, intuitive process so potential patients are more inclined to visit your office. Consider offering numerous channels for patients to schedule appointments at their convenience. For example, you could offer in-office scheduling, phone scheduling, online scheduling and more. 

6. Automate Payments

Bringing more patients in the door is only the first step to increasing your practice’s value. You must also make payments convenient to speed up the billing process and generate more revenue. 

You can improve the payment process by sending convenient online billing links after the appointment or offering financing options. Your practice may also consider automating the insurance verification and claims process to speed up collections. 

7. Prevent No-Shows

No-shows can quickly lower the value of your dental practice by wasting time and resources. You can prevent no-shows by sending automated appointment reminders to patients. 

You may take this one step further by requiring patients to confirm their appointment in advance. If they do not confirm, you can cancel on their behalf to free up the spot for another patient. 

Grow Your Practice with Dental Intelligence 

At Dental Intelligence, we help you grow the value of your dental practice through highly advanced practice management software. Continue learning how to maximize efficiency at your office with our guide on dental revenue cycle management. Schedule a Dental Intelligence demo to see our platform in action.

Bad reviews at your dental practice can deter potential patients, turn away existing clients, and kill revenue. What sets excellent dental practices apart is how they handle negative patient reviews. You can learn a lot from how clients complain about your business. 

Dental Intelligence offers a highly intuitive platform that helps you collect more positive online reviews for improved reputation management and website rankings. We understand how challenging it can feel when you first receive negative feedback and don’t know how to respond. Below, we will walk you through the top steps for taking advantage of negative customer reviews.  

1. Understand Why Online Reviews Matter

Online reviews affect your business in multiple ways. When someone says something positive or negative about a dentist at your practice, they’re potentially impacting the following:

• Patient scheduling rates
• Google rankings
• Practice reputation
• Provider reputation
• Practice revenue

Whether you want to improve your Google rankings or bring more customers in the door, you need to manage your practice’s reviews. 

2. Stay Professional 

Now that you know why online reviews matter, you can begin taking advantage of any negative reviews your practice receives. You may feel frustrated or aggravated when you first read a negative review. At this point, it’s best to step back and remain calm, professional, and level-headed. 

As a dental practice, you must keep the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) at the forefront of all interactions. If a patient mentions their care or treatment online, you cannot discuss the same details when responding, as this could violate HIPAA. Taking the conversation offline is the best way to proceed here. 

If you feel upset about a review, the best thing you can do is take a moment to draft your response before posting it. You can show it to peers to ensure it sounds fair and professional. You may report the feedback if you believe the reviewer made false claims. 

3. Respond Promptly and Appropriately  

About 20% of reviewers expect responses within 24 hours, while most want to hear from you within a week.¹ Prompt and genuine review responses show potential patients that you care. Try to keep the following tips in mind when responding:

• Try to sound authentic: You want to sound like you genuinely care about their concern and want to resolve it. 
• Personalize each message: Do not respond to each negative review with a copy-and-pasted message. Personalize each message if possible. 
• Thank the reviewer: Thank the reviewer for taking the time to leave their thoughts so you can improve your practice.
• Show that you care about their problem: Explain that you understand where they’re coming from and why they’re upset.
• Move the conversation offline: End the comment with a message like “This is not the experience we strive for. I’d like to discuss this further.” You can leave a phone number or, if you know the patient, you may email or call them. 

4. Fix the Problem, Then Learn from It

Moving the conversation offline allows you to potentially resolve the dispute with the patient so they can delete their negative review. 

Negative patient reviews should be learning experiences for your practice. While some patients may complain about seemingly small issues, many pieces of negative feedback offer opportunities for your practice to improve. For example, if the patient left a bad review about waiting 30 minutes for their appointment, then you know your practice needs to work on streamlining the check-in process. 

5. Learn Your Bad Review Triggers 

As you generate negative patient reviews over time, you’ll likely discover that a few key issues tend to ignite the bad feedback. For example, your patients may often complain about hidden costs after appointments. Once you learn your bad review triggers, you can prevent negative feedback in the future by improving how your practice operates. 

6. Focus on Increasing Good Reviews

The best way to improve your average rating is to increase the number of positive reviews you gather so the negative ones seem less prominent. With review collection tools, you can easily send customers a reminder to leave a positive review after their appointment. The more positive reviews you generate, the better your practice will appear to future patients.

Improve Your Practice’s Reputation with Dental Intelligence  

Whether your practice has negative patient reviews or fake customer reviews, we can help you transform your reputation. Get a demo with Dental Intelligence today to learn how our digital tools can help you collect more positive reviews.

Resources

¹ Social Media Today

Pricing transparency is hard to achieve but important for your dental practice’s success. By offering accurate service quotes up front, you can improve patient satisfaction, increase payment fulfillment, and speed up processing. Thankfully, numerous tools can help your practice provide dental cost transparency.

