Understanding & Optimizing Coverage Options

Episode #394 with Dave Monahan – CEO of Kleer.com

Patients want more dental care — they're just afraid of costs. So, how do you get patients to come in more often and accept more treatment? One secret is membership plans. And to explain how membership plans benefit both dentists and patients, Kirk Behrendt brings back Dave Monahan, CEO of Kleer, to share his data comparing behaviors of uninsured, insured, and membership plan patients. By switching to membership or subscription plans, patients can get the care they want and need without the hassle of insurance. If you're frustrated with third parties and want to liberate dental care, listen to Episode 394 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

On average, membership patients visit the dentist 50% more.

Membership patients accept two to three times more treatment.

Having membership plans will help generate twice your production.

Most practices are not collecting full fees from their fee-for-service patients.

Investors will pay five times more for a business that has recurring revenue.

Quotes:

“In our market research, we saw . . . it frustrated dentists and dental practices who were basically at the whim of third parties, and we saw patients who couldn't get access to the care they wanted. Because when you think about a patient, they really have two options: they can buy dental insurance, which when they look at that, very complicated 20-page agreements; very difficult to understand if they're going to get the value out of it; they're expensive. Then, on the other side, they can go without coverage. But being a patient without coverage is scary. They don't have any idea how much things are going to cost. So, they stay away from the dentist. So, we wanted to marry those two things under “liberate dental care”; give dentists control and give patients better access for the care they need.” (3:51—4:30)

“When [patients] buy a subscription, they come in two to three times more often. So, you're not just getting that subscription revenue, they're also coming in for their recare. And where does treatment come from outside of recare? It comes from sitting in the chair, talking to the hygienist, talking to the dentist. 75% of all non-preventative care treatment comes from coming in for recare. And that treatment revenue, just to explain that, that's from them sitting in the chair, talking to the hygienist, talking to the dentist and accepting fillings, crowns, so on and so forth. It’s the other things outside of the preventive care that they're accepting. So, you have to add those two things together. So, you have this recurring model, people paying subscriptions year in and year out, and they're coming in two to three times more often, and they're accepting twice the amount of treatment as they normally would. And that's what that treatment revenue is.” (11:26—12:19)

“There's a book out there called The Membership Economy. It’s now getting aged, but it studies companies in all kinds of industries and they compare companies that offer subscriptions or memberships versus companies that don't. And the average across all the industries is, if you are part of a membership or a subscription, you buy twice as much as somebody who is not. That's the key.” (13:06—13:31)

“The patient, in our example, wants more care. They're just afraid of costs. They're afraid of not having coverage. They're afraid of not getting a good deal. And so, they're timid about coming in. Or when they're in their chair and you're saying, ‘You should get this treatment,’ or that treatment, they're skeptical. They're not bought in. But the membership gives them access to the care they want and makes them more comfortable accepting treatment that they want. So, normally, if they don't have it,...