Quick Start Guide: How to Establish a Dental Membership Plan

Quick Start Guide: How to Establish a Dental Membership Plan

The decision to establish a dental membership plan is an exciting one! If you’ve made that decision, chances are you have weighed the pros and cons and realized how this could change the game for your practice.

But now comes the nitty-gritty work. The good news is, you don’t have to face this process entirely alone … the team at DentalHQ are here to guide and support you each step of the way!

Enjoy this quick start guide for your dental membership plan.

Find Clarity About Financial Goals

The first step to start is completely personalized to your practice and your financial goals.

What do you hope to gain from establishing a dental membership plan? The answer to this question will inform much of your thinking down the road.

Your unique motivations might be obvious because you probably thought about them when deciding whether or not you would start a plan to begin with. But dig a little deeper:

  • How does the increased revenue a dental membership plan could bring benefit you?
  • How does your membership plan benefit your patient?
  • How do you envision your practice growing as a business because of your dental membership plan?

You want to get clear on all of the good stuff your plan will bring as you prepare to launch.

Analyze Patient Demographics

What do your patients need? That answer won’t be the same for every practice and patient population, as you know. And having a firm grasp on this will be crucial as you design your plan.

If you work in a community with more senior citizens, flashy cosmetic treatments probably aren’t the best thing to include in your plan. But more function-forward restorative ones, like dentures and veneers, would probably be a better fit.

Work through your patient roster and think about research statistics for the city your practice is in and other nearby communities. Use this information to figure out what would work best to include in your dental membership plan.

Outline Your Ideal Dental Membership Plan

And now, it’s time for the fun part! Make a first draft of your dental membership plan outline. Here are a few points to touch on:

  • What services do you want to include?
  • How much will it cost?
  • Will you offer monthly and annual plans, or only one or the other?
  • How do you envision the plan evolving if successful?
  • Should you include special promotions for new patients who sign up for the plan during their very first visit?

These are just a few of the important questions to be sure you’ve answered with your outline.

Decide on Software

Will you run your dental membership plan in-house on your own? Or will you team up with a software partner, like our team here at DentalHQ?

Since this will heavily influence how much and what types of extra work your office team members will have to take on to execute your plan, this is a must-know before announcing your plans for the plan.

Clearly, we are biased. But the DentalHQ software platform helps to manage patient details, auto-charge patients on subscription, and more. A software partner plays a role in successful dental membership plans.

Explain the Details to Your Team

We do recommend sharing your dental membership plan outline with a few trusted team members before everyone sees it. This will enable you to get second opinions and ideas while there is still time to edit without creating confusion.

Another pro tip: If you have associate dentists on your team, be sure to have a separate conversation with them about how it might change their compensation (for the better) before telling everyone else.

Once you have nailed down the final draft, schedule a meeting with your team to explain all of the details of your new dental membership plan. You’ll want to know exactly who you will have doing what tasks by the time you host this meeting. If you don’t explain these finer details, members of your team are sure to ask!

Build Out a Strong Marketing Plan

Next up, marketing. When it comes to a dental membership plan, marketing is even more important than usual. That’s because many (honestly, most) of your patients don’t know what a dental membership plan is.

Your marketing approach needs to tell them. It also needs to convince them that it’s the best idea ever. And we’ve put together a resource or two for you to help.

Set a Date

Once you’ve got your marketing plan in place, you’re golden! The only things left to do are set a date and check your list twice.

Happy Planning!!

And if you do need a little bit of help figuring out the software part (or really any part of your membership plan implementation), give us a shout at hq@dentalhq.com.

Dental insurance is a problem. We solved it.
We invite you to check out all the details of our industry-leading in-house membership plan platform.
You can get your practice up and running in less than 8 minutes.