Welcome to Dental Unscripted,
where Mike D'Inzio and
Paula Quinn break down the
practice ownership journey,
one episode at a time.
Starting up, buying,
and running a successful dental practice.
all right all right guys
welcome back to another
episode dental unscripted
you guys know who I am
michael dincio one of the
crazy people that run this
show and uh we've got some
really fun uh folks on here
if you guys have not been
uh paying attention I've
got a new co-host and her
name's paul quinn hi paula what's up hey
So Paula helps me run.
And what's that?
So I'm just knocking things over.
Oh, boy.
She's out of control again, folks.
I don't know.
But no, Paula Quinn is on.
And now we are tandem this
program and tandem here and
having fun doing it.
And then we also have Michael Clark,
which who is one of our
newest coaches on the team.
Michael Clark,
an executive coach based out of Seattle,
Washington.
Hey, Michael, what's going on, brother?
How you doing, Michael?
I'm doing well.
Hi, Paula.
Hi.
We had Michael join us today
because of his unique background.
But today is kind of all
things kind of patient finance,
patient acceptance,
trying to get the most out
of every opportunity that
comes to the practice.
And the last time I had an
episode on this topic was
in twenty twenty.
I looked it up and it was
with Care Credit.
Michael Clark's former employee,
hence why he's on the show today.
Employer, sorry.
And yeah, it was a good conversation.
I thought we should bring it back up.
But before we do, a little housekeeping.
So if you guys are paying attention,
Dental Unscripted is a new
brand and new program for us.
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So please get over to Dental
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that one because we're
still going to have startup
topics for you on Dental Unscripted.
Same with Acquisition Unscripted.
Same thing if you're
listening on that channel.
Get over to Dental Unscripted.
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turquoise with a big tooth.
So...
That's that.
And then as you guys can see behind me,
if you're hanging out on
YouTube and participating
online through all of our socials,
you will see behind me,
I've got all this gear behind me.
And today we are proudly
sponsoring or being
sponsored by Candid Pro.
And so before we get started,
I just wanted to give you a
quick shout out.
On that announcement,
if you guys aren't aware,
Candid Pro is a clear liner
system built for general dentists.
That's what I said, general.
General dentists.
And it's kind of a cool program.
We actually had an episode
like two or three episodes back.
So you should definitely
check that one out.
But they've designed this
program specifically for
general dentists.
And you'll understand why
once you watch that episode.
But their whole thing is
about driving predictable
outcomes with more work efficiency.
So more efficient process around that.
And ultimately that's
supposed to drive more profit.
So, and it does, I think it does.
And so if you check out the
link below in the
description and all that good stuff,
you'll see a link and
they're giving you guys a
really incredible deal just
by listening to the program.
So click on that link, get a demo,
figure it out.
I think you'll like it.
And yeah, we'll go from there.
So let's jump right into it.
Paula and Michael,
all things patient finance
and getting patients to say
yes to treatment.
This is a simple question.
Michael, I'm going to tee it up to you,
my friend.
Why even have patient financing?
Why is that a thing?
Why should it be a thing?
Why do I always see it on the counter,
but yet nobody uses it?
It has a bunch of dust all over it.
But why?
Why use patient financing?
What's your take?
You're not wrong, Michael.
Years ago,
when I had my own consulting
business in Phoenix,
one of the things that I
ran into all the time was
the fact that almost every
office had a massive
unscheduled treatment list, just massive.
So if they were producing a
million and collecting a million,
they had, you know,
one point two to one point
five million in outstanding treatment.
So so what's happening is
by not giving the patient
options that work for them,
patients are just opting to
say no or I'll schedule later, right?
And unfortunately too,
what a lot of doctors don't
consider is that the
treatments they're saying
no to are typically the
more expensive treatments.
So-
What's bigger treatment plans?
What do you think a big quote-unquote,
to the average patient, right?
What's big?
Well, big is subjective, right?
To one patient,
big might be having to do a
crown instead of a three-surface filling,
right?
It could be a dental implant.
It might be like a clear aligner case.
Doctors are
start to do all on all in
four cases you know those
can be what twenty five
thirty grand an arch so so
big is relative right right
I mean when you ran your
practice paula did you
offer patient financing I
think you did I did and did
you offer it to everyone or
just to the quote unquote
big what did you I guess
every demographic's
different your demographic
in the city big was
probably a thousand bucks yeah absolutely
I was probably a little guilty,
as Michael Clark's going to uncover today,
of picking and choosing.