At Dental Intelligence, we offer an advanced platform for dental payments that helps you collect more funds while offering flexible payment options. With our software, you can track dental pricing in real time while streamlining the claims and insurance verification processes with Dental Intelligence Insurance, so your patients aren’t shocked by their bills. Read on to learn everything you need to know about price transparency in dentistry. 

Why Price Transparency Is Challenging in Dental Practices 

Ideally, your dental practice would have a single price for every service that all patients must pay. Unfortunately, dental services involve many complex factors that make pricing transparency difficult. Each final quote depends on the following:

In many scenarios, the provider cannot calculate the patient’s out-of-pocket costs during the appointment. Instead, the dentist makes a rough estimate based on how much the service typically costs for other patients with similar insurance plans. Unfortunately, seemingly small factors, like the patient’s diagnosis or deductible, can greatly influence the final cost. 

The Importance of Pricing Transparency

Pricing transparency affects your practice in numerous ways. While accurate quotes may be hard to deliver, they can improve member experience figures, fulfillment rates, and more.  

Faster Payment Fulfillment 

If you expect a bill of around $100, but it’s $500, you will likely hesitate to pay it. You may call the office or your insurance company a few times to ensure it’s right and take your time paying it if you can’t afford it.

As a dental office, when you tell your patients exactly what costs they can expect up front, they can either accept or decline services based on their financial situation. Pricing transparency improves payment fulfillment rates after sending out bills because patients know what’s coming. Pricing transparency helps your office get paid faster and can reduce the number of bills sent to collections. 

Improved Satisfaction Rates

Transparency is vital in providing excellent experiences. When a patient gets a surprising bill in the mail, they may complain, which could make your practice look bad. Providing clear and accurate prices can boost satisfaction rates. 

If your patients often leave poor reviews about hidden costs, surprise bills, or high fees, you should consider restructuring your system. Prioritizing price transparency will allow patients to decide what they can or cannot afford. 

Legal Adherence 

As of January 2021, under Federal Law, the American Hospital Association (AHA) requires hospitals to post standard charges for service, including out-of-pocket cost estimates for at least 300 services.¹ The No Surprises Act requires providers and hospitals to provide uninsured patients with Good Faith Estimates. 

While these laws may not apply to insured patients at dental practices, your office should still consider the new regulations. As the legislation expands to support price transparency, dental practices may soon be legally obligated to provide the same level of accurate estimates.  

Faster Processing

When you adopt solutions for price transparency, your practice can enjoy faster claims and insurance verification processing. Essentially, you will provide the patient with their estimated quote based on their insurance plan and services. 

Because these steps have already been taken for you through an automated system, your team won’t have to go through the complex and time-consuming steps of submitting manual claims. As a result, your practice can enjoy faster payment fulfillment from insurance companies and improved acceptance rates.

How To Offer Transparent Pricing in Your Dental Office

The best way to offer pricing transparency at your dental office is by adopting automated insurance verification tools that can take the guesswork out of patient payments. Such tools create accurate treatment pricing information in real time during the patient’s visit based on their insurance information and provided services. After showing the patient their quote, they can either accept or deny the service, so you can directly submit the claim to their insurance.

Collect More Payments with Dental Intelligence 

With Dental Intelligence, your practice gains pricing transparency, flexible payment options, automated insurance verification, and much more. Schedule a Dental Intelligence demo today to see how our dental software can help your practice provide transparent pricing.

Resources

¹ American Hospital Association

Serving your community with professional and ethical dental services should be your number one priority as a practitioner. However, you must still have an effective online marketing strategy to reach potential patients and maximize your conversions. Using patient reviews is a practical way to achieve your marketing goals.

With Online Reviews you can automatically request reviews from patients to showcase on top review sites like Google, Facebook, and Yelp. Still, it is crucial to understand how to earn and use reviews for the best results.

How Do Patient Testimonials Help a Dental Practice?

Over 80% of Google users read reviews to evaluate the quality of businesses like yours. In other words, when your happy customers post positive testimonials on Google, other potential patients see them and may choose your services.

On a more technical level, positive reviews impact your ranking in Google’s algorithm — meaning the more reviews your dental practice has, the more visible it is online. Ranking higher on Google is important because most people will not click past the first page of the search engine results when looking for a new dentist. Earning four and five star ratings helps more people find you, which is the first step to converting them into loyal patients.

What Should a Dental Practice Do to Earn Reviews and Testimonials?

Earning honest feedback from patients can be harder than it seems. However, collecting these reviews is an important first step in your marketing strategy. Before you try to solicit reviews from patients, examine how often people post about you across sites like Google, Facebook, Yelp, or other major platforms.

If your dental practice lacks reviews, leaving signs around your clinic or printing stickers for your doors and windows with instructions on how to post a review can help. You can also email or send a message to patients after their appointments, encouraging them to share their thoughts online. 

Your reviews and testimonials serve different purposes. A review is typically a general rating between one and five stars — sometimes with an option for your patients to share additional information. Testimonials are longer statements from patients discussing their experiences with your staff in detail.

