Overcoming the Dental Insurance Bias
Dental insurance is a hot-button topic for practices that operate on a fully fee-for-service basis as well as those that are in network with every insurance company imaginable. The healthcare system has trained patients only to use providers within their insurance network. Practices usually include this in the list of cons when considering the fee-for-service model, and fee-for-service practices often struggle with overcoming the insurance bias with new patients. What if I told you that we’ve unlocked the secret to booking more new patient appointments even when your practice is out of network?
Quality Over Cost: Changing the Mindset Around Out-of-Network Dental Care
Our co-founder, Jackie Cullen, recently spoke to Dr. Lee Brown, a long-time owner-practitioner and the founder of Freedom Dental Coach, a consultancy for dental practices seeking to transition away from insurance. Dr. Brown and Jackie have been working together for more than five years, and they share one very important thing in common: they believe quality matters above all in marketing, dental care, and operating your business.
The biggest and usually first question a potential patient will have is whether your practice participates in their dental insurance network. What they’re asking isn’t really about insurance. It’s about price. The patient is concerned about the cost of the care they will receive because they’ve been conditioned to believe that healthcare is exorbitantly expensive without insurance.
Reframing the Dental Insurance Question
When a potential patient calls and the first thing they learn is that your practice is out of network, the conversation usually ends there, even when budget is not an issue. As Jackie puts it, “You could have someone making $500,000 a year that is the right patient for you. They’re trained to ask if you take insurance. They have no idea what it means to go out of network and go to a real quality practice.” Now that fee for service is more common among private practices, the responsibility for undoing that training falls on the dental practices themselves.
Controlling the Conversation
The key to overcoming the insurance hurdle is helping people understand that quality is more important than cost, and that starts with the initial conversation. Jackie has listened to hundreds of patient interactions over the years. In her experience, the most successful practices train their team members to take control of the conversation and redirect the person’s focus. The best way to do that is by asking questions.
Relationship Building
Every team member who answers the phone at your practice should know how to build rapport with the person calling. Asking the caller about themselves, their reason for calling, how they heard about the practice, and other relationship-building questions shifts control of the conversation from them to you, and that gives you room to redirect their focus away from insurance.
Of course, this approach does not always come naturally to your team members. For them, it may seem more efficient and effective to answer the patient’s question directly. And while it’s important to give the patient the information they want, getting straight to the point without taking time to learn more first can result in missed opportunities.
Team members answering the phone can reassure callers that they will answer all their questions, but to serve them best, they’d like to know more about them first. They can explain that other patients of the practice have their same insurance and what it means to see a dentist who is out of network, i.e., why it may be the better option. This is the point where training and practice become essential.
Turning Objections Into Opportunities
If you want your team members to become pros at taking control and redirecting, they must
- Believe in the value your practice provides
- Exude positive energy over the phone
- Learn how to ask probing questions
- Practice handling incoming calls and objections
With the right mindset and plenty of opportunities to practice, your team will become comfortable taking control of the conversation, and you’ll see more new patient appointments on the books.
Walk the Walk: Believe in Your Practice
Even if your practice is not fully fee for service or even thinking about going there, Dr. Brown believes in taking the same approach. He says, “Whether you are fee for service or you take every insurance possible, it doesn’t matter. The conversation still needs to be directed away from an insurance-based decision and back to a quality-healthcare-oriented decision.” He adds, “The better we help these initial conversations, the more people we get a chance to help, and we get a chance to get them healthy.” If you truly believe that your practice provides the best dental care around, it doesn’t matter which insurance networks you participate in, and the patients you serve should understand that from the beginning.
