In Episode Four of the Best of Cash is King, AADGP President Dr. Brent Barta, Vince Cardillo, Founder & CEO of Maeva Dental Advisors and George Radigan, former VP of North American Dental discuss the merits of adding patient financing options to your Practice
Transcription
Dr. Brent Barta
Again, I’m going to take a little bit of a turn here and ask you guys what your opinion of patient fine at financing options within a practice or a group today. How how do you view having patient financing options?
How do you select those? Is that a big part of group strategy as they grow?
Vince Cardillo
Yeah, I mean, I think I think it’s I think it’s a gnome enormous part. I mean we are a society that is You know, pretty much driven on a monthly payment, right?
And people buy based on monthly payments and if we present that to patients, that’s that’s what they’re accustomed to. So that’s six thousand dollar, you know, two implants. and two crowns, price may seem like a lot of money.
To somebody, but if you presenting them it to them, that, hey, it’s $199. I can get this taken care of, for you. So it’s just a whole different conversation and and we struggle with with getting Docs on board with that notion, you know, getting patients to commit to the full treatment up front. I think it’s very important and I think it’s very important to have multiple vendors for patient financing.
I mean, some people are only going to, you know, finance at the high level. Then there are people financing the lower echelon. Ay the end of the day It’s cash.
that’s up front. and you’re getting people to commit to the treatment that is important to their health. You know, we work with groups that just like, well, you know, the patient’s don’t want to sign a treatment plan here. You know, it’s like you always hear that. Well, you don’t know where we are and our towns people don’t have money and they don’t they don’t, you know, they’re not going to do this whole treatment plan.
It’s like people are people everywhere. That’s one thing I can guarantee you people have money and people don’t have money and every town in the country.
So I think it’s, I think it’s real important.
I think that whole process of presenting the treatment to the patient and having those multiple options is important.
And, you know, we’re all giving, all the doctors are giving advice of what they believe, which is the best patient care. It’s our job to try and get them back here and in a price that works for their pocketbook.
George Radigan
Yeah, I 100% agree. I mean, it’s the barrier to accepting treatment and most dentists are conditioned for for rejection. Right?
That mean, that’s why you give multiple options for treatment plans and, you know, you get, you get your first couple patients and you present the A treatment plan, and you get a no and then you’re figuring.
okay. Well, the next couple patients, I’ll give them the B treatment plan, and then you get a no. And then the next couple patients, like, I’ll give him the C treatment plan. They got to accept that.
But then, in my experience the offices that utilize, this utilized CareCredit in other patient, financing mechanisms, do it really well. And there’s very few practices that actually utilize that in the appropriate manner.
Most of them just do it on larger cases when you can do that on crowns and get a higher treatment acceptance or or this, you know, not necessarily the cheaper procedures, but, you know, some people like Vince said, want the financing option and we’ll take that monthly payment in. It’s, in my opinion, heavily underutilized tool for practice and then the doctor thinks automatically will I get, you know, X % ding for the credit cards, but, you know, my patient financing is X Plus percent. Therefore, I’d rather just, you know, they can’t afford it on the credit card then let’s just not even go through the exercise, when it really could become a meaningful part of the practice to grow your Revenue.
Dr. Brent Barta
Actually, I’ll pick here to piggyback upon what you both have said, and I think it’s important that generally to have more than one option.
In a practice. I don’t know what you found in that respect. But this is also something that needs to be assessed on some sort of a regular basis because just like the PPO and UCR evaluation you need to be looking at these payment plans and assessing how they’re working in your practice, on some sort of a regular basis. Ideally, I would say Once a year, you look at what you’re doing with the volume, you’re doing in each and so on, and then, making adjustments, according to what, you know, what’s, what your results are with those tools in the practice.
So, yeah, I definitely agree with both of you but through that one additional caveat and don’t put it in place and then never look at it again, because these things do they do change.