10 Top Tips for Creating a Dental Hygiene Payment Plan

Are you looking to provide a dental plan for your hygiene care?  If you are, then this post is for you.  There are many situations both within NHS and in private practices where hygiene and preventive care within a dental plan work really well. Dental plans provide a great service, they are very patient-friendly, and we highly recommend our dental clients to explore them when delivering private care. 

If you are already private the process is more of a benefit than transitioning your patient, but our top ten tips will still give you value. 

If you are an NHS practice you have the effort and energy of transitioning patients from an NHS quick/low-cost appointment to a more extensive and more expensive option; the way you position and promote that to your patient will determine your success.

One of the biggest mistakes that dental practices make when selecting the plan categories is that they design it around a fast-paced NHS style of dentistry and perhaps add five or ten minutes onto an exam or hygiene appointment.  Is this better? Yes, but is it enough for the care you want to provide?

The quick ‘check-up’ and ‘scale and polish’ undervalues your expertise as clinicians: we unknowingly have placed a low value on ourselves by using these terms and working within the tight constraints of short appointments.  The biggest challenge you face in converting patients is related to what they have been programmed to expect. 

If you want to work differently and deliver a higher level of care and service please, please, please do not design your dental plan only on more time, nor only on what you think your patients will accept.

 Here are our Top Ten Tips 

1.  Write down your reason for offering a plan.  What is your reason for the plan? What are you moving away from?  What are you moving towards?  Make sure you know this and design the care around that.  It’s very important that you spend a lot of time thinking about the care you want to provide because often its only the ‘more time’ benefit that features in our mind.  By giving an extra five or ten minutes in an exam or hygiene appointment may feel good but the reality is an extra five or ten minutes doesn’t automatically design a higher level of care; it usually allows for more chat time and for the patients to be less rushed. Speaking as a dental hygienist, the NHS system has crippled the value of hygiene and preventive dentistry and does not serve the patient in supporting them moving towards health.  Offering a plan that is designed well is your opportunity to improve your care and service to your patients.

2. Design your plan around the direction you are moving towards.  Make sure it enables you to deliver the care you want to provide.  Avoid benchmarking your plan on your existing way of working (if you want to provide better care that is)

3. Change the names of appointments.  Appointments should be descriptive, representing their value and help to build value to the patient – train your patients to not expect a ‘clean’ or ‘scale and polish’

4. Separate patient types.  Patients with a history of periodontal disease need a different maintenance appointment and should carry a different fee as they have greater clinical needs.

5. Categorise individual patient needs. Outwith periodontal care, some patients have greater needs such as high caries risk, sensitivity etc.  If you are including every adjunctive assessment or therapeutic treatment, make sure it is calculated and factored into the fee.  You could also be very clear what is included and what isn't and add on these additional adjunctive screenings and therapies.

6. Think about diagnostic tools and testing kits that differentiate the service and help to build value in both patient experience and in a monetary sense

7. Calculate the time required. You need to breakdown the elements involved in assessing, carrying out the treatment and supporting the patient in making the improvements they require to make between your visits.  The biggest problem of how hygiene appointments have been traditionally structured is that most time is given to the ‘doing’ element and not the ‘being’, and what I mean by ‘being’ is being at service and supporting your patient move towards health which is more about building relationships, education, behavioural coaching and less about ‘scaling’ teeth.  The goal always should be centred around moving patients towards health instead of ‘cleaning teeth’.

8. Write a paragraph on each type of appointment explaining the benefits in a compelling way and make sure that you can sell it to your patients. Present it to your patients, making sure you are differentiating it from their NHS appointment (if you are moving from the NHS).  Ensure that the whole team can support it, including the front desk because they are a critical piece of managing the transition with your patients.

9. Set your fees based on your worth, value and in alignment with the care you are providing. Make sure you don’t go too low here because once you have a patient signed up to plan, it is not easy to move them.  Be prepared for objections and know that they are mostly a request for more information unless it is a concrete reason that they are unable to accept.  Be comfortable with these discussions because you are both on the same side and you are ultimately serving them better.  DO NOT dilute your recommendations based on an objection.
10. Be clear on what is included and what isn’t. Remember, a hygiene plan should be for maintenance care only.  Periodontal treatments should be carried out in a separate appointment.  This is easily accepted when you set it out in the beginning. 

Why make all this effort?

Patients that take more responsibility and interest in their oral health are often more interested in elective and optimum dental care.  Having an optimum examination appointment and excellent hygiene room with a clear structure will help you to deliver the best service, be profitable and fuel the dentistry, and elevate care in the practice.  Designing this plan well, in the beginning, will help to future proof your flexibility in how you work and in how you move your business forward.

A popular course for dental practices and dental hygienists to take is our 3 step business model for profitable hygiene because it provides the fundamentals of connecting the clinical model with the business model.  Click on the link to find out more!

 Have you set up a dental plan and still have challenges?

Are you thinking of setting one up and need more support?