How to Create, Launch, and Grow an In-House Dental Membership Plan

Dependence or independence? Relative to your insurance provider network your answer is probably affected by profitability. Even so, independence could be achieved by discovering how to create, launch, and grow an in-house dental membership plan.

Get clear on what is a dental membership plan (and why it could give you some revenue independence)

Consumers, like your patients, are acquainted with membership arrangements for acquiring products and services. The same preferred convenience and VIP-like benefits could extend to your patient care.

And a dental membership plan also helps boost your revenue cycle and cash-flow.

  • More predictable revenue stream
  • Less insurance reimbursement delays

Those and more are good reasons to consider a dental membership plan as part of your overall revenue cycle management.

”A dental membership program allows you to create your own plans as an alternative to insurance. Patients pay your office a monthly or yearly subscription fee in exchange for benefits and discounts. People leave dental practices for various reasons, but more often than not they leave because of insurance coverage (money issues) and not poor customer service.”

How to create, launch, and grow an in-house dental membership plan

Keep it simple

Patients should be able to easily understand the details and benefits of your plan. Simplify the description into one, benefit-focused sentence as a way of explaining it.

Simplicity allows you to quickly and casually offer the plan as an alternative in-the-moment. Patients want a straightforward explanation of your plan unlike that of making a payment commitment when purchasing an automobile or home.

  • Streamline the treatment planning and financial conversation
  • Keep the plan benefits aligned with maintaining their oral health
  • Enhance your team’s buy-in and ability to communicate it to patients

And speaking of your team’s connection to the plan…

Train your team to promote it

Comprehensive team training from the front desk to your clinical departments will give your dental membership plan traction. Keep the training details and narrative relevant to the core benefits patients will receive from it.

  • Outline the comparative benefits of the plan to insurance provisions in an informative flyer and/or digital document (downloadable pdf).
  • Promote a patient referral incentive and benefit for sharing the plan with family, friends, and co-workers.
  • Highlight the short and long-term cost savings of joining your dental membership plan.
  • Keep the plan option visible throughout your practice and a frequent topic of your patient communications.

Make it a theme in your dental marketing strategies

Direct mail, email, and social media are go-to marketing channels for informing your patients and the public about your dental membership plan.

  • Add a “blurb” to your direct-mailings that highlights your plan and a few benefit bullet-points.
  • Create social media posts that target the uninsured demographic and engage them around the health and cost-saving benefits of your membership plan.

Keep it front-and-center on your dental practice website

Your online platform and presence is likely where you’ll create most of the “buzz” for your dental membership plan. Of course, it doesn’t need to be a dominant theme…but it does require some attention.

  • Research and use keywords that increase the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) around your membership plan – especially local keywords.
  • Routinely create and publish blog content around insurance alternatives, how to improve your oral health when you don’t have insurance, financial solutions for dental care, etc.

Ask patients to comment on it in their reviews

Your patient review strategy is key to highlighting actual patient experience with your dental membership plan. Ask patients who have joined to include related comments in their online reviews.

  • Share cost-savings
  • Comment on ease of use and the why & how of participating

The better the patient experience with your dental membership plan the better their ongoing loyalty will be. A dental membership in many ways can help you create lifetime dental patients…rather than one-and-done patients.

Check out the following resource for more detailed information about the ins-and-outs of a dental membership plan:

What Is a Dental Membership Plan and How Can It Improve Your Revenue Cycle?

And…

If you’re ready to start creating your path to insurance-independence – we recommend the Kleer dental membership plan platform.

  • Cloud-based
  • Simple, affordable, personalized
  • No insurance “middleman”

Consider a cloud-based solution and accurately measure your revenue cycles – even those generated by a dental membership plan.

You might find the cloud solution like Denticon to be a more efficient report gathering platform to monitor and drive your overall dental practice or dental organization’s performance.

Aside from its financial management capacity, the Denticon platform also provides:

  • A predictable, monthly subscription rate
  • Data hosted in the cloud that’s remotely and securely accessible
  • Savings that compared with a “legacy” system can total an average of 40%

It makes sense to look below the surface and see the massive potential of upgrading to a cloud-based dental practice management solution with a more advanced revenue cycle management module.

Thinking about or ready to update your dental practice management software? Contact us or request a demo of the Denticon platform… before you decide.