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    Behind the Dental Chair: How Smart Dentists Crack the Code and Build a Dream Practice
    Behind the Dental Chair: How Smart Dentists Crack the Code and Build a Dream Practice
    Behind the Dental Chair: How Smart Dentists Crack the Code and Build a Dream Practice
    Ebook136 pages2 hours

    Behind the Dental Chair: How Smart Dentists Crack the Code and Build a Dream Practice

    By Robert Tripke

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    About this ebook

    THE KEYS TO BUILD A DREAM PRACTICE
    There are two keys to unlock a dream practice for both dentists and their teams. The first key is to remove yourself as participating members in those dental insurance plans you dislike the most. Do this slowly, over an extended period of time. Explain to your patients that as a participating member in their dental plan, you are handcuffed regarding the procedures you can offer them. The second key is to implement a structured periodontal therapy program and generate $300,000 to $400,000 per hygienist per year in the dental practice. Allow patients to make educated decisions about their care. Dr. Robert Tripke has been successfully doing it since 1987 and this book will help you crack the code too.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateJan 7, 2019
    ISBN9781947480452
    Behind the Dental Chair: How Smart Dentists Crack the Code and Build a Dream Practice

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    • 5/5
      Excellent book about implementing a periodontal program in your practice. It covers the fundamentals of perio both from the practice owner's and the patient's perspective. How to scale, how to deal with patients injections, so as to better serve them, improve and extend their lives.

    Book preview

    Behind the Dental Chair - Robert Tripke

    Conversation

    Preface

    Writing a book about the system that turned my life around in dentistry never entered my mind. That is, until January 2018, when I found myself having a conversation with a very interesting and brilliant speaker, Mark LeBlanc.

    We were sitting at a table during a break at the Jumpstart speakers meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona. The meeting was sponsored by Vanessa Emerson, the highly intelligent, driven organizer and founder of The Dental Speakers Bureau. There we gathered for several days and exchanged ideas to help launch our careers in speaking.

    I happened to approach Mark at a table where he was sitting alone for a moment, and as we began to exchange conversation, he looked at me and abruptly said, You have a story to tell. You need to write a book.

    Well, that might have been the furthest thing from my mind, and literally took me off guard. My initial reaction was to say, What do I have to write about, and what could I possibly write that could fill a book?

    Mark simply told me to gather some ideas on paper and we would talk later. By the time I left Arizona, I had purchased all of Mark’s books, and on the flight home I read his latest, entitled Never Be the Same. The story and the title inspired me to look at my own life’s experiences which ultimately left me never the same. I hope these ideas are also game-changers for you.

    Robert Tripke, DMD

    Chicago, Illinois

    September 2018

    Why Insurance Dental Plans Are Not Your Friends

    From one dentist to another: We are in an age in our profession in which the insurance industry is cutting off our very legs and thwarting our attempt to make a living commensurate with our level of education.

    I have never been a participating member in dental plans. Why? Because they dictate what procedures I can offer my patients, and I will have to discount my fees to match those of the insurance company. I did all the work to get where I am, as did every other dentist. I didn’t become a dentist for someone to tell me how to run my practice, how much money I can make, or how to diagnose and create a treatment plan for my patients. If that’s the only game in town, then I ain’t playin’.

    The first dirty little secret in our profession is, we the dentists, own the bat and ball, not the insurance companies.

    What percentage of your patients could you afford to lose before it would bankrupt you? 10 percent? 20 percent?

    Well, I’m here to tell you that dental insurance companies are no different. They require enough players to field a team. If enough players stop showing up to play the game, then the game isn’t going to be played. The dental plan coverage of today offers for all practical purposes the same coverage of forty years ago. Look it up. In the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, good plans covered about $1,000–$1,500 worth of dentistry per year. That’s right: $1,000–$1,500, in non-inflation-adjusted dollars.

    In 1980, my crown fees were $220. That meant a patient could receive up to seven crowns per year under a dental plan. Today, a crown fee is at least $1,000, so the same plan covers just one crown per year. The cost of dentistry and the cost of doing quality dentistry have gone up significantly over the same time frame, but the coverage hasn’t changed to allow the dentist to provide the same volume of work for a given patient. The average dentist not only can’t charge the patient’s insurance plan for virtually anything, but also are getting paid (as participating members) a smaller and smaller percentage of that plan’s dollar.

    I don’t have a problem with anything a person makes in this country; if the market is such, more power to you. But I do have a problem with insurance company executives receiving a 12 percent annual pay increase at the expense of dentists and their staffs, who actually provide these services. Dentists give up the best years of their lives to learn dentistry, break their backs to provide patient care, and then are told as doctors that you can only see Mrs. X so many times per year and can only provide for her a certain number of procedures.

