Improve production, profitability and your quality of life!

That is a lower rate of case acceptance than what the profession had 30 years ago, yet too many dentists have accepted today’s rate as the norm and therefore believe that their only path to growth is more new patients.

A never-ending search for more new patients is rarely the solution to greater production or to greater profitability. Instead, the answer is to increase the percentage of diagnosed work that your patients schedule. Note that I did not say work that your patients “accept.” Every month dentists see thousands of dollars of accepted diagnoses go out the door, never to be actually scheduled and completed.

The responsibility of the dentist is to make it easy for his/her clients (patients) to buy the product (dental care) that he/she sells (diagnoses). However, far too many dentists have forgotten or perhaps never understood that 80 percent of patients/parents cannot afford to write a check for $3,000, $5,000 or more (sometimes much more).

In addition, what about the rock solid blue-collar family with five kids that just had to fix the transmission in the family car? Can this family even afford to write you a check for $800 today? All too often the answer is no.

Dental practices’ aggressive financial policies, the insistence on payment in full, and the almost futile efforts to push patients into outside financing, have done more to kill case acceptance than any other single factor. And then, a recession comes along.

Our advice to our clients, since 1980, has been to be negotiable and flexible with respect to financial arrangements. If $0 down payment and four-, six-, or even nine-month financing is necessary in order to get a patient to accept the entire diagnosis, and if the responsible party is credit worthy, then grant that type of in-office credit to your patients.

Are you really willing to lose a $5,000 or more case because your patient/parent cannot afford to pay you in full or cannot afford the 50 percent down payment you are asking for?

Notice the key phrase above is “if the patient is credit worthy.” There is nothing worse for the quality of life within the practice than to get into a negative financial relationship with a financially weak patient. Missed appointments, poor clinical cooperation, zero referrals, etc., are always the result.

So, while it makes sense to be financially liberal with quality patients, it is a major mistake to do so with patients/parents who are immature, unstable and/or unwilling to or incapable of keeping their financial agreements.

Fortunately, with modern electronics and communications, in less than 60 seconds a practice can make a high-quality credit decision identifying the potential financial risk of any given patient.

What is it worth to you to know that your patient/parent has, for his entire life, paid all of his/her bills perfectly? Conversely, what is it worth to you to know that this person has never paid a bill and has been sued by every credit grantor in town?

Seventy-five percent of most practices’ new patients are in the low to zero financial risk category, what we call “A” patients. Twenty-five percent are in the moderate to high-risk category, “B” and “C” patients.

Take the time to find out which of your patients are in which category. Grant credit proportional to that risk, and you will improve your production, your profitability and your quality of life within the practice.

Various products are available to help you assess risk as described above. Consider the Zuelke Automated Credit Coach (ZACC), a web-based tool specifically designed for the dental profession, which evaluates patient maturity and stability, obtains and evaluates a credit report, and returns a credit “grade” and a payment plan recommendation in seconds.

ZACC evaluates credit risk in exactly the same fashion as a bank loan officer, but does not affect your patient’s credit score. To learn more about ZACC, visit www.getzacc.com.

About the author

Paul Zuelke is president and founder of Zuelke & Associates, a management consulting firm specializing exclusively in teaching credit management and accounts receivable control techniques to health-care practices. Zuelke’s extensive, professional background in lending and corporate finance, combined with 30 years of experience with more than 1,000 client practices located throughout the United States, Canada and Australia, positions him as the leading authority in using effective credit management to build a quality health-care practice.