Dental Treatment Financing
As every practice owner and manager knows, one of the best ways to grow dental practice revenue is to convert more patients into treatment. Many dentists find selling uncomfortable. They can articulate the patient’s problem and how the proposed solution will benefit, but asking for the sale can be a difficult final step. We have some excellent tips for effective selling of dental treatments and cover these in some other articles on our website. Additionally, we have developed several specific courses to help dentists achieve more success when selling treatments to patients. In this article, however, I wish to focus on an additional treatment selling tool – finance. In particular, specific dental and healthcare financial solutions can play in helping you increase the treatment side of your practice.
Dental treatments range from a few thousand dollars for orthodontics to several thousand for implants and oral surgery. These treatments are often deemed to be cosmetic by insurance companies. In these cases, the patient must cover most, or all, of the cost. Some fortunate patients can use their savings; however, for many, that’s not an option, and they find themselves forgoing the treatment. The result can be longer-term emotional anxiety about their perceived appearance to others, or the risk that failure to treat now may result in major dental issues later in life.
The good news is the uncomfortable topic of money no longer needs to be a deal-breaker for potential treatment patients. Today, finance companies specializing in health care and dental offer short and long-term monthly payment plans at favorable APR rates. By recommending one of these to your patients, you can provide a palatable solution to dental treatment’s financial barriers.
For example, imagine you have a patient who is interested in a dental implant. However, a total payment of $5,000 is not something they can afford at this time. Instead of losing that appointment, you can offer the same treatment at only $99 per month using dental financing!
With dental financing, previously expensive treatments are now within reach of many more patients. By making the sell-in of treatments much more manageable, a dentist can increase their monthly treatment volume.
One example is GreenSky, which specializes in consumer loans and has a specialty division devoted to healthcare. Depending on your patient’s credit rating, they can offer monthly finance plans with APR rates of 7.99%. Let’s compare that with other financing options:
- A good APR, credit card rate, is anything under 14% for someone with excellent credit. Yes, there are credit cards today offering interest-free terms, however, usually over a finite period. After 12 months or less, they will revert to the APR rate. Unless your patient plans to pay their treatment off within 12 months, an interest-free credit card is probably not the best option.
- A personal loan through a bank can run at around 10% APR for someone with excellent credit, although lower APR rates may be out there.
- We can see that a 7.99% APR rate is at least competitive compared to other alternatives in the market today.
- Payment terms can even extend up to 90 months, depending on the size of the loan. The approval process is quick, and once approval is received, the dental practice is paid within two business days.
These finance companies like to partner with dentists and healthcare professionals to attract referrals. Each referral is a win for them, while also a win for the practice owner, who can now implement the treatment procedure.
Selling dental treatments is often not easy and even uncomfortable for many dentists. With the options available today, a practice owner can now offer dental treatment financing a compelling solution to one of the significant barriers to dental treatment acceptance.
About NGT Academy
We are one of the few turnkey Learning Management System providers that specializes in the dental industry. Our platform contains dental-specific eLearning courses designed to help you with dental practice operations and all other aspects of dental practice management.
Did you know eLearning typically costs at least 30% less than conventional training? It could be a truly efficient solution for your dental organization.
Do you want to learn more? Contact us for more information or schedule a demo