    Sure, the insurance companies will tell you that you can treatment- plan anything, but what isn’t being relayed is that the patients are being told, If we don’t pay for it, then it isn’t a usual or customary procedure.

    I realize I’m fighting city hall here, but I feel very confident that I speak for many of my colleagues about the problem.

    There is a solution, however, which will be explored in the next chapter.

    Two Steps To Get Out Of The Mess

    There are two steps to getting out of this mess for both dentists and dental practices.

    The first step: Start removing yourself as participating members in those dental insurance plans you dislike the most (you know which ones they are). Do this slowly, over an extended period of time, explaining to your patients that as a participating member in their dental plan, you are extremely handcuffed regarding the types and quality of procedures that you can realistically even offer them. As a nonparticipating dentist, however, you will be able to offer them any procedures at any level, and they as patients will be allowed to make educated decisions as opposed to being told how limited their choices are.

    I’ve also spent years educating my patients that, for example, at twenty-five dollars an hour in their job, their employer may be extracting as much as one dollar per hour to pay for their dental plan. If they run the numbers, that computes to about $2,000 per year in lost wages for the patient. That money, if saved each year, could provide a significant pool of resources for their dental needs (certainly more than their dental plan). Make twenty-six dollars per hour, bank the one dollar per hour, access two to four times the dental benefits (depending on the plan), and the patient chooses what gets done, not the insurance plan. Sounds too simple, but it is true.

    The second step is to implement a structured periodontal therapy program and generate $300,000 to $400,000 per hygienist per year in a dental practice. I have been doing it since 1987: It’s not a fluke.

    A Few Thoughts On Marketing

    Marketing is something that for most of my years as a dentist was considered taboo. I built my practice, like many dentists, through word of mouth, which I still feel is the way to build the best practice. There is no question that a dental practice can be built faster (in terms of patient volume) with marketing, but I also believe a quality practice versus a quantity practice is done by word of mouth.

    I had one experience with marketing in which I generated sixty-seven new patients in one month. For my practice, that was astounding, since prior to that push, I was averaging twelve to fifteen new patients per month. I offered a complimentary exam and X-rays, knowing I would have to give something to get something. The breakdown on those sixty-seven patients was as follows: sixty-one wanted something for nothing, which, unfortunately, I gave them; five wanted reduced-rate extractions; one patient actually wanted to return to my office for ongoing dentistry.

    Let me say, I’m not against marketing. If it works for you, then have at it. But I’m not selling merchandise. I’m not a retail store; rather, I am a provider of health care services. The idea of giving away services, to me, reduces the perceived value of those services, and says to the patient, If they will give that away for free, what else can we get for free? It sent the message that I need the patients; not that, because of what we do, they need our practice. How valuable are the services we offer if we give them away for free? Several of those patients actually asked how cheap were our caps? I felt like they were waiting for my Wednesday afternoon special.

    Try Ruffling Some Feathers

    Fear of rejection is the big private-practice clinician killer. Dentists come by this very honestly. Too many dentists are concerned with being their patient’s best friend, not wanting to ruffle anyone’s feathers. This is where speaking taught me the importance of ruffling feathers, because ruffling feathers is how we gain case treatment acceptance. Telling the truth = ruffling feathers. You can’t succeed by telling people what they want to hear, but only by telling them the truth. If that makes them my best friend, then so be it.

    Too many dentists avoid treatment-planning anything, just to avoid rejection. I told my staff for years that I do not want to know if the patient even has insurance, let alone what type they have. If I am advised of this ahead of time, it surely will bias any treatment that I propose. For example, if I know a patient’s insurance will not pay for crowns, that naturally pushes me away from those and into large restorations. This not only compromises that patient’s treatment but is unethical.

    I propose the correct and highest-quality solutions for each patient. If the patient wants to talk down the degree of quality, then that’s on the patient, not on me. Rejection is your formula for success, because when you keep throwing quality treatment plans at the proverbial wall, sooner or later, some will stick.

    The one single event that changed all of my concerns over patient rejection was the diagnosis and treatment planning of periodontal disease. In the 1980s, I didn’t have the benefit of our current knowledge with regard to the oral-systemic connection: we did not yet know periodontal disease was linked to heart disease, stroke, diabetes, premature births, respiratory ailments, cancer, arthritis, and yes, even Alzheimer’s disease. Despite this, I was receiving about a 90 percent case treatment acceptance from my adult patients.

    The simple reason my acceptance rate was so high

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