The greatest leverage point for the value of your time and the profits of your practice is the amount you are paid for what you do, your fees. In most businesses these are called prices. And there is immense power in the price. For Private Practice Owners, it alone can mean taking back control over their time, life, and business.
Yet, for far too many dental practices, there is an intermediary effecting those fees and limiting their ability to fully leverage their time and resources.
Yes, of course I’m talking about insurance. However, before we just blame everything on insurance, I want to take a step back.
Most practices sign up for insurances out of fear. Either because everyone else is going to do it and they fear being left behind, or because they want to attract patients and they fear this is the only way.
Thus, they are willing take a discount on their fees by getting into a contract (a network) with insurance in hopes that more patients will show up which will ultimately lead to generating greater revenues.
The problem is they never look at the exchange of value for time. It might make sense if you had an unlimited number of hours with an army of hygienists and associates where the more patients you have (even at a discount) you still win on volume and make more money. Obviously, this is never the case, there is always a finite supply.
That means that the value of your business will always be based on the value you extract from the resources (people, time, space, equipment) you have available. So, any discount you take is making your business less valuable than it otherwise could be.
To maximize the value, all you have to do is have enough demand to fill your schedule with the highest value dentistry and you’d never need any discount dentistry to fill those hours.
In my upcoming Masterclass I’ll share three strategies to double case value and have more fee-for-service patients waiting in line (and pre-paying) to get in your schedule.
We’ll also go through the one switch to insurance verbiage that will flip the script and make your patients realize how insurance has been depriving them of their true health potential.
If you haven’t registered yet, there are a few seats left for each session…
You Can Pick Your Date for the Live Masterclass Here…
Now, there is an even more substantial benefit to skipping out on the insurance game… and it has nothing to do with money.
It’s all about positioning.
Either we are operating out of fear and desperation (willing to take anything at any cost) or we are operating from a position of power and demand (able to be discerning with what we do and when we do it). By not succumbing to insurance, you automatically position yourself differently and above all other alternatives.
Yet, this is only half the battle. Often doctors and teams still sabotage themselves. They stop taking insurance but they still play the insurance game. Meaning they make excuses for why they don’t take it, they get defensive, they make it the patients’ problem instead of the patients’ benefit.
Essentially, they imply (or worse actually articulate), that the patient is at a disadvantage instead of proudly demonstrating why the patients’ health is better off as a result of the deliberate position they have chosen.
If you want to be paid full fee then don’t think that just opting out of insurance is good enough. You still have to earn the full fee. You have to complete the mission by having an experience that is void of insurance with education that lifts the patient up to a higher level of value, belief, and deserve. You have to literally change the game by removing it altogether from how you engage patients and operate your practice.
Really, this is what the entire insurance discussion is about. It’s not whether you participate or not, whether you’re in network or not… it is about how you decide to include it, where it’s placed, the words used, the emphasis (or lack thereof) put on it.
Case in point, think about your patients with insurance that you have decided to take in the past. They can be excellent patients who appreciate your dentistry. It’s certainly not their fault for your insurance reimbursements.
All you need is a strategy to use insurance within your practice without it compromising patient health.
One of my most successful doctors has masterfully made this work in his practice. He uses insurance more like lead generation – coupled with an A Patient creating experience; rather than an insurance experience which so many practices default to. He simply allows his patients to use their insurance like a coupon and they stay in their dental home for life.
This is proof that you can do it any way you want.
It ultimately comes down to how insurance us being woven into your practice systems, processes, language, and culture.
It can’t allow it to negatively influence the patients when explaining you are out of network. You are then letting the insurance companies label you and that is their entire premise: to use fear to keep you in. You make it easy for patients to choose otherwise because they are comparing apples to apples.
You are – by following my advice and strategies – a category of one. There is no comparison. It doesn’t matter if someone else takes insurance next door because you are entirely different with dramatically evolved experiences.
Let’s do a quick review…
Control your fees and don’t be bashful. Be proud of your dentistry and your fees because you know it was a fair exchange for all.
Don’t make the patient the bad guy or bad girl. Help them make better decisions by removing insurance from their mindset through an educating patient experience.
Use insurance to your advantage. When you have insurance as an excuse and a ticket in the door you never know what patients are coming for. However, when you don’t have that as a cop out then you’ll know right away the patients is coming in for the right reasons.
Think about the opportunity to attract more patients who actually want to get healthy. You automatically leverage up the value of your time and more importantly provide more meaningful dentistry. This means you can work smarter not harder by achieving more from less.
Lastly, if you are in all kinds of insurance networks or the majority of your patients are attached to one company and you want to get out. Just know you won’t lose patients if they are coming for the right reasons. Which there isn’t a better litmus test on earth.
You have their trust, believe in that and tell them the truth. The truth that you are doing it because it is to their benefit and you are no longer going to let insurance stand in the way of their health. It can play a role but we won’t let them define what you deserve. That decision will be between you and me from now on.
What patient will object to that? If they leave… you just made room for other patients who will pay more, stay longer, refer better, and appreciate you. They’ll be there for the right reasons… because of who is doing the dentistry not because of how much it is or what’s free or who’s paying for it.
Whatever you aren’t earning (difference between your fee and what you collect) is costing you money, diminishing your profit, and sabotaging your practice’s potential.
Perhaps you are already free from insurance. Inside of this Weekly Report you’ll find incredible perspectives and strategies to double down and make sure you and your team aren’t wasting your energy, losing opportunity, and still letting insurance cost you.
This is where a significant gain can be made in profit creating and wealth building. Put the money math in your favor and help even more patients achieve optimal health in the process.
We are about to close the door on my first ever Masterclass that will put your practice in position to be insulated from economic uncertainty, protected from rising inflation, unshackled from insurance reimbursements, safeguarded from high turnover, and built to thrive for years to come.
Join me to regain control over your practice success, reclaim your path to financial freedom, and surge powerfully forward in 2022 and beyond.