You know, it's hard.
You know,
some companies are different than
others when the ones that
require you to have a
promotion and you're hit
with a bigger financing issue.
And we can bust through
those myths today with Michael Clark,
but there's other options
out there where you don't
have to do that and you can
pass that more on to the patient.
And that's probably a little
bit more comfortable for an
owner to know that.
they might only be paying
three percent interest
instead of fifteen percent
interest um yeah so we
should probably talk about
that a little bit more so
yes I offered financing um
was I guilty of picking and
choosing absolutely um yeah
Well,
I think that's a perfect segue to
kind of like statistics around,
if I spelled that right,
statistics around payment methods.
I hope I didn't.
You did.
Every time I do that, like someone chats,
like you just butchered that.
I'm like, well, okay.
Just abbreviate stats.
Stats.
Okay.
Let's do some stats.
I love stats, and I'm a numbers guy,
and I think numbers speak.
I will transition this to Michael,
but I will say the last
time that Paul and I coached a client,
I'll never forget, it was a one point six,
seven million dollar practice.
And we did a care credit
analysis on how many times they did
Forget CareCredit,
they're not sponsoring us today.
Candid is sponsoring us today,
but it was CareCredit and
they did like this analysis
and they used it like one
time in twelve months.
And I was like a one point
six million dollar practice
offered it one stinking time.
Before you get into statistics,
the thing that I hear
because I do case acceptance,
patient enrollment all the time.
What I always hear is the
team thinks they know
what's holding the patient back.
Yeah.
They don't know.
they'll, they'll make up something.
No, they don't, they don't want that.
They don't need that.
They just need time to think, or, you know,
it's, it's, you just don't know.
So what I learned, you know,
through Michael Clark
before he coached with us
is you should just always lead with it.
You know,
you pretty much should always
lead with your options, but he's more,
a little bit more of an expert on that.
So I'll let him talk about that.
Um,
And if you want to go straight into stats,
we can right now,
but I think it's important
for teams to know that.
No one's following up on
that one point five million
unscheduled treatment.
And the ones that are, right.
I'm sorry to interrupt,
but the ones that are,
I used to ask because they
would have a team member
have to sit on the phone.
and start calling all these people, right?
And that's fun, right?
So I would ask them like, okay,
out of a hundred calls,
how many people actually schedule?
Or even answer these days.
Or even answer, right.
And the most common response
I got was out of a hundred
phone calls that they had
to make that they didn't
really want to make,
maybe three people would schedule.
Maybe three.
They need Paula.
They do need Paula, but that's terrible.
Exactly.
Well,
and so and so so so statistically
speaking,
we can easily say that that this
service is underutilized.
And to Paula's point,
it's probably very subjective.
There's probably some
limiting beliefs behind the
front office people with Paula.
with their financial situation, right?
And so they're not doing that.
But from a statistic,
you were sharing before the program,
please share.
When a patient comes in, how do they pay?
You were just sharing that.
Please share with the audience.
Yeah, the revenue stream for a practice.
Historically,
about fifty percent of the
revenue coming in is coming
from insurance.
It makes sense, right?
Crown's twelve hundred.
They cover half.
Patient's got to pay the other half.
Yes.
Thirty,
thirty five percent typically is
coming from your
traditional payment method.
So Visa, MasterCard, Discover, cash, check,
whatever.
But every.
Which is why merchant
services is so important.
And we can have that.
Got a good plug there.
But every office.
And what's interesting is it
doesn't matter if you're in
Beverly Hills or if you're in Ajo,
Arizona or wherever you are.
it's fifteen to twenty
percent of your patients
are just not prepared for
the cost of dentistry.
They're just not there.
Fifteen to twenty percent.
So if you have two thousand patients.
Right.
That adds up.
Yeah.
So so a hundred patients
walk through our practice today.
Twenty of them had no idea
how they were going to pay
for whatever you just dropped on them.
Right.
Two out of ten people come
into your practice today
are not prepared to pay.
period.
Okay.
And, and that's why, again,
you go back to what I said earlier about,
you know,
if they're doing like your
practice example, doing one point six,
they're unscheduled.
It's probably two point four.
Mm hmm.
Guessing.
