A problem I often hear from my coaching program members is that their bosses are so afraid to lose clients that they refuse to let full-mouth radiographs be a non-negotiable part of every dental cleaning. The price increase will suddenly make them more expensive than the neighboring clinics. Also, if we increase our prices, some "old" clients can no longer afford our service.
Does this sound familiar?
If we let fear of losing some specific clients overshadow increasing our standard of care, everybody loses!
Why is that?
The patients lose because hidden oral disease is not found and treated; the clinic loses revenues and risks losing the most ambitious employees because they are not allowed to perform best-practice care.
When I started doing dentistry years ago in general practice, we would ask the clients if they wanted full-mouth x-ray or not when admitting their pet for dental cleaning, but if you think about it, it doesn't make any sense to ask them. They expect you to do what's necessary to find disease - not to tell you how to do it. You are the vet, after all, right?
To me, it's like offering to do a blood test but asking the client if they want creatinine included or not... We know that we need to measure creatinine to find kidney disease, like we know that 30% of oral disease is only visible with x-ray, so we need x-ray to find and treat oral disease.
The client could save some money by not running the creatinine, but we decided for them that it's needed to do a proper job finding the disease.
Why is it any different from oral disease?
I understand the logic behind the fear of increasing the price. Some clients will no longer be able to afford the standard of care. Some solutions include care credit or saving up before the elective dental procedure.
Truth is, I can confidently tell you that every one of the clinics in which I have increased the dental standards of care did not lose clients. They gained so many dental patients that we were usually booked solid for months in advance..
Think about it
Ultimately, you must decide what kind of practice you want to run to attract motivated employees and clients who want only the best treatment.
Until next time..