One or two strong testimonials on the homepage of your website could convince visitors to choose your practice. Alternatively, reviews on your Google Business Profile page offer users a quick look at your practice while browsing the web. Both are important to use to market your practice.

What Other Strategies Can Your Dental Practice Use to Boost Online Visibility Through Reviews?

Knowing how to use customer reviews to generate interactions online is essential. Any time a patient leaves feedback, you should respond to it concisely and professionally. Practice-to-patient engagement shows users that you are active and receptive to concerns. 

Don’t worry if a few patients leave negative reviews now and again because you can use these to your advantage. Some online users may think bots generate all your reviews if you don’t have a single poor response, so one or two negative reviews can boost your other reviews’ credibility.

Feature your positive reviews on your website, social media, or in press releases because it is essentially free advertising. Good reviews show that your practice is trustworthy. It may even be worth quoting your reviews as a website brag line if you earn dozens of five-star responses.

How Many Reviews Do You Need?

Determining how many reviews your practice needs depends on your marketing goals. As a new business, earning seven to ten five-star reviews from local patients is a reasonable goal to set. 

It may be worth requesting a deeper testimonial from a patient who leaves a five-star review. They can post these on third-party sites to encourage others to explore your online resources. Remember not to pressure them with this request, or you could violate solicitation laws.

As your business grows, continue providing outstanding patient care and customer service to maintain a high ratio of positive to negative reviews. Earning dozens of five star reviews puts you above your competition on Google and exponentially drives new customers to your practice.

Dental Practice Solutions That Amplify Your Online Reviews

Earning and managing reviews doesn’t have to be tedious. At Dental Intelligence, we can help you optimize your online strategy. Schedule a demo today to see our Online Reviews in action!

Creative contests on your social media platforms can increase patient engagement and get your pages more followers. However, coming up with dental contest ideas can be difficult if you don’t know where to start. What competition ideas and contest themes can help increase your social media presence and engagement? Read on to find out.

Benefits of Social Media Giveaways and Contests

You might wonder whether hosting giveaways and contests on your social media pages is worth the time, energy, and cost. However, a study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications indicated that customer engagement through contests increased the number of decisions to buy among users and the amount of money customers spent after engaging with a campaign¹.

Engaging with existing and prospective patients through social media giveaways or contests can increase awareness of your dental practice and services. You can improve your social media presence over competitors by offering a free cleaning or special swag bag.

Increase Patient Engagement on Social Platforms With Creative Contests

Social media platforms track user interaction with your pages to determine how popular your page or profile is among local users. The more popular your practice page is, the more often the platform will recommend your page and ads to local users. By increasing engagement for your page through likes, comments, and post shares, you can improve your page’s visibility among local platform users.

Contests based on likes, shares, referrals, and comments can help you reach a new audience of local patients when they’re shopping for a new dental practice. By improving your page popularity, a social platform is more likely to show your page when it’s most relevant for someone looking for a new dentist nearby.

Competition Ideas for Your Dental Practice

So, what are some dental contest ideas you can implement on your pages to boost numbers for followers, likes, and comments? Consider different types of contests to increase each type of engagement, including the following:

Caption Contests

Post a silly or interesting picture and let your followers suggest the best caption to describe the image. Caption contests often get tons of likes and comments if your original content is engaging enough. If your office hosts a silly costume day, post a group photo of your staff in their costumes and ask your followers to suggest the best caption. The prize could be as simple as a $10 gift card to a local coffee shop.

Raffle Contests

For larger prizes, you can hold a raffle contest on your page. Make it free to enter, but include instructions that users must follow your page, share the post, and leave a comment with a specific emoji or keyword to enter. These instructions can help you grow your followership, increase awareness of your page through shares, and increase on-page engagement through comments.

Comment Contests

If you want to increase engagement among your current followers, create a contest for a free Waterpik or half-off teeth whitening to promote your services and increase on-page engagement analytics. Ask users to enter to win by commenting with a specific word or emoji. Most users will also like the post, and some will share it.

Holiday Hashtag Contests

Create a contest campaign for tagged posts by asking your followers to post a picture of their shiny smile, tag your page, and use a targeted hashtag. For example, if your practice is located in Atlanta, GA, you can ask users to use the hashtag #ATLSmiles4July for your Fourth of July contest.

Guessing Contests

Have users guess how many pieces of candy corn or jelly beans are in a jar in the comments to win a prize. This is a great way to increase engagement without requiring a lot of time or attention to manage the contest if your office is busy.

Consider which contests require your social media followers to take more steps and plan your prizes accordingly. Multi-step entries should offer the chance to win a better prize, like a summer fun pack of towels and a new cooler or a fancy holiday gift basket. Dental marketing by Dental Intelligence can help you plan your marketing strategies.

Increase Patient Engagement With Help From Dental Intelligence

From dental contest ideas to using videos to promote your dental practice, Dental Intelligence is a comprehensive practice performance solution. Schedule a demo to learn more about how Dental Intelligence can help grow your practice with new patients.

