As we continue to discuss our Operative Strategy to beat down the Evil in our Industry known as Insurance, I will remind you the idea and old expression of “if you can’t beat them, join them” never ever works out for the best.
Never. Ever.
You understand, giving in only ends well for those whose interest is served. The insurance companies and all of your competition.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I have said it right here many times before, I don’t care if you are in-network or out-of-network, if you classify yourself as fee for service or taking assignment of benefits, or if you are running Medicaid through your Practice.
None of this matters.
If you have the right strategy.
If you actually have a plan.
No one has to dictate your fees unless you let them. In my powerful Insurance Domination Report and Strategy Guide I outline for you the specific approach to ensuring you are never at the mercy of the Insurance Companies and your Patients’ health is never being controlled or dictated by anyone other than you and them.
This is essential if you are going to maintain the integrity of your Practice, stay true to your mission, and practice dentistry on your own terms. Which is the only thing I allow from my clients. You set the terms, we fulfill your vision with a calculated practice business plan that makes it all possible.
You won’t believe this, maybe you will…
I actually get hate letters from losing dentists telling me how it’s not possible to avoid being in network or how there is no way around insurance and that they have given in a long time ago … couldn’t beat them, got desperate and decided to join them. Simplified: I’m basically full of $*#!, smoking crack they say, by promoting an idea that’s time has come and gone – insurance free dentistry.
And of course anyone who is as pathetic as this, to take time to write about their own sorrows, looking for a pity party and begging for sympatht because they gave up, stopped fighting, and are losing the battle to diminishing profits, discount dentistry, and insurance controlled care – it’s not my fault and it certainly isn’t yours.
It’s theirs, because they sold out.
And maybe you have too – and that’s okay as long as you accept responsibility. If you give up your power, you give up everything.
In Dentistry, how you get paid is the difference between a job and a business, it’s the difference between family time and no time at all, it’s the difference from being able to keep amazing Team Members and living in a vicious cycle of reimbursement to pay the bills.
The result is doing the dentistry you have to instead of enjoying the dentistry you want to.
This should be unacceptable. Until you decide that it is, you will continue to play victim.
Remember – being in network or not has nothing to do with the way your patients make their decisions and investments towards your diagnosis and treatment plans.
NOTHING to do with it. These are NOT the same things. Stop taking the easy way out and linking them together – they are disconnected.
How much you get on a crown and bragging about being fee for service but still getting paid by the insurance doesn’t make you much better.
The only way smart, successful, ambitions, progressive, professional Dentists want to be judge is by the value of their treatment planning that is accepted and paid for in a timely manner directly tied to the percentage of the total diagnosis.
That’s it. So how do you make that happen?
Very simple: You accomplish this by educating your Patients on what Insurance really is – and – what it is not!
Today, I’ll give you the three big ones. The ones you can implement right away, teach your team, apply tomorrow and get started making a difference.
The Reality of Insurance
#1 – Insurance is about maintenance, not about health.
There are many analogies here. Insurance doesn’t buy you a new car it helps you keep the one you’ve got longer. Insurance patches tires, it doesn’t replace them when they are bad.
I could go on and on, the simple fact is – explaining to your patients the truth – insurance works just fine if they are at a baseline of health to begin with but it is not going to restore their health if it has diminished…we can use insurance once we have you back up to the baseline of health that you deserve and is essential for your wellbeing – but – to get back to that you are going to have to invest your way to health, it’s the only option and your responsibility.
#2 – Insurance is NOT the Doctor.
You can’t let Patients defer to insurance. Because they are not patients of the insurance company – they are customers – they are the insured – not the patient. They are your patient, they are your responsibility. No different than your children. The decisions they make are either in line and congruent with your diagnosis or they become your liability.
It’s amazing to me how some would let patients dictate their own treatment based on the parameters of the insurance company when it is your @$$ on the line – no one else’s – not the patients and certainly not the insurance company.
There is nothing wrong with being blunt with your patients. Who do they want determining their treatment, the insurance company who has never looked into their mouth (and makes money by paying out as little as humanly possible), or themselves and their dentist (You, who has a relationship with them, cares about them and the one who will deal with the benefits or consequences of their treatment and decisions).
The answer is obvious.
#3 – Insurance is actually bad for your health.
Because…it does just enough to get by until ‘next year’ and when you do just enough to get by from year to year, what you are not taking into consideration is that the parts of your mouth you are not fixing, making healthy, improving, restoring, whatever, those other parts that insurance does not pay for – are only getting worse – therefore when you do the least amount of treatment possible, otherwise known as “only what the insurance pays for” you are getting unhealthier each and every year and your insurance is going to cover less and less each and every year.
This means when you base your health on insurance, you are headed for a collision course with problems, emergencies, and potential crisis. Eventually you will end up needing a whole lot more work that is way beyond the scope of insurance and then you are really going to be in a bind.
That’s why it is always better for patients to do whatever is diagnosed at the time that the Doctor recommends the treatment, otherwise you (the patient) will have problems compounding on top of other problems.
In summary for today –
As I have taught you many times before, Transparency Sells.
Don’t talk badly about insurance and definitely do not tell the patient about your fees and how they steal money from you and all the other bad feelings you have about insurance. Being negative is never going to lead you to success.
Instead, just be honest.
Insurance companies are not healthcare companies. Their sole reason for existing is to make a profit – and the only way they can do that is the exact same way everyone does it – by keeping more money than they payout.
So get this – you pay into insurance, someone does, you or your work, which really means you, and the insurance company takes your money and they use it – their objective is very simple – to never give it back to you and if they have to, if you try to be smart and actually use your insurance then they are going to make sure you use as little of it as possible because you and the insurance company are competitors – they want to keep your money and you want to use your money for what it was intended for – to take care of you.
That is why it’s never going to work.
That is why you have to invest in your health.
Because insurance is not meant to make you healthy, it’s only meant to keep you there. Right now you have a decision to make, wait it out and try to win a game that you don’t understand and that was never designed to be won.
Sound familiar. Like gambling in Las Vegas. You aren’t suppose to win. That’s how they make money. And the same is the way with the insurance companies.
Or you can choose to be proactive to beat them at their own game by having the smile of your dreams, the mouth you deserve, the function, health, and aesthetics you were born to enjoy and you will be able to milk your insurance company for every dime – after – you take care of your responsibility first.
I sure hope this at least gets you thinking.
Here’s the good news… The real problem is not how patients make decisions – it’s how you and your team present and talk about insurance to begin with. And there in lies your single greatest opportunity for growth.
As I said last week, the only solutions are to…
Decisively BREAK THE LINK BETWEEN CASE ACCEPTANCE AND INSURANCE.
Aggressively EXPLODE THROUGH THE CEILING of TIME BOUND PRODUCTION.
Confidently EMBRACE THE BENEFITS OF VALUE BASED DENTISTRY and accept nothing less.
If you’d like to receive a detailed report on my specific strategies to achieve each of these three solutions as realities in your Practice – email me with your sentiments on the state of insurance in the dental industry as it stands today and the impact it’s having on you or other Dentists you know and I’ll put you on the priority list to receive this detailed report when it’s released in the coming weeks.
Next week, we’ll talk about the biggest mistakes Practices make when dealing with Insurance Driven Patients and how to avoid them and finally fix them for good.
It’s going to alter your perspective and elevate your optimism and once again put the advantage in your favor against one of the greatest enemies we face in dentistry today.
