Here at Patients4you we are big proponents of growing a practice through a base of building a solid and steady flow of emergency patients which can help fill in holes in the schedule and often turn into high production cases that bring cash in the door quickly. When done well, this flow of emergency patients can be surprisingly consistent and long term investments can be made counting on future patients.
What are Carecredit and Sunbit?
Carecredit and Sunbit are two financing companies that specialize in medical finance solutions for patients who need help affording their treatment. Carecredit focuses exclusively on medical use cases, while Sunbit covers a broad spectrum of financial use cases. The best thing about these third party programs for a dental practice is that they take the credit and underwriting risk, whereas your practice receives a lump sum payment for the treatment, regardless of whether or not the patient later defaults on their payments. Many patients rely on Carecredit to pay for emergency dental care.
Should I offer in house payment plans?
In house payment plans and financing solutions are the holy grail of conversions. Very few practices offer these nowadays, particularly for new patients, and should you choose to offer these options, then you can expect to attract a large number of patients. The decision to offer in house payment plans; however, should not be taken lightly. At the end of the day, you are running a credit underwriting operation with very little information on the risk of these prospective payers. It is our recommendation that if you choose to offer in house payment plans, you only do so for patients who have an established payment history with you to reduce the default risk and potentially catastrophic impact to your cash flow.
Why should I worry about patient financing in my practice?
Whether or not an emergency patient marketing program results in long term profitable growth for a practice depends largely on two factors:
- Ability to convert inbound emergency patient leads into appointments and patients in the chair. This depends on factors such as the script your staff is using on the phone, and whether or not you have an automated and/or systematic way to confirm and remind patients of appointments. Those factors are outside the scope of this article, but probably the most critical factor is whether the patient feels that they can afford the treatment or no. In emergency care, patients are often strapped for cash, and if you do not offer some kind of patient financing option, you can expect your lead to appointment conversion rate to be less than half of a practice with solid financing options.
- Ability to convert initial patient visits into treatment plans. Similar to the above, many patients will come in having budgeted the initial $50-$150 for the initial exam and x-rays, but they will have no way to pay the thousands of dollars that many emergencies will likely need in treatment. Having a variety of payment options for your patients will ensure you convert the largest portion of these initial visits into long term patients.
What are the best practices when it comes to offering financing options to patients?
The key to improving your office’s conversion rate and the way to best leverage the services provided by these third party providers is to work these offers into your patient intake flow, starting with the script your front desk uses to answer these inbound patient calls. The first thing is to contact these companies and get a referral link which you can then give to patients. This referral link will grant you a commission and become an incremental revenue source for your practice once patients start leveraging these funds. On the intake call, take the opportunity to text the patient the link; that way there is now a two-way engaged conversation with the prospective patient, maximizing the chances that the patient will continue with your office even if they do not make an appointment on the initial call.
Do patient financing options matter for non-emergency patients?
Yes! The reality is most patients in the United States are ill prepared to handle an unexpected medical expense in the thousands of dollars. If your goal over time is to move your practice towards higher production per patients and increase overall revenue, then financing options must be a part of the solution in order to also lessen the financial burden on your patients, which will make them loyal long term visitors and turn them into referral engines for your practice.