Resources

¹ Northwestern University

Does your dental practice accept most major insurance plans? Ensuring patients understand the difference between in-network and out-of-network dental benefits is a key aspect of patient billing. Does your office have a process for explaining out-of-network dental benefits to patients and alternative payment methods like dental financing?

In-Network vs. Out-of-Network Insurance Coverage

Your practice’s patient education should begin by explaining which insurance coverage you accept as an in-network provider. If your patient has an insurance plan you accept, explain any limitations in coverage. Most insurance providers don’t cover cosmetic dentistry, for example. Review your patient’s policy thoroughly to ensure you know how to submit requests to their insurance provider.

If your patient has dental benefits from an out-of-network insurance company, explain what that means for your patient’s liability compared to their insurance provider’s. An insurer often offers both in-network and out-of-network benefits but will cover less of the total bill for an out-of-network procedure.

Each patient may have a different deductible to meet before their insurance coverage kicks in. Some insurance companies may not offer out-of-network coverage until the policyholder meets their deductible. Review patient insurance coverage with them so they understand their billing obligations before their first procedure.

Developing Patient Education for Their Dental Benefits

Patient education ensures patients get the most from their dental treatment plans. Many patients will choose a dentist based on finding an in-network provider. However, if a patient already has a wonderful dentist at your practice and is considering changing providers because of the type of insurance accepted at another office, you can educate the patient on the out-of-network benefits still available to them.

Do you have appropriate materials for explaining out-of-network dental benefits to patients? What are your options for communicating the potential dental benefits available to patients with other insurance coverage?

Options to consider for patient education include:

• Pamphlets, brochures, or booklets offering key insurance terms and information about common coverage limits
• Blog posts on your website about insurance coverage for dental patients and what most policies cover
• Social media posts and ads about out-of-network benefits and low-rate dental financing options

Explaining Out-of-Network Dental Benefits Offered at Your Dental Practice

Why the big push to ensure patients know their options? If a patient considering your dental practice realizes your office isn’t in their network for insurance coverage, they may look elsewhere for a new dentist. By educating prospective and existing patients that they may have out-of-network dental benefits through their insurance company, you can continue to attract new patients and retain existing ones.

The challenge is reaching prospective patients before they choose another office. Making your educational materials readily available in print and online is essential for your dental office marketing strategy.

Pros and Cons of Being In-Network vs. Out-of-Network

You may think you can only get new patients as an in-network provider or through dental financing for patients who don’t carry dental insurance coverage. However, there are several advantages and disadvantages to consider when choosing which insurance plans you’ll accept as an in-network provider. The major pros and cons of being in-network are as follows:

Pros of Being In-Network

• Insurance portal listings for your office or offices as an in-network provider
• More patients who carry accepted insurance plans for dental care
• More patients who stick with their dental treatment plans for regular cleanings and dental procedures

Cons of Being In-Network

• Additional patients can overwhelm smaller dental practices
• Non-negotiable procedure fees
• Less time to spend with each patient during appointments due to higher booking volume

Because dental procedures are more affordable with an in-network dentist, many patients prefer going to a dental practice covered by their insurance. However, there are pros and cons to consider as an out-of-network provider as well, including the following:

Pros of Being Out-of-Network

• Choosing your own rates for dental procedures
• Greater control of your office billing processes for out-of-pocket and insurance claim payments
• Fee-for-service billing options to get paid immediately and seek reimbursement from the patient’s insurance company on behalf of your patient

Cons of Being Out-of-Network

• Higher costs for billing department labor
• Less accessible for some low-income patients

Getting paid by insurance or out of the patient’s pocket is easy with Dental Intelligence Payments and Insurance. Learn more below.

Process Patient Payments Quickly and Easily With Dental Intelligence

Now that you know how to explain out-of-network dental benefits to patients, help them develop a patient payment plan. Dental Intelligence offers several payment options. Schedule a demo today.

Whether you’re opening your first dental office or have an existing practice that needs some extra “oomph,” you may want a new dental marketing strategy. However, how will your new dental marketing cost affect your bottom line? Will advertising and a sleek new website with online scheduling and payments bring in enough new patients to offset the costs?

Learn more about the cost of dental marketing and determining the best way to estimate your budget for website development, search engine optimization (SEO), and other organic and paid marketing options.

What Are Common Costs Associated with Dental Marketing?

In trying to find new patients for your dental practice, what are common costs you should consider in your marketing budget? Some costs you should consider when establishing a budget include:

• Website development and design
• Added features and third-party app integration for your website
• SEO content development for site service pages, local pages, and blog posts
• Paid ads for Google Local Services Ads (LSA)
• Paid social media ads with local targeting
• Email campaigns to retain existing patients with special offers and regular dental health reminders

You also need other office tools to help you manage your marketing campaigns and results, including CRM (customer relationship management) software that stores contact information and patient notes.

