Dental Membership Plan Services: What Treatments Should Your Plan Include?

Dental Membership Plan Services: What Treatments Should Your Plan Include?

After deciding to create a dental membership plan for your practice, now you have another big decision to make. What procedures and treatments should you include in your plan? The answer isn’t one-size-fits-all, so let’s talk about how to figure this out for your practice.

Factors to Consider

Before jumping into possible ideas, consider the following factors. They may be unique to your practice and could influence your decision. 

  • Demographics of your city/region
  • The demographics of your current patient base 
  • Demographics of patients you might want to attract
  • Ratio of preventive versus restorative care services you perform on an annual basis
  • Levels of insurance coverage most of your patients have
  • Levels of insurance coverage most common in your local area 

Examining these elements separately and together can paint a clearer picture of the types of services that may appeal to your patients. It will also reveal those they might need help paying for. 

For example, if many of your patients are seniors who use Medicare, you might consider including discounts for dentures or veneers as part of your membership plan.

If more of your patients are young parents and their kiddos, your plan could instead include:

  • More focus on preventive care appointments
  • A referral discount to an orthodontist
  • Discounts on orthodontic retainers

Another idea is to offer multiple plan options, with each plan providing services specific to a particular demographic in your current patient population or those you’d like to attract to your practice.

Vouchers for Uber rides to appointments, for example, are a nontraditional but potentially valuable offer for patients in your area who depend on public transportation and rideshare services to travel through your local area.

Preventive Care Offerings

Specifics aside, we typically recommend that any practice include cleanings, exams, and even x-rays as a standard offering in their dental membership plan. Patients pay monthly or annually for their plan subscription, and in return, they visit your practice for their twice-yearly cleaning. The results? Better oral health for them and better cash flow for your practice.

If you feel that you have a more proactive audience, you may include additional preventive treatments in your plan. Your dental membership plan could provide two cleanings a year plus a special fluoride treatment and/or a discount on an enamel-protecting prescription toothpaste.

Cosmetic Additions

Depending on your patient base demographics and the most common treatments performed at your practice, you could also offer cosmetic procedures as part of a pricier monthly or annual dental membership plan rate.

If you have a high-profile practice in Los Angeles, including restorative care in your dental membership plan will probably feel obvious to your patients. Sure, they want healthy teeth. But they feel that way because they know healthy teeth look beautiful and are a prerequisite to many restorative treatments. They are coming to you for a beautiful smile, not just an adequately healthy one.

So they will more likely pay a higher monthly rate for a plan with cleanings and whitening.

Now, let’s say your practice serves a community of seniors in South Florida. Their perspective might be different from a patient base in Los Angeles. But this is still a good market to provide a restorative procedure-inclusive dental membership plan, such as dentures and veneers.

As another example, we can look to a practice in a community of traditional suburban families. Are mom and dad going to schedule whitening and veneer appointments in between the kids’ nap times? Maybe. But they are less likely to focus on procedures like whitening and veneers compared to the other two example patient bases. For these parents and their children, it’s all about strong, regular preventive care.

The Decision Is Personal

In short, only you can answer the question of which dental membership plan services you should include. Two annual cleanings is a good place to start regardless of your demographics. But it is also important to understand who you want to sign up for your dental membership plan and what services they most likely need and want.

Whether you choose a more preventive or cosmetic approach, these factors are also key to crafting messaging for your membership plan marketing materials.

If you need more help landing on a decision, we would be happy to talk you through it! Sure, the plan that works for your practice is ultimately your call. But here at DentalHQ, we have experience advising practice owners and managers on what services to include. After all, the inner workings of a dental membership plan are sort of our thing! Get in touch, at hq@dentalhq.com.

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