Mastering Dental Billing & Membership Plans

what's up everybody and welcome to another exciting episode of the automatic patient podcast I'm your host today Jordan comto with me a special guest I have Erica Erica what is up how are you doing hey how are you doing good why don't you tell our audience who you are how you got into dentistry and what you do with Dentistry oh gosh uh I am a dental Viller I I mean I I have a dental billing company and how I got into Dentistry like most of the

listeners that are dental billers or office managers we most of us started like as dental assistants and um I learned this craft in 1998 when we were still billing on paper claims and filling them out with ink umz you know so I started back in the day when there was no practice management software and and uh we were on those very archaic uh pegboard system I was going to say the pegboard system yes oh my gosh yes I've seen Dental billing evolve from that to what

it is today and I have to say Dental billers today have it really easy um because they don't have to write it all out by hand so GE yeah that's that's essentially what I do and now I have an entire team and we do billing for offices all over the country so cool yeah I know it's it is a Hot Topic uh Dental billing I uh I am a geek on the weekends I look at like what people are searching online right especially in the dental

space Dental coding and dental billing and and Ada codes are a hot search topic it seems it is it really is so I got some questions for you so we can help our audience understand Dental billing most of our audience is is practice owners uh on on this podcast so I have questions as if they if they were here in the room uh every week I record with Dr Dan Nelson who's not here today because he was on our earlier podcast but I'm like thinking how

how would Dan ask these questions as a practice owner here here's my first one for you what are some of the biggest challenges with dento billing that you're seeing day in and day out helping practices I think I have a couple answers to that but I think the first one is that Dental the billing department was never set up properly um and we have a lot of really good billers out there um but there's no systems in place so things can fall between the cracks um

AR becomes um Can potentially become a mess so the lack of systems in the billing department is definitely one challenge that I see um the other is not understanding um how to navigate through the coding systems you know and now with diagnosis codes coming uh on up into the dental billing Market I think that's going to throw a lot of people for a loop interesting when when when the one of those codes G to hit the market is that new for next year 2025 the codes

have already hit the market um and in fact the American Dental Association back in 2012 they updated their claim form to include four four diagnosis codes on the claim the dental claim uh everyone ignored it and now it's coming up and starting to hit the dental billing Market um as I mention I have a billing company we've already started to see denials for things as simple as composite fillings because it didn't have a diagnosis code on the claim form so I really think that although most

plans are not requiring it it is something that is coming um down the pike and if we don't get on board with incorporating diagnosis codes onto the claim form we're going to see a spike in denials and it's probably it's probably not even going to be a denial it's going to be a rejection they're just going to reject yeah that's a big deal and I know and I don't know if you've seen this but I know there's a lot of AI being used on the insurance

side of things AI denials we did a podcast I don't know several weeks ago uh on this topic where you know I know there's been several insurance companies that are being sued because of these AI Insurance denial systems they're creating properly denying claims yeah yeah so but I would imag imagine they're going to find ways to do it even though they're they're getting sued they're going to find ways to optimize and and make it more challenging for dental billing that's kind of how I look at

it yeah it's wild what uh we didn't talk about this but I'm curious what um what what can a practice do to kind of combat those AI denials that may be on the rise I think just first and foremost we have to understand um the patients benefits and making sure that what we're doing is covered under the plan so we want to always make sure that we have a strong verification process and then secondly um understanding how to create a claim so that it provides sufficient

evidence proving Dental necessity I mean that that is like my Mantra in Billing we want to submit uh clean claims that provide sufficient evidence proving Dental necessity so once you have those two in Combined you know that these benefits are available to the patient you know you created a claim that proves Dental necessity there's no reason for the insurance company to deny that claim and so when they do deny that claim that is because most likely they're trying to stay within budget and insurance companies have

cost interesting yeah they have these strategies that they call them Cost Containment strategies and um denial Deni the denial game is one of those uh post containment strategies because uh I just was reading this report recently and it's uh this on the weekend of course right on the weekend yes because I was telling Jordan I was just telling you that I I geek out on the weekend on this stuff so experion releases a state of claims report every year and they just released the 20124 state

of claims report and one of the statistics that was in there was that 59% of denials were upheld in 2024 so when you think about that as an industry we're not doing a good job in fighting back with these denials that were issued we are we're playing into the Cost Containment strategy when we do you know an appeal and we go back and forth with the insurance company eight times it's at that point we have to learn how to fight back fire with fire so and

