Recession: relax you are a Dentist

It does not matter where you look at the moment, there appears to be only bad news about the economy. Petrol prices are through the roof, high interest rates and reduced consumer spending. But how is all this doom and gloom affecting you? Well, if you have a mortgage or a car the answer for you personally is obvious, but what about your practice? Have you noticed a drop off in new patents? Less compliance with recalls or perhaps lower acceptance or deferral of larger treatment plans?
If any of these things are happening in your practice then relax as I have some good news for you. At times of economic down turn there are plenty of low cost and simple methods to help build your practice. These methods should be implemented at anytime, however if you have been previously busy but have noticed a slight down turn recently now is the time to action some of the following suggestions.

Firstly, let’s start with some truths. Apart from a very small section of society, which you are probably not looking after now anyway, the current increase in the cost of living should not make a blind bit of difference to a persons’ ability to afford proper dental care. Now this statement is not arrogant, but fact. It is well documented that when times get tough, lower income families spend more on luxury items such as alcohol, cigarettes and entertainment. It is not a total lack of money that affects a persons’ compliance with a dental visit, it is purely a choice. Believing this is important as otherwise it is easy to get sucked in to all the hype in the media.

If your practice has seen a recent down turn, then the goal is to make sure that dental health is given a higher priority within the family budget. If a patient is not in pain then it is easy for them to ignore their dental health as there is little to remind them on a daily basis (it’s a shame the media does not do a “Daily Decay Report like they do Stock Market reports). So this is where your marketing machine needs to kick in. The starting point is to look at your recall system and what messages are currently being conveyed through this.

Over the years I have looked at hundreds of practice recall systems and with the vast majority of them (99%) the only thing that is being communicated is the time and date of a recall appointment. This is a seriously missed opportunity as no matter what your current recall method is, post, telephone, e-mail or SMS, then it costs nothing to add quality and meaningful messages to the process. For example, I don’t think there is much controversy these days over the statement that periodontal disease is linked to an increase in heart disease, so why not tell your patients this? If I think I might drop down dead if I miss a dental appointment then I may be more motivated than just thinking that my teeth will be a bit cleaner from the visit.

There is a vast array of similar messages that can be sent through your recall system that will both improve compliance and also will result in better questions and more elective procedures. The trick here is to find the messages that you genuinely believe in, properly research them so you can quote statistics if necessary and build them into your system, whether by way of a newsletter instead of a recall card, a question over the phone, an e-newsletter instead of an e-mail or a headline attached to your SMS.

The next thing to look at is your patients’ acceptance of treatment plans. How a treatment plan is presented varies widely from simply verbally communicating patients’ options and the costs associated, to highly detailed reports outlining every nuance of the treatments suggested.

Most case presentations however only convey the technical and the costs but very rarely do they convey the benefits. What I mean by this is telling a patient that ‘A porcelain veneer is a thin layer of porcelain that is made to cover the front surface of the tooth.” Or, even worse; “Porcelain Veneers cost $1,700”. This is purely technical information and does not convey years of smiles, improved confidence, feeling and being more attractive etc.

Ideally, treatment plans should be presented with an accompanying brochure explaining all the benefits from the treatment and also the standard of care provided by you and your team, but if you do not currently have such a brochure, then the benefits of the treatment, whether cosmetic, health or both, should be clearly written on a two-page outline of treatments suggested. The reason why treatment plans should not be conveyed verbally is that there is no reinforcement of the benefits once the patient leaves the practice. If you have remembered to explain all the benefits verbally to the patient then these can be easily forgotten or conveyed incorrectly to a spouse after a visit.

In terms of actual new patients into the practice then the quickest, easiest and lowest cost marketing activity you can employ is improving the number of referrals you receive. If you are a regular reader of my column then I am going to sound like a broken record here, but if you are not asking your patients to refer their family and friends then start today as it works. Don’t let your referrals just happen by chance, tell clients that you would love to treat their other family members and friends and give them a couple of practice brochures to pass on. Done correctly, this is not pushy, if fact it’s a compliment to them. If you want to know more about how best to implement this, visit www.idm.com.au and look under the articles section as I have previously written whole articles just on this topic.

Dentistry has long been reported to be recession proof, which is one of the reasons there has been so much interest from the corporate sector in dentistry recently. To think that you are immune from a down turn in the economy would be foolish, however simple activities such as those outlined here can make all the difference. So don’t buy into all the media hype and take control over your own destiny.

If you would like to know more about recession proofing your practice then you can contact Carl and his team at IDM on (02) 9211 1477, visit www.idm.com.au or e-mail Carl personally at carl@idm.com.au.