Mm hmm.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Because high case acceptance is forty,
you know, forty one, forty low forties.
Medium is in the mid
thirties and, you know,
so if they're getting even
thirty five percent case acceptance.
Mm hmm.
I you just reminded me of
something years ago,
I had heard a statistic
that the case acceptance
rate for crowns in this
country was was around forty two.
But this was years ago.
I think it was an ADA statistic.
I was working with a large TSO client
a couple of years ago and
speaking with their CFO.
And we got to talking about this.
And I said, I said, just out of curiosity,
you know, what is,
cause he's a numbers guy.
I'm like,
what is the case acceptance rate
for your group?
And he said, it's abysmal.
He says it's
Hmm.
That's bad.
And just so,
and just so everybody's just
so everybody is on,
on point for all of the
doctors that are driving to
work right now and saying, and thinking,
and thinking, and thinking, and thinking,
not high.
We're talking about dollars accepted,
not people.
So if ten people walk in your practice,
you might get eight of them to say, yes,
that's not eighty percent
case acceptance.
If those ten people each had
a thousand dollar case,
then what we're talking
about is dollars accepted.
So the eight people may have said yes,
but only four thousand of
the ten thousand was accepted.
So, again,
dollars accepted is the actual
case acceptance that we us
consultants talk about.
So anybody,
any anybody can get one hundred
dollars out of someone,
but it's a little harder to
get a thousand, two thousand,
ten thousand out of somebody.
So.
Yeah,
I think the stat is like if it's the
size of a car payment or smaller,
they're more likely to say yes today,
right?
Yeah.
And you're not wrong.
Yes, patients are scheduling,
but I'm a patient that
needs two crowns and two fillings,
and I'm scheduling the
fillings because my
insurance will pay for it.
I'm not scheduling the crowns yet.
Yeah.
Well,
let's let's get to kind of like what
option?
I think there's a lot of options like.
Why?
I don't know.
How about this one?
Why?
Why don't practices take
advantage of this?
I guess we kind of covered that already.
I guess it's the belief.
We covered on that.
The belief?
Why else?
Paula, you own a practice.
Paula, speak to it.
Why do you think?
Is it all down to the belief?
I'm assuming that they know
better or just talking
about money is icky or what?
I think it's just habit too.
It's forgetting about it.
It's not being fully educated in it.
You don't want to
feel stupid.
They think it's time consuming.
So it's more on their plate
to have to help a patient
fill out an application or I don't know.
Mike, you went around.
What were the objectives or
what did you see?
I mean, it.
Yeah, it was to Mike's earlier point, too.
It was very common for them to say, well,
I present it all the time.
Yes, I present it all the time.
Really?
Do you?
How do you present it?
When is it presented?
You know,
do you wait until the patient is
squirming in the chair
because they've got a five
thousand dollar treatment
plan in front of them and
the insurance is only going
to pay fifteen hundred of it?
You know, when do you bring it up?
So I think really there's a
lot of reasons why they
don't take advantage.
Number one,
the staff is not comfortable
with talking about money, essentially.
Two,
doctors or owners don't necessarily
like financing because
Paula made the point earlier.
They in their mind,
they're thinking that
they're paying fifteen
percent interest in my offer.
OK,
and it's what what they're missing out
on is it's not interest.
It's just a merchant fee.
It's no different than your
visa or MasterCard.
OK,
most of these lenders are going to
deposit the entire
treatment amount minus the merchant fee.
And that's it.
OK,
so they think that that and if the
merchant fees, fifteen percent,
Mathematically, they're thinking, well,
wait a minute,
my profit margin for my practice,
my overhead is seventy five.
So I'm only making twenty five.
And if I do financing now,
they're going to take fifteen of that.
And that's not really how it works.
Not really how it works at all.
Another reason to especially
like when you have like a
legacy office manager
that's been with the doc forever.
I like how he said that
legacy office manager.
Legacy office manager.
AKA Greta.
Greta.
No offense to any Gretas out there.
Yeah.
My, my grandma was a Greta.
So no, no Ethel.
I was going to say Ethel.
Wait, her name's Greta or Ethel.
You don't know.
It's Ethel.
I,
Oh, I didn't mess that up.
I always talk to my clients
about the Ethel Greta.
You did mess it up when you
said Lisa's name.
OK,
I just hope you don't get hate mail
from all the Ethels and Greta.