that's whole other conversation but but that's part two that's part two yeah so like understanding how going back to your question understanding how we can uh reduce denials first and foremost know the patients's plan benefits and then make sure that you're submitting a a clean claim proving Dental necessity okay yeah that's crazy I know that's a big thing that's happening on the in the tech world is all the AI stuff so listen to Erica and her tips all right here's here's another question for you Erica

uh during my weekend research when I'm you know alongside of you session when we're hanging out maybe I should text you more be like hey people are searching for this Ada code a ton have you noticed this oh yeah I probably have an answer yeah you probably do that's why I should start texting you more um what Ada codes are most often misunderstood by by practices and office managers so the first one that comes to mind is uh d0180 the comprehensive pero exam and I see

offices use this code when they do a Paro chart on a patient so maybe the patient's coming in for pero maintenance and we do an exam but we also do a pero chart um that is not an appropriate code to use when we are simply Paro charting for the sake of understanding um the patients right like the patient's already been diagnosed with pero so I see that code misused a lot um I also see the emergency pallative or now it's called the pallative um code and

d9110 and I see a lot of offices um misunderstanding the updates to that code because prior to 20123 you would use the pallative code to when the patient came in in pain and say you did an open and Med and you got the patient out of pain you would Bill pallative emergency pallative but in 2023 that code was updated to only be used when the patient's in pain and you cannot find a code that describes how you got the patient out of pain so in 2023

and and forward we want to use that code only when there's a code that doesn't describe what we did to get the patient out of pain Teresa Duncan gave an a great example when she was going over um this code in one of her reviews and I love this example but it's appropriate because if the patient comes in with a popcorn kernel you know stuck in between their gums obviously their's discomfort and you we don't have a code that says you know we got a popcorn

colel out we don't have a code uh for that so we went ahead and build 9110 that's appropriate but when you do a procedure to get the patient out of pain that has a code that describes it accurately then you want to use that code so I think there's a a strong misunderstanding with the use of d9110 um 18 d0180 and I could go on with some more codes but yeah there's there's definitely um lack of Education with coding knowledge out there for sure yeah it's

it's almost like we could do we we probably could uh write articles upon articles on on what to do with with with codes which we we probably should do that let's do that I'll text you this weekend and be like hey you want toite you want to write an article with me on this code I'm game I'm dead serious I'm not kidding either I love it no this is this is always a fascinating topic to me because Dental as you know I I'm I play in

the world of dental billing not like it's more membership plan style right right so it's it's really fascinating to me that the the complex of dental billing on the on the insurance side and it it always I'm always fascinated on how complicated it has become um with with all these codes and what what practices have to keep on keep up with with the changes you know so here's here's my one of my other questions that I that I had for you um if I'm a practice

owner like I want to know that I want to I would want to know that my my dental billing Department the processes are are like perfect right how can a a practice owner know who's who's not in the weeds of dental billing like a practice owner is not spending time understanding all the codes and everything that they got in the business to those dentistry and help patients right how can practice owners know if their process is is working or if there's kinks in it like what

what what's how do they know yeah well you know I've sometimes I've asked a question um when I am doing a workshop somewhere I might ask you know by a show of hands how many of you know on a scale of 1 to 10 how well your practice your billing department is performing and sometimes I'll get a a a doctor that might say you know we're a 10 we never get denials we are golden and I think that's the worst way to measure whether or not

you have an efficient billing department um one one of the ways that we help to capture as much revenue Insurance revenue for the practice is by creating a coding profile for the doctor and that is simply just running a report that identifies the top 30 40 codes that make up the practice income and once you identify that then you can analyze specific to that practice you know what what do we need to do for our major procedures in this mix that require attachments and narratives what

do we need to do to maximize how do we prove uh Dental necessity for our M our major procedures and make that your you know your billing guide so that everybody coming on board knows in this this is the booklet this is our billing guide these are the procedures that doctor does day in day out and here are the requirements for our procedure um so that there is no mistake about how to submit that claim um and then also assistants play a big role believe it

