What is a Fee for Service Dental Practice?
A fee for service dental practice is a dental clinic that operates by billing patients directly instead of billing insurance providers and waiting for reimbursement. In many cases, this can result in the same out of pocket costs for patients since the patient’s insurance company will still reimburse the patient for covered services.
Why do Fee for Service practice owners need to think differently about their marketing strategy?
Fee for service as a name is not a great consumer-facing brand; to most potential patients hearing this they will usually think of higher out of pocket costs for them, that is if they even recognize the name at all. It is mostly a brand that dentists recognize and that they are attracted to because it helps solve the age-old problem of strained cash flow due to insurance company delays and outright denials to pay reimbursement claims.
Due to this, fee for service practice owners need to convey the value of their practice clearly in their marketing in order to attract patients. Additionally, they need to have scripts and well trained staff to answer prospective patient inquiries and convert them into patients in the door. Fee for service practice owners should keep the following things in mind when designing and implementing their marketing program:
- Highlight the differentiating features of your practice. Often, fee for service practices go for a higher end, upscale service and feel, with prices that go along with that. This can work well, but be careful with this strategy as it will also turn many patients away. This works best for practices that have a well established brand and have a repeatable system for getting patients in the door.
- Help your patients obtain the funds they need for treatment. Regardless of your previous (probably negative) experience with insurance companies, realize that in the end all they are is a source of financing for your patients. Absent this financing, many patients will need alternative means to pay for services. Even at the higher end where patients have access to funds and credit, many patients will be reluctant to spend 5 figures on a dental treatment at once. To help with this, you can connect patients to medical financing companies such as CareCredit, Sunbit, and others. They often even provide incentive payments on approved amounts which can provide incremental revenue for your practice.
- It becomes extremely important that you have a solid sales and conversion process in your process before you even start your marketing. If you have a high proportion of calls to the front desk that are getting missed, or patients are calling in with questions that the front desk can not answer off the top of their head, then you are guaranteed to lose money if you start investing in marketing before you improve your internal processes.
Can Emergency Dental Marketing work for a Fee for Service Practice?
Yes! We are big believers that emergency dental marketing can frankly work well for almost any dental practice. In fee for service, the key is being able to have a very solid phone script, friendly answering staff, and attractive offers to bring the patients in the door. When emergency dental marketing doesn’t work for fee for service practices is when they try to recoup all their marketing in the first visit of every patient that walks in the door. Having an abundance mindset in business in general is beneficial, and this is true for dentists as well. Realize that some patients may only come in for an x-ray and not get treatment, but one of those patients may be the one that ends up getting a full set of implants and makes up for those few that only got their x-rays taken. To ensure you have the best chance of capturing those high value patients, you need to have an open door policy and not scare most of them away with a $250 initial visit fee or similar terms.
Get started with an ROI focused marketing program for your dental practice
To ensure the best return on your marketing investment, you should consider working with a marketing agency that is hyper focused on return on investment and can show you actual full funnel tracking which you can correlate to production numbers. In a fee for service practice, this becomes even more important as conversion rates tend to be lower than typical PPO practices, and so your patient acquisition costs can spiral into unprofitable territory if they are not closely monitored on an ongoing basis. We pride ourselves on providing actionable and full funnel tracking, so if you are ready to grow your practice, schedule a demo with us using the link below:
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