How To Increase Your Dental Case Acceptance Rate for Dental Patients

Each year, dentists rank at the very top of the list for health practitioners that people in the US don’t visit as often as they’d like. Of the patients who do visit the dentist, dental case acceptance rates range between 50-60% for established patients and drop to 25-35% for new patients. That means if you can boost case acceptance rates by even 10%, it would dramatically increase revenue for your dental practice. Sometimes all it takes is for a dental practice to be a well-oiled machine. With the right practice management and imaging solution in place, higher acceptance rates are just around the corner.

Address Your Patient’s Main Concern

The biggest hurdle to overcome when presenting a case to a patient is usually the cost. Many patients avoid going to the dentist altogether because they’re afraid of how much a procedure might cost. That’s why it is important to be as transparent and informative as possible about costs and payment options with your patients in order to boost trust and patient retention.

In fact, one great advantage about Denticon over any other solution is the ease of working with the patient on a payment option that best suits them.

Help Inform Your Patients with Denticon

Before the patient arrives, Denticon is already at work. With the integration between Denticon and CareCredit, Denticon automatically runs a check on patients the night before to see who is preapproved and who already has a CareCredit account.  

Denticon also enables flexible payment options and can automatically calculate payment plans over time, such as for orthodontics patients. 

When calculating insurance and fees, Denticon provides real-time numbers for your treatment coordinator to share with your patients. Denticon has a highly advanced fee schedule and insurance module that lets you and your patient see in real-time what portion insurance will cover, what portion is the patient’s responsibility, co-pays, frequencies, maximums, etc. With very accurate estimates shown in real-time, you can build trust with your patient by being transparent and accurate about costs. 

No matter what payment option your patient selects, Denticon helps your staff present cases in an easy to understand and flexible way. Denticon offers all the information your staff needs at their fingertips to help inform patients. Then, patients can choose what works for them and feel confident about their financial decisions. 

Simultaneous Task Completion vs. Single Task Workflow 

Another way your office can “wow” your patients is by expediting the entire appointment through parallel workflows. Tasks that previously could only be completed one at a time in the office can now be completed simultaneously with Denticon and our integrated imaging software. This saves an immense amount of time for your office and your patients. Here’s where having a fully integrated cloud-based practice management solution which includes our  imaging software really shines. 

With Denticon and our integrated imaging software, X-rays can be reviewed by the dentist in his or her office (or anywhere in the world) as they’re being taken thanks to cloud-based software. And the treatment coordinator can begin preparing a treatment plan as the dentist is reviewing X-rays with the patient. The patient is taken step-by-step through their appointment with the ability to ask questions and review the images with the dentist right there. 

What’s more, this economic use of time helps your team dedicate more time for patients. Time spent building rapport with your patients is time well-spent. You and your team will be able to invest in the patient relationship by educating them and supporting their oral and overall health.

A Real-Life Example of Increasing Dental Case Acceptance Rate With Denticon

A real-life example of how Denticon and the integrated imaging software helps boost case acceptance for patients would be if a patient had an appointment coming up for a checkup. Denticon automatically runs a CareCredit check the night before and notes that this patient is preapproved for CareCredit. The day of the appointment, the patient arrives and there’s very little time spent at the front desk because all forms were completed through Denticon’s online patient portal. After check-in, the patient is quickly taken to receives X-rays. With the fully integrated cloud-based practice management and imaging software, the dentist reviews them as they’re being taken and diagnoses the patient with a cavity requiring a crown.  

Because the imaging software is cloud-based, the images are accessible anywhere—from the dentist’s office, the operatory, the front desk, or around the world. By the time the patient walks to the operatory, the images are on the screen so the patient and the dentist can review them together.  

While the dentist is reviewing the diagnosis with the patient, the treatment coordinator is already reviewing notes as the dental assistant is inputting them within Denticon. By removing delays between when the dentist leaves the operatory to when the treatment coordinator arrives, the patient doesn’t need to sit there wondering how much longer the wait will be. The treatment coordinator is ready to present the treatment plan immediately with real-time numbers for the patient to review. 

The treatment coordinator can view the fee schedule and insurance module in Denticon to show the patient that the cost of the crown will be $1,300, of which his insurance will cover $300. The treatment coordinator can provide several payment options to increase the chances of having the treatment plan accepted by the patient. First, they can let the patient know that they are preapproved with CareCredit and applying takes just a few minutes. Or they can offer other flexible payment options so the patient can receive the care they need and make payments on terms that work with their financial plans. 

Throughout this process, Denticon and its integrated imaging software streamlines how the staff interacts with the patient, providing helpful information in advance to meet any possible concerns, and making it easier for your team to address concerns in a helpful way. By offering more options that are tailored for each patient, you vastly increase the rate of acceptance and ultimately provide better clinical outcomes for your patients.

Continually Build Rapport with Denticon

Each time you exceed patient expectations by quickly offering customized payment options, unexpectedly quick appointments, or seamless case presentations, you increase the odds that your patient will accept treatment. Beyond increasing case acceptance, you build trust and rapport. In the long run, you’ll see patients consistently returning for recall appointments with leads to less patient turnover, increased revenue, and better clinical outcomes for your patients. Find out how Denticon and our imaging software can help you do all this and more. Interested in learning more about increasing case acceptance through better communication? Check out our related blog.