or not in the building process and having your assistants understand what attachments need to look like um when I need an intraoral uh you know when I need an fmx do we have an fmx on file uh we need to understand all of that and educate our assistants so that they can take the best um X-rays and intraoral photos for us because that's where you know that's where it starts um and that is really where an area where I find a lot of assistants don't know

that we need a a pre-b buildup intraoral photo showing the insurance company that there's less than 50% tooth structure remaining justifying the buildup so that they don't incorporate the payment of the buildup into the crown so we there's so many moving Parts but I think creating your coding profile then analyzing it with your biller identifying what attachments are needed um for those claims and then educate your assistant let them know what is needed so they can help us out and get us paid help us get

paid yeah that's interesting yeah I wouldn't have thought of assistance being help helping with with Dental Building big deal you know I was thinking when you're saying that like this is how my sarcastic brain works um um I'm like holy smokes it's like you know how we have the IRS yeah it's like and they're like oh you got to prove that you're this is for business use oh yeah and then you got insurance companies like oh you gotta prove that it's for dental necessity a dental

necessity yeah that's the word use my mind is like man it's like practice owners have two layers of the IRS working working that's what I felt like yeah I me so bad it's so bad it's such a joke because it's for pennies yeah it it is interesting you know and in in at least with my line of work we we like a 100 like 95% of practices that come to us maybe even 100% now uh are trying to reduce dependence on on insurance companies because of

the nuance and because of the the craziness and because of the cost when when we put our our Po writeoffs and look at them as a as a marketing expense it's like oh man to acquire a PO patient you know through an insurance company uh marketing strategy because it is a marketing strategy yeah that that means that patient will will always have a cost associated with it called the write off from a business standpoint right so that would mean that PO patients are actually more expensive

to acquire because I'm not I'm not even talking about all the things that you got to do to to get money into the door right it's like holy smokes just right right from the beginning there's that insurance write off that that occurs and if practice owners aren't thinking of that as like hey this is a this is a marketing expense because it is right very expensive marketing very expensive marketing uh uh cost right to the practice that goes on in definitely right as long as that

is in existence in the practice right so that's how I feel when I look at it as as as another business owner I'm like oh this is a really interesting goto Market strategy for practices that they've they've involved themselves in so deeply uh it's it's always fascinating to me so oh yeah definitely definitely and and then you know you that cost in addition to the rework that insurance companies impose on practices because of the denial game that they play I mean I it can cost a

practice anywhere practice owner anywhere from $25 to rework a claim up to $150 depending on how many times they go back and forth we're trying to get a prophy PID for $60 you already lost you know so if you're working with insurance companies which most most practices do dental billing efficiency is probably something that we need to measure weekly or monthly within the practice that's where that again that's where my mind goes is like all right if I had to deal with this what I would

need to understand the efficiency of of the D Dental billing process that's really interesting actually especially because well if I could just add really quick though the two metrics that I care about when um we are reviewing a billing department and uh I'm looking at the progress since we took on a client for example all I care about Jordan is that the AR is going down so Insurance AR is reducing and collections are going up that's all I care about if I don't see those two

metrics moving in the right direction then something's wrong you know where go owners simplify it for them AR is going down your collections is going up and that's all that matters okay that's good I like having those data points you know to when you're managing a a business data is everything so that's fantastic awesome Erica so if if people are looking uh on our podcast listening uh needing your assistance and help where where do they find you how do they how do they you have a

website are you cool on Instagram like where do they find you let's go to Instagram so Instagram you can find uh you can find the company Fortune billing solutions okay and um we are on Instagram as Fortune billing solutions and uh currently working on the website um but yeah you can we're very interactive there and I am really excited about uh everything we have going on inside the company right now okay that's awesome so we'll we'll leave the website or and website and Instagram in the

show note so people can check you out and uh ask you questions and get help absolutely the help that they need yeah okay Jordan well if we're done with billing I have some questions for you sweet let's go okay well I have some questions for you because the idea of membership plans is always brought up in my conversations when I'm doing uh coding and billing analysis and this is going to help me to have better answers for them yeah but one of the things that I

noticed when I am uh analyzing a potential client's uh billing department is that their UCR fees are always and typically low or I should say typically low for their zip code and they are terrified to increase their usual and customary fee because their fear of having to charge that to the patient so I'll hear I can't increase my UCR fee because then I I'm going to lose patients they're going to think I'm overcharging them and that's where we start to have the conversation around membership plans

