Episode #579: Membership Plans: Automation & Intelligence. with Dave Monahan

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Main Takeaways:

Incorporate a membership plan to increase revenue.

Membership plans will increase uninsured patient visits.

You will have recurring revenue with a membership plan.

A membership plan will help you move away from PPOs. 

Quotes:

“A membership plan will improve patient engagement, the retention, and the revenue you generate from your uninsured patients. That's typically the number-one reason to do a membership plan. So, most practices assume their uninsured patients come in, accept treatment, and everything is great. If you actually pull the data out of practice management systems, uninsured patients, on average, come in once every two years. Let me say that again — once every two years. And they accept half the amount of treatment of your insured patients. And so, it looks great when your insured patients come in and accept treatment and you use your UCR maybe with a discount, and things like that. But the net is, you can make that so much better if you focus on those patients and gave them what they want.” (3:18—4:02)

“So, what do [patients] want? Well, we've done a lot of research. We actually did interviews of uninsured patients. We did focus groups. We did a national survey. They want care. So, they value oral care. They actually relate it to their overall health, their quality of life, and their longevity. So, they get it. They get that oral care is very important to them. They don't come in because they're afraid of the cost. And they don't have a plan. They feel exposed when they walk into your dental practice. They're unsure. And pricing in the dental market is anything but transparent, so they don't know what they should pay. So, what do they do? What's the reaction to that? They just don't come in. So, that comes back to the coming in once every two years and accepting half the treatment.” (4:02—4:47)

“The first value proposition is, get those [uninsured] patients to come in more often. If you give them a membership plan, it’s a simple subscription. It includes preventative care. They come in a lot more often, like two to three times more often. They accept two to three times more treatment, and you create a loyal patient that comes in more often and accepts more treatment. It works over and over again. It’s amazingly consistent how well it works. So, that's value prop number one.” (4:48—5:17)

“[Value proposition] number two is, you can create a nice recurring subscription revenue source in your practice. On average, on our platform, our practices charge $372 a year for their subscriptions. So, if you do some simple math and you add 300 patients to your membership plan, it’s over $100,000 of recurring revenue. A lot of our practices build up that recurring revenue, and they use it to pay their recurring bills like their office lease or their equipment lease, things like that, things that are recurring in their practices. Their subscription offsets that. And you can rely on that revenue. You know it’s coming in, year after year, because of the high renewal rate on membership plans. So, that's really nice to have. You don't even have to show up to work, right? Your recurring revenue still comes in, so it’s a really nice model to have.” (5:17—6:06)

“The third [value proposition] is reducing your PPO dependence. So, most practices, about 75% of their patients use PPOs. And we’ve done a bunch of measuring of these, and about 50% of those PPOs are unprofitable for a dental practice. And I know everybody is feeling this pain. It’s getting worse and worse as costs go up in a practice, and your reimbursement rates go down. At some point, you're crossing into unprofitability for these PPOs. And some of them are very unprofitable. Anyway, you can start moving away from those PPOs. We never say just run away from the PPOs. You've got to manage it . . . If you can start that journey and maybe drop the low production, low profit plans and move a membership plan in, you can start that journey of moving away from your PPOs.” (6:07—7:00)

“Two more things related, from a value proposition perspective, when you have a new patient come into your practice who is uninsured, the reappointment rate, on average, for those patients is about 45%. If you put them on a membership plan, it’s 100%. So, you can move from a reappointment rate from 45% to 100%. If they buy a membership plan, I guarantee you they are coming back. So, it’s a great way to get insurance on those new uninsured patients. And by insurance, insurance that they are going to come back. And I think, on average, a practice spends about $400 per new uninsured patient that walks into their practice. So, you're basically making sure that patient comes back.” (7:01—7:38)

“The last area, which is a nice opportunity, is — again, we have all the data from the practice management systems. On average, a practice has about 2,000 dormant patients in their practice management system. And these are patients that came in at some point and haven't come back in 18 months. And so, those patients typically don't come back because they don't have coverage. They're much like the uninsured patients I described earlier. And so, if you get them on a membership plan, those dormant patients will reactivate and start to become loyal patients to your practice. So, I know it’s a lot, but there's a lot of value that you can create in your practice through a membership plan.” (7:39—8:13)

Snippets:

0:00 Introduction.

0:58 Dave’s background.

2:44 The value of membership plans.

8:14 Why members spend more.

Dave Monahan Bio:

Dave Monahan is the CEO of Kleer, an advanced, cloud-based platform that enables dentists to easily design and manage their own Membership Plan and offer it directly to their patients. Kleer is turn-key and free to implement. Kleer’s mission is simple: partner with dentists to increase the value of their practices by making dental care accessible and affordable to everyone.