6 Tips for Dentists to Manage Rising Costs

by | Mar 20, 2023 | Employer advice, In The News, Practice Advice, Practice Marketing | 0 comments

It seems like around every corner, the cost of living is going up.  And running a business with these runaway costs might be keeping you up at night.  With the cost of payroll, shipping, dental supplies and more continuing to increase, we want to help. I put together this post to give some ideas and tips on how to save money and where to find additional revenue.  

#1 Get your team to help bring in Additional Revenue

It might sound counterintuitive to pay your employees more money. However, if you are paying them more money because they are selling more production or bringing in new patients, then that is money well spent. 

You should present to your team that if they do any of these things, they will get paid for it. 

  1. Hit or exceed production goals
  2. Bring in new patients
  3. Needed upsells such as products or oral cancer screenings
  4. Reviews where the patients mention team members’ names.

Here are three posts that will help you implement systems to have your team members bring in additional revenue. 

Get your Dentist to pay you more money now!
Teach your team this four letter word if you want to grow your dental practice
Dentists: You don’t have to do it all

#2 Make treatment accessible

With the increased cost of living, your patients are also probably tightening up their spending.  

You might find that patients are likely to put off treatment if they can’t afford the lump sum.  

Breaking their payments up into smaller, more affordable, monthly payments usually helps in these situations. The patient can afford these payments and get the treatment that they need.  

However, you should not offer these payment plans unless you have a guarantee that you are going to be able to collect that money in some way.   

Luckily their are companies like Varidi that bring you guaranteed financing AND guaranteed payment on treatments.

It is easy, your front desk emails or text the application directly to the patient.  The patient fills out the short application and they are guaranteed to get the financing.  

To learn more head to Varidi.com.      

#3 Stop dealing dental insurance

Dental Insurance is a whole other item that is causing many dentists suffering and sleepless nights.  So if you find that you are trying to move your practice and patients away from dental insurance, then offer them an in-house insurance plan.

Sure, you can try to do your own plan, but those are time consuming to develop and very hard to keep track of.  Companies Kleer allow you to quickly develop your membership plan and keep track of member’s used benefits and payments.  

Another bonus of a membership plan is residual income.  The patients on your plan, make monthly payments, just like they do with their insurance, so you get to enjoy that guaranteed income. 

#4 Be cost efficient in your hiring process

When you need to hire, it can be expensive and time consuming.  DirectDental realized this and has been working hard to improve the hiring process for our dental practices.  

On DirectDental, you post your job once, and we send it out to all the major job boards including ZipRecuiter, Indeed, Google Jobs, CareerBuilder and more to give you more candidates to choose from.  All this for as little at $65/mo.

We also offer cost effective upgrades such as our Boosted and Full Service plans to get you even more applicants.  

Click here to choose which plan is right for you. 

#5 Outsource to save money

We are seeing dentists really embrace outsourcing certain items of their offices.  

A very popular trend is outsourcing billing and the phones and then just having a receptionist or treatment coordinator managing the in-office patients.  

You can outsource your HR to CEDR HR who will make sure you stay compliant and handle all the mundane HR tasks for you. 

You can outsource your hiring to us at DirectDental by utilizing our Recruiter Services.  

You can outsource marketing, web development, IT services and pretty much anything.  

If it is something you are struggling to do for your office or costing too much money to employ someone to do, outsource it.

#6 Make sure you stay up to date on your accounts receivables

If money is tight, don’t let yourself fall behind on connections.  

Stay up to date with your receivables with these 7 simple steps.

  1. Dental Insurance Verification
  2. Treatment Plan accurately
  3. Collect at the time of treatment
  4. Submit claims same day as treatment
  5. Run AR daily and have an in-house and 3rd party working on AR. 
  6. Send out patient invoices as soon as the insurance check comes in. 
  7. Never write off small balances. 

Read more on these 7 steps by reading Take Control Of Your Accounts Receivables in 7 Steps. 

We hope you find these tips useful and easy to implement.

Smiles,

Holli Perez 
DirectDental

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