because I always tell offices UCR fee on your claim form and for your discount plans it's you know for your patients without insurance it's going to be the discount plan you don't have to mix the two would you be would you say that that's accurate yeah yeah I would say that's accurate if if now if a practice hasn't increased their pricing that that's a that's a bigger issue if you ask me yeah most of the time and I'm sure you've seen this patients don't know what

you charge or how you charge you you as a practice owner or an office manager a team member think about it way more than they would oh yeah definitely and the truth is if you're in pain if you're in pain and you're offering value from a pricing perspective and you solve that pain or that that issue with with a with a patient then it's worth every penny so yeah industry Gets In Their Heads a lot just from a from a a mindset perspective they get in

their head a lot on increasing fees you should be increasing fees every year that's that's or every other year right the very yeah 100% always and and I had a similar thing like when I managed my dad's dental lab they they did not increase their Fe fees for like five or six years right wow and and my dad was you know working working hard hard you know I'm just like let's increase the fees because well we need to because inflation and costs change you need to

be able to have the flexibility oh 100% to change right um so mindset wise that's what I would say s you know with with practice owners you're way more valuable than you think stop denigrating oh my increase your fees because you're valuable and your patients need the service it's simple well yeah I mean and and so that brings me to my question is like what is what are the benefits of a patient membership program to yeah so yeah we we'll talk about the patient benefits and

the practice benefits starting with patients because patients are everything right for our practices the benefit of the patient is it's budget friendly right um often the biggest reason why patients don't say yes to treatment because it's confusing to them right and or they may be scared of the costs to getting the treatment right what a membership program does is it makes it makes the preventative care in most cases depending on the plans because there different plans that you can offer your patients but in a general

in a general dentistry practice um a preventative care membership program is pretty common right so one it helps with the patient mentally with a budget friendly option to get dental care they need especially if they're uninsured or if they don't like their insurance often that's the case they don't Insurance can be confusing and complicated and they just want to pay the doctor direct it just is a simple convenient budget friendly way for the patient right oh yeah second is with with the discounting off of off

of the the fees within your practice right um it allows the patient to get peace of mind that you will take care of them because they don't have insurance or because they've chosen to move off of insurance into your membership program right so there's peace of mind that they get if they need any additional treatment that they're going to get some type of discount for being a member right uh you pair that with patient financing or even payment plans like payment plans which our technology helps

with payment plans and and patient financing we've got some providers in there um you pair that and it allows for uh case acceptance to increase because you're allowing easy Bud budget friendly options for treatment from membership plans to fin Finance plans right it helps patient say yes more so that's that's the benefit it helps the patient say yes more right on the flip side of of of the practice benefits it helps the patients to say yes more right so you get more Revenue yes it's a

dual purpose it's a dual yeah right uh so a membership program one of the biggest benefits is is generating predictable recurring revenue for a practice and that's everything yeah that's everything it's everything cash flow no matter what business you run cash flow will always be king right and we've seen Erica with the practices that we manage with with our with the boom Cloud technology we see practices get to like a million dollars or over in recurring annual recurring because they've scaled their membership program the right

way you know with systems and with marketing and I can get into that here in a minute but um that is one of the benefits is predictable recurring Revenue we found too that um well I'll say this in another question it's really fascinating data on the the differences between ppos and and membership it's like you read my mind it's like I read your mind yeah it's like you read my mind like I that's what I was gonna ask next like what is the difference between a

PO patient and a membership patient and then I see I actually I saw this question get thrown around a little bit in I think it was an office manager Facebook group okay and people were debating about um you know if a patient has po benefits can they purchase the in-house plan and one trumps the other and there was a big debate around it and there was a lot of misinformation in there so in addition to asking like what is the difference between the two can you

also answer that question like what happens when one or the other or both come into play insured patients that that maybe H their maximum and need need EXT ra assistance yeah that's a common question absolutely and the answer that is it depends on where you live but yeah we'll get to it so the the difference between po patients versus membership patients and I'm going to add a new one in there versus cash patients as well there's so those three cohorts of patient types we've seen po