I know they're not listening
to the program.
If you're a dentist, I'm sorry.
Back to back to the legacy office manager.
You know,
they they've known the doctor for
so long and they've been in
the practice for so long
that they don't offer it
because they think they're
saving the doctor money.
Yes.
Not offering it.
And what do they usually offer instead,
Michael Clark?
Do you know?
Oh, I know where she's going with this.
A lot of times they will
offer an in-house payment option.
There you go.
Because number one,
they don't have to worry
about a rejection.
You know,
the patient is not getting approved.
Number two,
they can at least get the
patient on schedule.
Right.
And the patient only maybe
has to pay a couple hundred down.
And they think that we'll
just collect it over the
next two or three months.
What they don't understand
is that statistically,
if that outstanding balance
goes on any longer than a
hundred and twenty days,
the probability of actually
collecting it drops to near zero.
Well, I like that you said that.
Oh, sorry.
Go ahead, Michael.
No, I was just saying, of course,
dentists and business
owners think that there'll
be better banks than the
bankers and other people.
I mean,
offering payment plans is in every
consultant's
vocabulary coaching tool bag.
We all say, do not do it.
Why?
Because of what you just said,
it doesn't get collected.
And then there's the
management of staying on
top of it and tracking it
and getting Greta to follow
up with those payments.
And it's just, it's a bad idea.
It's just a bad idea.
Is that where you were going with that,
Paula?
I interrupted you.
Yeah, no, no, no.
That was it.
It's the managerial fee of
the front office now
tracking this payment down.
It's the risk of not getting the payment.
And I say to my team members,
how about we forfeit your
your payroll for one
hundred and twenty days
till I get that money collected for,
you know, to pay you with that.
If you're going to make
those kind of decisions all the time,
doctors are doing in-house
payment plans and it makes that.
This is way off the subject,
but on the subject, I say this every day,
we're the only industry
that allows somebody to
take a product home and not
pay in full or finance.
Why not finance?
They finance their cell phone.
They finance a mattress.
They finance everything.
I showed you that thing the other day,
Michael, that I did with the hygienist.
One point two to two or one
point five to two billion
dollars every day on hygiene.
plastic surgery,
just like a nose job alone.
It's like a thirty billion
dollar industry and people
have no problems financing it.
But heaven forbid the
gateway to their body,
they just like go to hell
in a handbasket.
Well, I mean, I mean,
the statistics are that the average.
adult has less than two
thousand dollars in their
savings account right now
like that that that
statistic has gotten worse
and worse and worse over
the years and and so
payments matter so so not
all three of the the
panelists today aren't
disagreeing that payments matter.
That's what gets people to say, yes,
that's the way that
millennials and millennials
and so on and so forth.
That's the way they think.
Even the older folks, my mom,
she's on a fixed income.
She's got her money coming every month.
She wants a payment plan.
Payment plans matter.
It's what gets people to the
to the finish line.
But doing it in-house, not the way to go.
So, Michael Clark, why do they matter?
Two points there, two points.
And I'm going to give a
shout out to the wonderful,
one of the dental speakers
that I used to follow.
She wrote a,
she actually started off as an
office manager with her
husband and then started
looking at the business of dentistry,
discovered some really interesting stuff,
eventually wrote a book and
then she became a
consultant and now she is a traveling
famous speaker.
And I'm speaking, of course,
about the lovely Kathy Jamison.
And Kathy Jamison studied
what the cost of managing in-house is.
And her conclusion after
reviewing multiple,
multiple practices was that
it's forty two cents on the
dollar as well to manage.
the postage the staff time
is forty two cents on the
dollar so your point about
why do payments matter uh
I'm going to tell you a
brief story real quick so
one of my former colleagues
story time story time um
one of my former colleagues
uh was looking to do
invisalign uh because she
was an ortho relapse case
she had some shifting she wanted to
you know, make her teeth pretty again.
And so she,
and she knew that she was
probably going to be an express case.
So it wasn't going to cost
her maybe as much, right?
This was before Candid, of course.
Of course.
Let's say a clear liner
company of the other.
Candid would have been more affordable.
Yeah.
Candid would have been way
more affordable and she
wouldn't have even needed payment plans,
but go ahead.
Sorry, Michael.
Absolutely.