Establishing a Marketing Budget

How do you plan a budget for your marketing? If you’re an existing practice, you can calculate your marketing budget based on previous years’ revenue. If you’re just opening your practice, you must estimate your revenue goals for the first three years and then calculate how much to set aside for marketing based on growth goals.

Factors that matter when establishing a budget include your goals for growth and the competition in your market. If you’re happy with your current patient numbers or don’t have many competitors, you can spend less on marketing than offices with several local competitors or high growth goals.

So, how much should you spend? For new offices, consider spending:

• 10% for slow growth or in a less competitive market
• 18% for moderate growth or in a fairly competitive market
• 25% for fast growth or in a highly competitive market

Be aware of the risks of setting your growth goals too high, such as not having the space or personnel to manage the influx of patients. Consider starting slowly and building up to a higher marketing budget.

For existing offices, consider spending:

• 2-3% to maintain
• 3-5% for slow growth or in less competitive markets
• 5-7% for fast growth or in highly competitive markets

Planning for the Cost of Dental Marketing

Developing a marketing plan involves identifying your target market and meeting them where they are. Patients use multiple platforms and methods to find a new dentist, which is why your dental marketing cost could be much higher than you anticipated if you don’t budget correctly. What should your marketing strategy include?

Website Development

You need a fast, responsive website that works well on PC and mobile devices and has all the tools a patient might want. Your site should handle scheduling, reminders, and bill-paying services.

SEO Content

SEO is the science of creating content on your site that helps your practice rank over competitors in the search results for relevant search terms and keywords on Google and other search engines. Understanding the factors that search engines measure for ranking search results and developing relevant content to meet certain search parameters is key for your website.

Local Ads

Google allows business owners to set up Google Business Profiles and set their location for advertising. You can also purchase ad space on Google to appear at the top of the local listings as a sponsored advertiser for your dental services.

Social Media Advertising

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are great for targeted local advertising. You can choose information about who to show your ads to, including distance, age, and other demographic information.

Existing Patient Retention Marketing

Email campaign software can help you market special deals and reminders for existing patients, including newsletters, reduced-price services, and other key information to keep your office at the forefront of patients’ minds.

Get More Insights into Marketing for Your Dental Practice

If you need content marketing for dentists, turn to the experienced marketers at Dental Intelligence. Learn more about our full range of dental marketing tools and schedule a demo to discuss the dental marketing cost for your practice.

If you think “networking” is a dirty word, and the thought of mingling with other dental pros nearly makes you break out in hives, you’re not alone! Many dentists would rather do anything else than spend time at dental networking events.

If you’re one of them, though, you could be missing out on those all-important professional connections to help further your career. That’s why any dentist who takes their work seriously can’t afford to miss out on networking events.

Below, learn about the importance of dental networking and see what these events can do for you.

Networking Allows You to Mentor and Be Mentored

At dental networking events, you’ll often come across young professionals fresh out of dental school. These fledgling dentists are excited yet nervous as they enter the world of dental work.

Young dentists can benefit from mentors to help them learn the ropes. If your practice has the time, you may want to consider taking one or more of them under your wing.

Mentorship gives you a chance to share your knowledge and pass it on to a new generation of dentists. It’s not only helpful to young dentists; it’s rewarding for you, too.

Or perhaps you’re the one in need of a mentor. If you’re a recent grad, networking events can be a great place to find them.

Networking Helps You Build a Resource Pool with Others

Is there anything worse than running out of dental supplies in the middle of a busy day? If you’re on your own, you’d have to wait until the next shipment from your supplier.

On the other hand, if you have a robust network, you can tap into that to borrow supplies from your partners. Of course, you’ll want to return the favor if any of those partners are ever in need.

Dental networking events are chock-full of dentists who’d love to build a resource-sharing pool with your practice. Just start asking around to find them!

Networking Can Open Doors for Your Dental Career

If you’re a new grad, finding an opening at a good practice can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. You’ve spent hours, days, and even weeks scouring the job boards to no avail. You’ve sent your resume to dozens of practices but have yet to hear back from any of them. Now what?

Dental networking events are the answer! Unlike job boards, which are faceless and impersonal, networking events allow you to connect with real dentists in the flesh. The more of those connections you make, the bigger the chance a practice will discover your talented self.

Networking Enables You to Build Your Professional Reputation

How would you like to see your name in lights? Well, you’re a dentist, not an actor, so that’s not very likely. However, dental networking events allow you to build your reputation and become a celebrity in the dental world.

Are you involved in cool research? Does your practice use cutting-edge tech in a novel way? Dental networking events are the perfect place to share your achievements with others in the industry.

The more you share your story and accomplishments, your reputation will grow. You could attract the attention of high-profile practices, investors, and other must-know dental colleagues.

