Regional Support Manager, Jo Phillpot, suggests ways to ensure your patients sign up to the correct plan for them.
While it’s true that having a membership plan in place offers your patients a great way to spread the cost of their appointments with you, our message to them is that its primary objective is to help them maintain their oral health. This point gets lost sometimes when practice staff talk about joining the plan, so it’s worth keeping at the forefront of your mind.
Most practices offer different combinations of numbers of examination and hygiene appointments to suit the needs of individual patients. The monthly fees will vary according to the number of appointments being prescribed annually. So, as you would expect, a plan offering two examinations and two hygiene appointments per year would have a higher monthly fee than one offering one examination and two hygiene appointments. Which makes sense.
Prescribe your plans
However, which combination of examinations and hygiene appointments is appropriate is something for the dentist and hygienist to decide. It’s not up to the patient to choose the plan they like the look of but for the clinicians to recommend, or prescribe, the one most appropriate for maintaining the patient’s oral health. A possible exception to this rule would be long-standing patients where reception can see a recall history and therefore can advise which membership level a patient needs.
For this reason, it’s crucial that the clinicians are the people who have the initial discussion about membership with a patient in the surgery. Leaving it to reception or other team members risks making patients feel as if they are being sold something as an add on. Worse still, as the clinician failed to mention it in the surgery, they may believe plan membership is unimportant.
Language is important
It’s essential to use the right language when speaking to patients about plans. It’s good to get into the habit of using the word ‘prescribe’ when discussing which plan would be most suitable for a patient. It carries much greater weight than the word ‘recommend’ and is likely to be taken more seriously. Patients are also less likely to question the plan put to them. After all, you wouldn’t negotiate with a medical professional over a prescription, would you? If you simply say, ‘this is the plan I would recommend’, that leaves you open to patients choosing not to accept that recommendation and opting for a plan that does not suit their need.
However, if a patient insists on going onto a plan that differs from the one the dentist has prescribed for them, then this needs to be documented in their patient notes. It helps to have a clear internal practice policy about what happens if a patient wants to deviate from the prescription. Is the front desk team required to just accept the patient wants to join a plan that is not suitable or are they given autonomy to push back and say they are unable to change the prescription, and to check with the treating Dentist? That needs to be agreed and communicated to everyone concerned.
Stagger appointments
Once your patient is signed up to the plan the dentist has prescribed then it’s a good idea to stagger their examinations and hygiene appointments rather than having both on the same day. This really benefits the practice diary, especially when dentists are taking time off.
As well as helping your diary, it allows you to have a greater number of touchpoints with patients. For example, if a patient is on a two examinations, two hygiene appointments plan then, I would suggest booking their first inclusive hygiene appointment at three months, their examination at six months, their second hygiene at nine months and final examination at 12 months. This way, instead of two opportunities per year to keep an eye on their teeth, you get four. Affording you a greater chance of catching emerging problems early and nipping them in the bud.