patients um which is a large portion of a lot of our practices um that we see po patients often from a from a revenue uh perspective they spend less right they say yes less to treatment meaning poo patients on average from the practices that we looked at roughly spend around $500 a year right with the with the practice right add adding all that uh you've got all the admin costs the dental billing costs that you you're so familiar with right the cost to maintain that patient

type uh is expensive right when you've got a membership patient or let's start with cash and we'll do the save membership for the last cash patients often is the most misunderstood cohort of patients everybody thinks that cash patients are the best type of patient it's like often I hear when I'm talking to practices like why should I discount uh allow my cash patients to join my membership program when I'm collecting 100% of the fee awesome yeah that logically makes sense when you think of it that

way but when you dig into the data only 20% of the time pat cash patients are saying yes to treatment compare that with ppos ppos are saying yes poo patients are saying yes on an average of like 30 to 35% of the time to treat in fact P poo patients are better from a case acceptance perspective right exactly now from a revenue per patient perspective uh your cash patients are better right um and those cash patients typically the offices that I looked at they're they're saying

yes to like and and spending about $900 a year so from a from a revenue perspective cash are great right and then we look at the membership patient cohort it's like on average those membership patients are saying yes like 40 40 45% of the time to treatment you know W which is the highest case acceptance rate out of those three Co cohorts every time I look at look at it and membership patients with the subscription included spend uh uh around 2, 2150 a year 2,150 a

year now that's going to and flow because not everyone needs a crown every year right but the Year this this last year looking at several of our practices that that done that that have had those three patient cohorts that was the the the data that we uh recovered from that right so they say yes more to treatment and they spend more on treatment what does that mean in in regards to marketing and and getting the right patient type in your practice well it means when we

look at those three cohorts it means that membership patients are actually the most profitable patient type because one they're committing with their wallet right with monthly or annual subscription two they're they're actually interesting patients because they're they're financially committing to their preventative care which means they care about their health right so when we go to market and and try to find new patients don't just do the shotgun approach ask yourself with this type of data that I'm sharing how can I find more of this cohort

of patients because that's going to make my Pro my practice more profitable and and we're going to find patients that actually care and say yes to treatment right so when it comes to marketing that's that's the like one of the biggest benefits uh yeah back to the question number one I didn't talk about the marketing benefit is finding uh membership patients is actually the most productive thing that you can do from a marketing standpoint and then sense of course when you're when you're working with those

patients your existing patients it's the best cohort because they commit to your practice you want people to commit to your practice that's what that's what's going to keep you in business I mean the whole the whole idea in dentistry is to encourage your patients to make dental or dental work or dental preventive care a regular feature in their lives because a lot of times you know you have patients that are just GNA come in because they're in pain the dental avoiders and there's more Dental avoiders

out there because of finances because of fear of the dentist but this helps them to make Dentistry a a more regular feature in their life and you know from a business standpoint we get uh recurring recurring business because of that benefit so yeah I totally understand the concept agree with it my next question is how would would an office grow I mean I have clients that have membership plans and I'm telling you Jordan they're just not doing anything yeah and I don't think common challenge yeah

every me so this is great but then how would you how do you grow it in the practice Yeah that's a that's the biggest challenge that we've identified uh working with practices and I've have I have tons of podcasts and articles on that specifically so um the other day I re I I spent some time with one of my customers that have grown their their membership program from like zero to 365 she's probably closer to 400 a day because they signing up patients every day um

on track to in the next year or two on track to hit a thousand active patients that's that's how well she's got it dialed in right uh Gina is her name she recorded I don't even remember what episode it was but it's it's uh I'll share it uh on in in show notes on on this podcast and I'll show yeah I'm gonna do the same I'll I'll put a link to that episode in my podcast as well but this is what she did and this is

what most practices forget to do right one it's a new program it's a new system operating in the practice right so you've got to get everybody on board and what Gina did to get uh close to 400 active membership patients in 12 months she got the clinical staff and the the front office staff on the same page right and educated them on the importance of the membership program in their office right yeah and she put more weight on the clinical team saying you guys need to

know the benefits of this more than anything because the patients listen to you the most you have the Authority right when it comes to patients listening right the last thing we want to do is is is just have the patient learn about the membership program at checkout no no you got to talk about it throughout the whole thing the whole process right and once again this is how boring I get Erica I've literally sat in offices uh for hours at a time watching patients come in

and identifying if they're insured or uninsured and the the the practice what their their internal operation was the the ones that had their front office trained and and then had signage and um oh yeah their clinical team talking about it like clockwork those patients signed up without question right because it is a massive benefit so internally that's what you want to do right that every practice every mature practice has an opportunity Zone to get these membership patients uh to to find uninsured patients or inactive patients

and turn them into members right so internally you want to make sure your clinical team understands it and is talking about it if not and you're letting it just be the front office you're going to have some challenges right right two and then you want to have signage everywhere that says no insurance we can help type signage oh yeah right we have all this that we supply all of our practices as well right so they when they use our software um another thing that that that