How To Network with Other Dental Professionals

If you have no idea where to find dental networking events, that’s understandable. These niche events can be difficult to locate if you don’t know where to look. Don’t worry, though; we’ve got you covered:

• Hang out on social media. Thanks to platforms like Facebook and Twitter, you don’t have to travel far to find other dentists eager to network. Plus, they may be able to clue you in on local networking events.
• Join dental organizations to stay up to date with hot trends in the industry. Organizations like the American Dental Association and the Academy of General Dentistry sometimes announce dental networking events.
• Stay in touch with people you met in dental school, including fellow students and professors. Both can be an excellent networking resource.

Expand Your Practice with Dental Intelligence

If you’re ready to take your practice to the next level, you can’t afford to miss out on dental networking events. To learn more about successful brand building with Dental Intelligence, request a demo of our software today.

After long years of hard work, your practice has finally got it made: lots of loyal patients, plenty of profit, and a dedicated staff that runs the office like a well-oiled machine. Naturally, you start to wonder whether it’s time to expand.

Is growing a dental practice right for you? It might be. Expansion can be appealing, but you don’t want to bite off more than you can chew. Below, you’ll learn whether you’re ready for dental practice expansion and how to do it the right way.

Want to learn how to meet your dental office goals with Dental Intelligence? Reach out to us today!

Understand Why You Want to Expand

Nearly every dentist dreams of dental practice growth. They picture a spacious, airy office, perhaps situated in a high-rise building or by the water. They imagine serving dozens of patients a day and reaping so much profit that they’ll finally be able to buy that fancy house or car they’ve always wanted.

That’s a nice fantasy, but is it a dream your practice can make come true? That all depends on why you want to expand in the first place. Without a strong “why,” the “how” falls apart.

Ask yourself:

• Is your waiting room so tiny that you’re often limited to standing room only?
• Do you have plenty of patients but not enough staff to handle all of them?
• Would you like to buy cutting-edge equipment but lack the space for it?
• Are you sick of having to refer patients to other practices for services yours doesn’t offer?

If you answer “yes” to any of those questions, you might be ready for dental office expansion.

Signs Your Practice Is Ready to Grow

Growing a dental practice isn’t as simple as shopping for new office space. Before you start making a plan, determine whether you’re ready and able to grow.

You’re Doing Well Financially

Going over your key performance indicators (KPIs) with a fine-tooth comb can be kind of boring, but you’ll need to do it if you’re planning on expanding. That’s because if you lack the cash to expand or your practice is in serious debt, you’ll want to put your plans on pause until you’re financially in a better place.

Consider:

• How much revenue does your practice make every month?
• What do your profit and loss statements look like?
• What’s your collection rate?
• How much are your overhead expenses?

You’ve Got a Steady Flow of New Patients

Bringing in new patients is a good thing, which is why practice owners can never rest on their laurels. Dental Economics magazine says that, ideally, you should bring in 10 to 25 new patients a month¹.

Is your practice hitting those numbers? If so, great! But if you’re too busy and can barely keep up with the influx, that’s not so great. You may need to consider hiring another dentist or two for your practice to maintain a manageable workload.

You Know How to Retain Existing Patients

Dental practices live and die by the loyalty of their existing patients.

“I can always find new patients,” you might say. That’s true but doing so can feel like running on a treadmill that never stops. You can’t focus on practice development if you’re always worrying about where your next patients will come from.

Ideally, patients should stay with your practice for at least 18 months. If you have very few regulars, you might not be ready for business growth just yet.

Do you know how to keep patients coming back time and time again? Does your practice have a loyalty program, for instance? And are you sending friendly appointment reminders? If not, try these strategies and watch your patient retention rate skyrocket.

Tips for a Successful Dental Practice Expansion

So, you’ve decided that you’re ready to expand your practice. Here’s how to do it:

• Increase your office hours. Consider offering extended hours on the weekends and on certain weekdays.
• Hire more staff to keep up with all your new patients and lower the risk of employee burnout.
• Draw in new patients with advertising (local ads and pay-per-click advertising work well for this).
• Move to a bigger office if yours isn’t large enough to accommodate all patients and staff.

Grow Your Practice with Dental Intelligence

Growing a dental practice is far from easy, but Dental Intelligence can help! With our software, you can send appointment reminders, request online reviews, offer same-day dental services, and so much more. Ask for a demo today!

Resources

¹ Dental Economics

Is your dental practice struggling to draw in customers? Have you tried advertising only to end up with nothing but crickets and tumbleweeds? If so, it may be time to consider a fresh start for your dental practice branding.

Practice rebranding can be a smart way to revamp your identity, but it’s not as simple as slapping a new logo on your door and calling it a day. If not done right, rebranding could cost you more customers and revenue than your practice lost in the first place.

Below, learn how to meet your dental office goals with these rebranding dos and don’ts from Dental Intelligence.

What Is Dental Practice Rebranding, and Why Should You Consider It?

Have you ever watched a movie or read a book where a character changed their identity? They get a new name, a fresh wardrobe, and a different haircut. They even move to a new home.

Dental practice branding is a lot like that. You’re not just changing the name of your practice; you’re going all in and creating an entirely new identity.

