Post-pandemic trends worldwide have pointed toward rapid inflation due to increased costs. For general dentists, this is no exception. Here is a way to leverage your current patient base to increase revenue against these trends, without putting pressure on chair time.
According to ADA’s 2022 Survey of Dental Practice (a part of their 2022 Report of Dental Practice), practice expenses have risen 7.7% between the years 2013-2017 and 2018-2022 while practice revenues have increased only 2.2%. With increased patient load post-pandemic, there essentially has been a ‘margin compression’ - or a cap to how much dental practices make, made even harder to overcome with such disparate rise in costs.
In this short article, we’ll reveal a way for dental practices to overcome rising costs and increase margins, without relying on chair time (and while also not having to refer out patients). This approach, offering turn-key clear aligner treatments, doesn’t require any investment and allows general dentists to begin fielding this new offer in three days or less, allowing you to increase practice revenue without increasing expenses.
What are Turn-Key Clear Aligner Treatments, and Why Does it Matter?
A turn-key clear aligner treatment is a service system of providing third-party aligner treatments to dental practices and orthodontists. PerfectFitOrtho™ turn-key clear aligner treatments, provide support, tools, training, treatment and digital monitoring from sales through treatment so any practice can confidently treat class I, class II and class III treatments (this includes treatments for open bite, deep bite and cross bite). Practices and patients receive free tools to scan, monitor and communicate throughout the process - allowing practices to decrease their reliance on chair time for revenue.
As a dental practice, you’ve likely come across a large number of patients that would benefit from addressing any degree of malocclusion, only to not address the alignment issues seriously enough toward your preferred treatment outcome (or had to refer out treatment to a local orthodontist).
We’ll show you how, in only a few short steps, you’ll be able to account for those lost treatments and begin confidently fielding them for same store growth and increased revenue.
How to Leverage Your Patient Base
Here are a few quick steps to begin leveraging your patient base. Keep in mind, since our technique is to leverage PerfectFitOrtho’s turn-key aligner treatments, this technique relies very little on your chair time. In fact, PerfectFitOrtho™ treatments require an average of 70% less chair time than in-office treatments - requiring patients to be in the chair two to three times during treatment.
1. Take Stock of Malocclusion Access your client list and begin to organize patients by malocclusion.
2. Assess Readiness For the sake of immediate revenue, assess which cases would be ready for treatments. Keep account for the severity of their case and any factors that would disallow accepting treatment. TIP: We’ve helped offset inability for patients to afford aligner treatments, by providing in-solution payment options. Giving patients more flexibility to pay and offices the ability to collect immediate revenue.
3. Calculate Case Acceptance (Added)
As a baseline, practices that have previously been offering aligners see an increase of 30 to 100% in case acceptance rates - with an average close to 70%.
In order to get a baseline for your practice, take the number of verified cases of malocclusion from the previous step (#2), and multiply it by .30 to get the expected baseline of case acceptance. To get closer to the average, take the verified cases of malocclusion and multiply it by .67.
How to Calculate Case Acceptance
The average dental practice has 3,800 patients. Let’s say you have found 760 of these to show signs of malocclusion (the average according to NIH).
Of the 760, you’ve identified 624 to be ready.
Calculating Your Practice Baseline
624 x .30 = 187 patients as a baseline for immediate treatment acceptance.
Calculating the PerfectFitOrtho™ Practice Average 624 x .67 = 418 patients as an average for immediate treatment acceptance. |
4. Calculate Revenue Increase (Added)
Now that you have your baseline and PerfectFitOrtho™ average case acceptance rate, let’s see how much revenue may be generated from your calculated baseline and average.
For this, take your calculated patient load in the last step (#3) and multiply these by $3,825 - the average net revenue gained by each practice per case.
How to Calculate Potential Revenue Increase Calculating Your Practice Baseline 187 x 3,825 = $715,275
Calculating the PerfectFitOrtho™ Practice Average 418 x 3,825 = $1,598,850 |
5. Begin Offering Clear Aligner Treatments
Now that you have your averages, you can get a sense of what this means to your practice with verifiable data supported by our practice averages.
The best part?
Since this is through a turn-key system PerfectFitOrtho™ has taken care of each step of the process, from tools to help sales, digital onboarding to lessen chair time even more, free tools for virtual and in-office scanning, payment options and financing for your patients, along with included virtual monitoring and doctor consulting - meaning you get everything you need to treat your patient load with confidence.
To make it even easier, each case submission is absolutely free. Meaning you don’t pay until the case is accepted and put into production. To make it even easier on the list you've collected, your patients can submit photographs to get their treatment plan, from wherever they are.
Simply let them know through email and/or text - which ever your practice is most commonly used to communicating with patients.
# Tips and Reminders for Offering Turn-Key Clear Aligner Treatments
As a reminder, PerfectFitOrtho™ will be consulting during the process, exam and treatment. Patients will also have the tools and opportunity to scan each week, allowing us to provide up-to-date monitoring.
This means you do not need additional chair time, orthodontic tools or accreditation in-office - taking off your workload while releasing you from requiring chairs to collect revenue.
Once you get started, PerfectFitOrtho™ will provide you with a free virtual consult tool for your practice website, allowing you to begin onboarding immediately (most practices begin accepting treatments within just three days!). This tool will bring your patient through the steps required for their case setup without needing to come in-office. If the patient is in the chair, this can also be done through a mobile device with the doctor.
Onboard New Cases From Anywhere
Bring in cases from your own site, for continual revenue, without tying up chair time.
Run a Test (Gauge Organic Receptivity)
Want to let your patients know you can provide world-class clear aligners?
To get the ball rolling, we’ve created this printout for you to put up in your office - letting your patients know you can now offer clear aligners in-office.
Let your patient base know you're offering clear aligners.
Click the image below to download signage for your office.
Closing: What this means for your office.
As a dental office, you are no longer limited by chair time or have to feel the crunch of margin compression on your practice. You can even expand your practice without needing to hire another dentist or an orthodontist employee.
You can now beat out the national average in revenue increase, while making it easier on your practice to thrive while offering world-class continuity of care. Without years of investment, CE credits or in-office accreditation, you can begin offering clear aligners to your patient base in as little as three days.
Interested in Increasing In-House Growth and Continuity of Care, Without Spending?
Start easily leveraging your current patient base with PerfectFitOrtho™.