So she reached out to her dentist first,
obviously, and, and asked him, she said,
Hey, you know,
What do you charge for an express case?
And they told her it'll be
about thirty six hundred.
And so she said, OK, you know,
I'll think about it.
And she went home and
thought about it and then thought, well,
maybe I'll get a second opinion.
So she called another office
that wasn't too far away and said, hey,
I've already been checked.
I know I'm an express case.
You know,
what does that run if I do it
through you?
And they told her, oh,
we've got some great payment options.
In fact,
we can start to start treatment on
you with no money down and
payments as low as, you know, whatever,
about fifty bucks.
Right.
Done.
Who did she book with?
Of course, she booked the payment option.
And what's really
interesting is she didn't
know until well after the fact that.
By the time she paid it off,
she actually paid more for
the second option.
So the office technically
collected more revenue as well.
So the moral of the story is ABCs,
always be selling.
No, I'm joking.
No, kind of not.
It's all in presentation and
verbal skills.
I love that.
That's a great story.
And it absolutely matters.
We also do membership plans,
help people with membership plans.
And we had our other partner, Dental Menu,
um, on the program,
check that episode out.
Same thing.
Um,
patients want payment plans and they
need them and they're,
they're budgeting and it matters.
So, okay, cool.
Anything else on that topic?
Go ahead.
Yeah.
I mean,
I think the other question I would
have is you're saying why financing,
right?
Um, I think Michael Clark,
if you can hit on level of care, you know,
that would be,
and we're talking to the dentist here.
Right.
A hundred percent.
So, oh, we care about that.
No, I'm joking.
I'm joking.
Go ahead.
Yeah.
We don't get hate mail on that too.
Um, yeah, no level of care as well.
Um, you know,
offering a way to pay over
time can mean the
difference between somebody
doing like a PFM in the interior,
you know, versus doing a fully, you know,
zirconia, something really beautiful.
Uh,
it can make the difference between a
denture patient getting like the absolute
baseline plastic looking
dentures versus getting
something that makes them
feel good about themselves
because it looks real.
Right.
Yeah.
And it's, it's the difference between,
like you said,
doing the couple of
fillings versus doing the
entire treatment plan, you know,
going ahead and do
everything that's planned
out for that year,
as opposed to phasing it out over a
a five-year plan.
Yeah.
Say actually we've been tracking same day,
same day treatment percentage,
I believe has been going
down the last two years on average.
Um, which is,
which is an interesting fact.
And maybe,
maybe Paula can fact fact check
me with dental Intel.
I don't know.
Um,
but I believe the last time I looked at
it,
same day treatment acceptance
percentage has, has gone down.
And maybe this, uh,
idea of patient financing is a way to, to,
to help you do that more often.
Well, and I'll tell you this much, uh,
both of my children needed ortho, uh,
two stages of ortho when
they were very young.
And of course, you know,
the orthodontist offered
the in-house payment option thing too,
but because of the time was shorter,
Uh, I would have,
I was almost forced to have
to decide which child I loved more,
you know, because it was too full.
Yeah, that was the first round.
Right.
But there was a, I,
there was a financing option that, uh,
I could spread it out over
a longer period.
And it essentially allowed
me to do both children
simultaneously for about
the same monthly payment.
I would have paid for one
job for the inhabitants.
Well, I guess like last little bit on this,
unless we really have a
burning desire to touch on other things.
But I'm curious what the group thinks.
I've never sold the stuff.
I've never really looked into it.
There's a lot of options.
We keep saying care credit
just because they're the lion's share.
But there are some others
that are really doing well out there.
Um,
and we've partnered with a few of them
over the years, but like, what are,
what are some of the things
that differentiate these companies and,
um, who's, who, who are they?
I mean,
I guess we don't even have to get
into that and there's no
way we know everything about all of them,
but, um,
any ideas there from the team on
other options, um,
other things other than care credit or,
or what,
what's the downside of care credit?
Let's have a discussion about that.
Well,
there are a lot more options these days.
Care credit has been around the longest.
They're still hugely popular
because the utility of
being able to use the card
over and over and over
again through the years.
The challenges might be
because it's a revolving line of credit,
the underwriting standards
are going to be a little
bit tighter than if it was
an installment loan, for example.
And so what you're seeing
right now is a big
big surge in FinTech and
MarTech companies basically
breaking into dentistry,
breaking into healthcare
and trying to provide
lending solutions for the
patients that are more palatable.