Consider rebranding if:

• You have a lot of negative publicity. We’re not talking about a few bad online reviews (every practice gets those). We mean seriously bad publicity that’s doing major damage to your reputation.
• You’re merging with another practice.
• You moved to a new office and want to expand your offerings.
• You want to attract a different clientele.
• Your branding is too similar to that of your competitors.
• You haven’t updated your branding in the past several years.

Dental Practice Branding Dos

For your rebranding to be a success, follow these helpful branding strategies.

Understand Your Target Audience

The coolest-looking branding in the world won’t help if it doesn’t appeal to your target market. These are the specific types of people that your practice wants to attract (for instance, parents or seniors).

To better understand your target patient, ask:

• What are their demographics (age, where they live, income, etc.)?

• What are their pain points?
• What sort of marketing do they respond to?
• What type of dental care do they need?

Fully Understand the Pros and Cons

Before embarking on your rebranding journey, it’s critical to understand the perks and drawbacks. It’s true you’ll get a fresh start, and that can be exciting. You might be able to draw in more patients than you were ever able to before.

However, a total rebranding effort means starting from scratch. You’ll lose any brand recognition your practice had; you may even lose some customers along the way.

Rebranding is a lot of work — and expensive to boot. Can your practice afford it? Are you and your staff up to the challenge?

Think About the Image You Want to Convey

When rebranding, you can’t simply choose the colors and imagery that appeal to you. Instead, think about what your target patient would prefer.

For instance, do you run a pediatric dental practice? You may want to stick with bright, cheerful colors and images of happy kids in the dental chair.

Dental Practice Branding Don’ts

Now that you know what you ought to do when rebranding, here are a few mistakes to avoid.

Don’t Change Your Name Without a Good Reason

Dental practices should never change their name unless they have a very good reason to do so. One of these reasons is negative publicity that your business can’t overcome. You might also need to change your practice’s name if it’s too similar to one of your competitor’s names.

Don’t Use Confusing Jargon

Patients don’t like to feel as though you’re talking over their heads. In your copy, avoid using technical jargon and dental terminology that most patients won’t understand. Stick to simple language that reassures potential customers you can help with their problems.

Don’t Be a Carbon Copy of Your Competitors

If your competitor has beautiful branding, you might consider copying what they’ve done. Don’t! The goal of rebranding is to stand out so that your practice doesn’t look like all the rest.

That said, it does pay to at least check out what the competition is doing. This can give you ideas to use for your own messaging.

Make Dental Intelligence a Part of Your Rebranding Strategy

Dental practice branding can be tough, but Dental Intelligence is here to help! Our software enables your practice to handle online reviews and reputation management, remind patients of appointments, and market your practice to customers. Book a demo today to learn more.

When discussing a treatment plan with patients, they may have to choose between several dental treatment options and struggle to understand their implications. They’ll also have questions about potential costs and how their insurance plan fits in. 

Communication is easier when you ensure you and your patient are on the same page. Using smart tools like dental treatment plans and payment plans by Dental Intelligence certainly helps, but you still need open face-to-face discussion to build a rapport with your patients. Check out our top five tips for dental treatment plan presentation. 

1. Invest in Patient Education

The treatment plan (and, on a macro level, your entire dental practice) will succeed only if the patient is 100% on board with what you propose. Take the time to explain dental procedures in a clear, accessible way when you present a treatment plan.  

Your patient needs to understand:

• Their current dental condition
• Why you are suggesting a specific treatment plan
• Their available dental treatment options
• The potential consequences of accepting or declining the treatment plan you present

Focus on the value you are offering the patient. For example, “If we complete this $150 dental filling now, hopefully, you’ll be able to avoid a $1,000 root canal down the road.” 

2. Relate to Patients on an Eye-to-Eye Level

Remember that your average patient isn’t a dentist. Be sure to use simple terms and relate to each patient on an eye-to-eye level, always taking language and cultural barriers into account. When your patient understands their dental treatment options, what they involve, how long they may take, and how much they will cost, they’re a lot likelier to trust you.

Visual aids go a long way toward explaining complex dental procedures. You can use X-rays, 3D scans, dental animations, and other visual tools to educate the patient and help them make an informed choice. Knowing what they may expect will also help the patient feel calmer, especially if they struggle with dental anxiety. 

3. Be Up Front and Honest About Pricing

“How much will this cost?” is one of the first questions patients ask when discussing dental care plans. Even if you generally leave billing to your administrative team, you should ensure that your suggested treatment plan falls more or less within your patient’s budget range. 

You want to avoid a situation in which the patient gets up after a consultation, thanks you politely, and never returns because the treatment plan you proposed was far beyond what they are able to pay. If several treatment options are available, let the patient know which one would be more affordable. If your practice offers payment plans, mention it and briefly explain how they work. 

4. Discuss Insurance 

Many of your patients rely on their dental insurance plans to fund treatments. If you provide out-of-pocket cost estimates based on the patient’s insurance coverage, be sure to clarify these are only approximate numbers since it’s not within your ultimate control whether the patient’s insurance covers the treatment. 

