What You Need to Know About PPOs and IPAs

Episode #440 with Dr. Barrett Straub

There's an old story of what success looks like in dentistry. You're always busy, packed with patients, making millions, and have tons of PPOs. But if you're here listening, you already know something’s wrong with that picture. And in this special edition podcast, Kirk Behrendt and Dr. Barrett Straub introduce ACT’s new PPO Roadmap, a guide for insurance independence to help you work smarter without the fear of dropping bad PPOs. Don't stay stuck in high-volume dentistry! If you're ready to take control of your life and practice, listen to Episode 440 of The Best Practices Show!

Main Takeaways:

Learn to work smarter, not just harder until burnout.

Don't chase patients and production without strategy.

You can provide great service without giving it away.

Knowledge will remove insurance independence fears.

Your life should always come first.

Quotes:

“We, as leaders, have egos. We have pride. And I think, sometimes, we tell ourselves, ‘I should or can be all things to all people. I should be the leader that can be a visionary and the implementor.’ And what I've learned through this is no one can be everything. No one can be perfect at all phases. And when you surround yourself with the right people that have skillsets that fill in your blind spots, it’s amazing. Not only can you accomplish more, but work is more enjoyable.” (11:50—12:23)

“We, by no means, are anti-PPO. We are pro-insurance independence. And so, sometimes, the narrative in dentistry becomes, ‘You've got to cut all your PPOs. You've got to become fee-for-service. It’s the only way to do it.’ And we love fee-for-service. I personally have been doing it my whole career. I love the model. However, every practice is unique, and every dentist is unique, and they’ve got to find their own sweet spot.” (17:05—17:32)

“We’re launching the idea of insurance independence. And what that means is you have enough payers, 100% payers, where you get 100% of your fee that if you stopped all your PPOs the next day, you could still be profitable enough to pay your bills.” (17:34—17:54)

“We all became dentists, and we bought our own practices, and we’re business owners, in part, for freedom. We want to control our own destiny. We want to practice the way we want, with who we want, on who we want.” (18:20—18:32)

“If we really think about the number of lives we can impact — a small impact, a great impact — every day, we come across so many people. It’s a great profession.” (19:11—19:21)

“When you sign up for a PPO, you're saying, ‘I accept a 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% discount. I'm going to write it off.’ And I'm willing to do that because the belief is that the volume of new patients or the volume of people accessing my practice, because I'm on the list, will outweigh the write-off. That, by definition, is a high-volume method. So, whether dentists know it or not, or made a conscious decision or not, they're in the high-volume game.” (21:31—22:07)

“Once you're in this vicious cycle of the high-volume game, it’s hard to get out because you're working harder — because you have all these patients that you need to see. And you've got to see a lot of them because you're writing off 30%. And when that happens, a patient that has no insurance that wants to pay you full fee, they can't get in for six weeks because your new patient schedule is booked out. So, they go elsewhere. And so, it becomes harder, and harder, and harder to break out of that. All the while, your margin is shrinking.” (24:46—25:17)

“Dentists, we need to stand back and look at our practices as if we’re a third party looking in and say, ‘Some of this stuff doesn't make sense. I have to think smarter and think differently about who I allow in my practice and the business...