So for example,
like a true no interest
product where there is no
interest for the first six months,
twelve months or two years.
And then if the patient
doesn't pay it off instead
of being hit with the
retroactive interest of, say, a
deferred interest plan,
the patient would only pay
interest on the remaining
balance to the end of the law.
Okay.
So that's more popular for some people.
But yeah,
it's just there's a lot out there.
There's a lot popping up all the time.
Just comes down to, you know,
what are the fees?
What's the approval rate?
And what's the conversion rate?
Are the products that are being offered
palatable enough to patients
that they want to say yes today.
Right?
Dr. Justin Marchegiani Well,
Paula has always talked about in offices,
teeing you up here, Paula, a little bit,
so get ready,
on delivering treatment one
hundred percent with that option.
On the treatment plan,
there's no subjectiveness,
there's no limiting belief.
Have you seen that before?
Or is that what you suggest, Paula,
when you're delivering
treatment plan is like
you've got all these
options and one of those
right there on one hundred
percent of the.
Treatments is right there.
Have you seen that?
Not sure what I understand
what you're asking.
Well,
just delivering it to the patient and
just having that as an
option one hundred percent
of the time on.
I think I think that every
time you deliver a treatment plan,
you've got to have multiple options.
And I think it's.
You know, cash, you know,
maybe a cash discount,
credit card or third party financing.
I think you let the patient decide.
I think that if you provide it all,
you know,
I always say patients are fifty
percent less likely to
schedule treatment once
they've left the practice.
Somebody's got to hunt them down.
Somebody's got to get that
emotion back in them of
just finding out they have
a mouthful of decay or
periodontal disease.
It's hard to get that back
after they've left and had a, you know,
bought a new cell phone, needed new tires,
whatever it is.
So whatever we need to do to
enroll that patient that
day into scheduling
treatment is the best
option or else you've just
paid your team countless
hours to hunt somebody down.
You're less likely to even
get them to schedule.
Probably not.
Even if they schedule,
it's probably not going to be committed.
So we kind of have to get
them while the emotions are raw.
And the best way to do that
is give them all the
options and let them choose.
It's, you know, again,
you asked and Michael Clark
kind of answered, you know,
why care credit above anyone else?
It's a household name.
They work in vet, eye, cosmetics.
Most people that are going
to not choose another one
is because they've already
got healthcare credit and
they don't want to their
credit checked again and like another,
you know,
form of that credit out there so
That's by care credit.
In my opinion,
I have nothing against your credit.
I think they're amazing that
I do not always like to
push the promotion period
on those smaller payments.
So I wanted other options.
Um, if they say, can I use this?
Absolutely.
I'm not going to fight somebody.
I'm not going to turn down
treatment because I might
get penalized with a little
bit higher interest,
but I'm going to lead with, with,
you know, something else,
but a third party option.
But I always want to be with
care credit because it is honestly,
I couldn't even tell you
it's it's a house.
It's a household name with
so many different fields of
medical out there that it
would be silly not to have them.
I do think their onboarding
training is great.
You know,
they require that you take these courses,
which is annoying,
but at least they set you up for success.
And then they come in and check on you.
They make sure that you
understand you're utilizing
the financing.
They try to meet with you
and encourage more usage.
Of course they do.
But it does set the front
office team up a little bit
more for success.
But you are suggesting two multiple,
not just care.
No, I'm not even like, sorry, care credit.
I'm not even saying.
What do you mean?
They didn't pay.
No, I know.
I'm not even saying suggest them.
I'm saying have it because
you have to sign up with them.
You have to have a direct deposit.
You have to go through the training.
I'm saying have them as an option.
You might not lead with it,
but you want it there in
case someone whips it out and says,
can I pay with this?
I'm saying lead with
multiple options and it's
third party financing,
whatever you choose.
Obviously, care credit.
and a cash discount, you know,
those would always be, you know,
and which works better for you would be,
you know, how I would say it.
But I'm going to lead with all three.
Whatever venue you choose
for your financing is up to you.
I just don't think you
should be afraid of offering it.
No, no.
And you're right.
One hundred percent.
The strength of CareCredit
is their network.
Really, it's the reuse.
that keeps coming back, right?
But for new patients,
there may be some other options.