Predeterminations can help you understand the patient’s coverage, but they may be inaccurate. It’s much more reliable to proceed straight to insurance verification, which allows you to offer a more precise estimate. When you know exactly what your patient’s dental plan covers, processing claims is more straightforward, and denials happen less frequently. 

5. Be Ready to Offer Alternatives

Maybe you believe, based on your experience and professional knowledge, that the treatment plan you suggest would be the optimal choice for the patient. But if the patient hesitates because the plan is too expensive or because they would prefer a less invasive procedure, be ready to discuss any other viable dental treatment options. You want your patients to be confident they’re making the right choice for them. 

Let the patient know you understand their concerns and are ready to go the extra mile to accommodate their preferences. Validate the patient’s opinions, answer their questions, and take enough time for each patient so the consultation doesn’t feel rushed.

If the patient needs more time to consider a treatment plan, ensure your team follows up within the next few days. 

Dental Intelligence Paves the Way to Healthy Communication

Presenting a dental treatment plan is a breeze when you use Dental Intelligence, the ultimate dental software service that includes everything from streamlined digital forms to insurance eligibility verification for dental treatment options. Try our tools and take a step toward easier patient communication, smoother processes, and higher profits. Request a demo today.

Is your dental practice tired of arguing with insurance companies or waiting weeks (sometimes months) for reimbursement? If that sounds familiar, you might consider switching to the fee-for-service dental model.

Fee-for-service doesn’t mean your practice needs to abandon insurance. You can still accept insurance, but rather than waiting for reimbursement, you charge the full provider fee up front.

At Dental Intelligence, we help practices like yours increase dental production and learn how to attract more customers. Below, we explain more about the fee-for-service model and some perks and drawbacks you might want to consider.

The Fee-for-Service Model Explained

Fee-for-service practices are out-of-network dental clinics that charge patients the full provider fee up front. Because these practices don’t rely on reimbursement, they’re not beholden to providing only the services insurance companies will pay for. Patients can get the specific dental work they want rather than settling for what their insurance will cover.

Your practice can define its fee-for-service policy in one of two ways:

1. Tell patients the estimated amount due and request this amount at the time of service. Patients receive a statement if there’s any credit or amount due after insurance pays the estimated portion.

2. Have the patient pay the full fee at the time of service, then tell them to request reimbursement from their insurance provider. Of your two options, this is the quickest route to payment.

Fee-for-service may sound like a great model in theory, but it’s not right for all practices. Below, we discuss a few pros and cons of the model so you can decide whether it’ll work for you.

Pros of Fee-for-Service

Fee-for-service can be the right choice if your practice wants to get paid now. Here, we’ll talk about the model’s benefits.

A Higher Quality of Care

With fee-for-service, the emphasis is on quality over quantity. In-network practices can see dozens of patients a day simply because those practices accept their insurance. That can make running your practice feel like a chore, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed when you’re overbooked.

Because you won’t be in-network, fewer patients will find your practice through their insurance plans. That means you’ll have more time to spend with the patients you already have.

It’s Convenient for Patients

Digging through an insurance carrier’s network directory is a huge pain for many patients. Will insurance cover dental services at certain practices? What if the directory is outdated? When you switch to the fee-for-service model, patients no longer need to spend time hunting for a provider that takes their insurance. 

No Arguing with Insurance Companies

Have you ever argued with an insurance company that said your patient didn’t really need that crown or bridgework? This is all too common because insurance companies aren’t charities. Many will fight tooth and nail to avoid paying for care patients desperately need.

With fee-for-service, you’ll no longer spend hours on the phone haggling with insurance providers. That means patients get the care they need right away. Plus, you get paid immediately, which boosts your bottom line.

Cons of Fee-for-Service

Even though fee-for-service has plenty of perks, it also has some drawbacks.

Loss of Patient Referrals

Full fee-for-service practices (i.e., those that don’t accept insurance) no longer get patient referrals from insurance providers. Fewer patients can be good because it allows you to focus on those you already have, but it’s not so great for your bottom line. You may need to spend more on marketing to attract new patients.

Some Patients May Leave Your Practice

Not every patient will be pleased about having to pay their full bill up front. Expect some of your existing patients to bail, which, again, means you might have to shell out cash on advertising to attract new ones.

The Need for Patient Education

Insurance typically covers preventative care, such as cleanings and fluoride treatments. If you don’t take insurance, those services will no longer be covered, which may confuse patients. You’ll need to spend time explaining how your payment model works.

Does Fee-for-Service Make Sense for Your Practice?

Is fee-for-service right for your dental practice? Requiring upfront payments could be a good choice if you’re sick of dealing with insurance companies and want patients to get top-quality care.

And if you’d like to modernize the dental experience, try Dental Intelligence! We have years of industry expertise and know what it takes for practices to run smoothly. Request a demo of our software today.