This is an article written in collaboration with 32Co. With 32Co, GDPs can work alongside one of the UK’s top orthodontic specialists in the planning of their clear aligner cases, resulting in treatments that are safer, more predictable, and more effective. Read on to find out how 32Co can also make your cases more profitable.
We’ve talked many times about the importance of profit in dentistry (or any business). It’s a simple concept, but it’s vital to overall success – as a business owner, your income needs to exceed your expenses. Regardless of how much money you turn over each year, you’ll only enjoy a profit when you’re earning more than you’re spending.
A Question of Profit
Despite the enduringly tricky financial climate, dentistry is still in demand. Search volumes are strong. The challenge is now that customers have become more discerning. As even simple costs like groceries remain high, everyone is questioning their expenses. And with potential patients thinking more cautiously about their spending, it’s up to practices to do a better job of understanding their goals and meeting their needs. We’re also noticing that with this increase in diligence, patients have become better informed. They’ve researched treatments, they know what results they can expect, and they know what they think things are worth.
Speaking to a well-informed audience is a good thing. But it also means that it takes longer, and requires more effort, to nurture your leads. This additional engagement, and the increased competition in the market, all uses time – and as we touched on in our opening paragraph, time is money. Anything a practice can do to reduce a clinician’s time – and where possible, costs – is a positive move. What we’re talking about here is particularly relevant to PMs (but if you’re GDP, do stick around for the second half of this article).
Take Invisalign, for instance. On the face of it, selling a treatment for an example £3,000 seems like an easy win. However, in the current landscape, it’s becoming more and more expensive to onboard a patient, while lab costs are also rising. If 20–25% of the £3,000 is spent on lab costs, 45% to the clinician, 5–10% on gaining and converting the lead, and 15–20% on general staffing and overheads, there’s little to no profit left at the end of it. Your income simply isn’t going to exceed your costs.
It’s tempting to chase the business, but there must always be a profit margin, even if you have thousands of pounds coming in. For larger practices, with a greater volume of lab work, it’s possible to negotiate a discount on costs such as these. But if you’re a practice with fewer cases, you’ll need to think differently to stack the deck in your favour. The effectiveness of how a clinician delivers revenue (your Average Daily Yield) will always be a key concern. This simple metric – indicating how much, on average, a clinician grosses in a working day – offers a snapshot view of income effectiveness without having the waters muddied by holidays, part-time hours, or sickness. This allows you to calculate whether you’re likely to make an overall profit when you have paid the clinician, lab fees and overheads associated with having the surgery running for the day.
Finding a better way
The secret lies in bringing down your costs. And (to reiterate it again), if time is money, the most natural solution is to reduce the time you’re spending on treatments. But how can you do this, without compromising on the service level you’re offering your patients? This is where our advice aimed at GDPs comes in – though it’s always good for PMs to know what small changes in their GDPs can increase profits.
Partnering with a company like 32Co is one strong solution. We’ve been watching them with interest, because of the way they’re demonstrably saving time – and boosting profitability – for dental practices. Offering specialist help, 32Co provides treatments meticulously planned by an orthodontist, so that a case can be executed more efficiently. This means a reduction in recalls and patient visits (saving around two hours of chair time per case), while ensuring a faster, better result for the patient. Without factoring in rewards and discounts, 32Co typically increases profit by £900 per case, compared to traditional systems. Alongside this, the training is free and lab costs are often lower.
For a long time now, Invisalign has been the go-to treatment for practices chasing profit, but this could never last – what we’ve seen is effectively a race to the bottom. The market has become so competitive that it’s costly to win leads, and those you do win can take their pick from the many low prices on offer. On top of this, prices and lab bills are increasing, treatments take longer (with more refinements), and there’s a sizable waiting list for training. This paints a sorry picture, but in reality, there’s no need to play into the game. The concept of a comprehensive smile makeover, in which alignment features, is still a compelling prospect to many patients, with no need to compete on price.
It’s fair to say that there’s no longer an easy “slam dunk” when it comes to profitability. However, if you’re a general dental practice and you’re not yet offering orthodontics, 32Co is well worth considering. By training for free, you can quickly bring an aligner offering into your practice, and offer treatments that are time-efficient and – as a result – profitable.
Of course, this is just one of the many things you can do. Profit ultimately comes down to marginal gains: finding the small percentage points where you can. If you can reduce your chair time, reduce your costs, reduce your lab bills… These are all small steps in the right direction.
Interested in making your practice more profitable? Speak to us to see how we can help.
If you want to find out more or sign up to 32Co today, please get in touch and a member of their team will be happy to help.