There's two great
up-and-coming lenders that
I've been introduced to
that I've been talking to recently.
So you got Covered Care and
you got Clarity Pay,
and they've got some
exciting things that are
different than what has
traditionally been offered in the space.
But one thing I did want to
also kind of point out or
cover with this is that
Another side effect of the
patient leaving without scheduling,
unfortunately, and there,
I believe it was a path to
purchase study that was
done a few years back with
dental patients.
Okay.
And, and I may be misquoting,
so don't send me hate mail
if I'm misquoting this, but it was,
it was somewhere in the
neighborhood of twenty-five to thirty,
twenty-five, maybe twenty-seven percent,
close to thirty percent of
the patients that walked
out without scheduling
ended up getting the
treatment done at a different office.
That's interesting.
Yeah, that's too bad.
It's such a simple thing.
I also, while you guys were talking,
I was thinking about like
extra large things
specifically like clear liners.
um there's other groups and
and fintech fintech
companies and other
competitors that kind of
have that niche of bigger
stuff five thousand or
bigger or you know and
there's just different
things to to consider so I
I just think that like you
can't just go care credit
like I think you guys
brought up a really good
Really good points on why
one of the options should be care credit,
but I don't think care
credit is pulled on every opportunity.
I think if it's clear aligners,
it might be someone else.
If you already know that
someone's going to have a
less of credit score,
maybe you bring out another option,
but it's having that
options for patients to say
yes and deliver care.
care.
That's what I heard.
Any last minute kind of
things on this topic and
hopefully the three of us
move the needle to our
audience because I just
don't think we're doing this.
We're not as an industry.
We're just not doing this
and we should be.
We should be.
I would say all of our
startups that I work with,
I tell them to pick two.
Pick two and have them
available and like you said,
maybe once based on
lower interest ones based on easier,
more widespread access due
to credit scores.
I think you've got to do some interviewing
There's so many out there.
I can't be super
knowledgeable on all of them anymore,
but I think you've got to
interview and sort of pick
two different options that
will cover a wider range of
patients that you feel comfortable with.
Cause I'd rather you,
if you're not going to use care credit,
don't go with them.
Although I think it's a miss
because like I said,
it's a household name having it there,
but I think you've got to
be comfortable because you
want your team to
to lead with that as well.
You know,
it's gotta be something that you can,
you know,
be comfortable offering because you're,
you're having a big miss,
like Michael Clark said earlier that,
you know, if you're a one point two,
one point five, whatever,
you probably have two,
two and over millions of
dollars of unscheduled treatment.
And unfortunately, you know,
you can't tell me those,
you know,
if we did it right the first time
that we couldn't get a
larger volume of that coming out.
And to that, go ahead, Mike.
I was just going to say,
and don't get something
just to get it like, Oh,
I got to do it because
everybody do your research,
understand the service,
educate your team and be a
loan broker to your patients.
Understand why you would
offer this one versus this one.
And if you know,
Your front office needs to
know and maybe even create
us an incentive around it.
But whatever.
I mean, but but the tools that you have,
like own it.
But don't just get it just to get it.
You got to you got to be a solution maker,
not a box checker.
Go ahead, Michael.
Last last comment.
Oh, no,
your comment was so brilliant that
I completely.
None.
I just blew your mind.
You blew my mind.
I mean, yes, go.
Go ahead.
No, that's it.
No, no.
Oh, no, you go.
Oh, no.
Oh, you go.
You go.
No, you go.
It's gone.
That concludes the program.
Wait, you just thought of it.
You forgot.
No, it bubbled up for a second,
but then it went away again.
That's what happens when you
reach this chronologic section of life.
Yeah.
Well,
you should have financed that
brilliant idea.
Dang it.
All right.
You too.
It's a pleasure.
And I hope our audience got out of it.
Just another reminder, check out Candid.
We love them.
We think they're great.
Check out the description below.
Again, they have a great starter package.
If you want any help on
practice management, case acceptance,
just helping set up your
practice from scratch, like Paula said,
even buying a practice,
don't just inherit what they all did.
Look at all the contracts
you have and utilize, you know,
figure out what you're
trying to do and see what
works best for you.
So without further ado, Paula,
thanks as always.
Michael, great,
great guest today and great knowledge.
Thank you for everything.
All right.
Happy to be here.
Have a good evening.
Yes, you too, guys.
Bye bye.
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