Gina did that I thought was interesting was uh you identify all the uninsured patients that are existing and as they're coming in you're having a meeting a morning huddle right and saying hey these are the uninsured patients that are coming in let's make sure we talk about our membership program clinical team and Office Team uh so by the time they leave they become a member you know she's on average I think Gena was signing up 30 patients a month with that that simple thing a third

thing that I I found was interesting is she uh she's an office manager that what used to be a hygienist and became she's way more business oriented than I mean I'm sure she's a great clinician on the the hygiene side I I don't know but from my interview she's a really smart business business person and um she ensured that the patient experience was positive for every patient right having a systematic patient experience so they don't have to spend money on like traditional digital marketing for example

now there's nothing wrong if you have to spend money on digital marketing I actually highly recommend it when your patient experience is top-notch right meaning meaning you have patients wanting to give you re reviews and referrals right that is a big thing uh where practices often fail I remember years ago I had a a dentist call me in frustration because he wasn't growing his membership plan and using our technology and before I got on the call I had a quick look on his reviews I'm like

oh I know why patients aren't buying from you because they don't like you right so be sure to have a a patient experience uh aist system to to give to offer the the the same type of patient experience every time every time every to know their lines I call it like a play yeah yeah you're absolutely right everyone needs to know their lines they it's just like creating a play and I know a lot of people might scoff at at the idea of that because it's

like well who has time for that but let me tell you the most high performing offices I've ever worked with had an intentional patient experience yes and there you can't refute that you cannot refute the fact that you put some time into everyone's lines you know body language the whole shebang has to go into the patient experience so I I I love that you're reiterating that yes so once you get that down that process down then you can do external marketing right so that's internal marketing

side that is the number one thing that your practice needs to to solve for right is is that internal markeet and understanding your existing patients and how to have give them a great experience and then also how to communicate to them if you got a patient communication software uh like weave for example you can you can send them messages before they come in like hey we know we we noticed that you're uninsured did you know that we have a membership program we'll talk to you about

it when you get here right yeah that's that a systematic approach like that for internal marketing fantastic fantastic right um and then from the external marketing side once you get all the patient experience all nailed and and solid for your patients yeah then you want to look at digital marketing uh type services or direct mail we had a practice grow to like 2,000 active membership patients just by using Direct Mail targeting 55 and up communities right have' lost their dental benefits they lost it and they

need more dental care right because their their teeth are wearing out they were like the number one client we saw at the dental lab yeah their teeth are wearing out right yeah and and they they have problems so that's ideal the ideal patient profile for a membership plan another way to go about it is reaching out to small business business owners in your local area and saying hey we know you're small business owner um two things uh we want to collaborate with you and give an

offer to your your let's say it's a restaurant for example give give uh give we we'll buy let's say it's a pizza place we'll buy bread sticks for all for this day for all of your patients or for all the customers that come in and we say we're glad we you smile check out you know Dr so and so's office right yeah there's things like that that you can do for networking with business owners and then at the same time go to that business owner and

say hey we also know that your business that's under 50 employees and most likely don't have a benefit package for your employees we would love to give your employees a a a way to sign up for dental benefits through our membership program right we have a practice that have has done that they actually used restaurants and they scaled their membership program I think I think they're like four or 500 active membership patients because they went to small small restaurant owners yeah the Chamber of Commerce is

what comes up in my mind that's another one Chamber of Commerce you know go to the Chamber of Commerce and yep and talk to all those small business owners there yep that's a great way that's a great way to talk to one person and get 20 new patients on your membership program right or or whatever the size of the business is my employees here at boomcloud we don't offer uh we don't offer dental insurance we offer a dental membership plan with Dr Anderson at essential Dennis

what's up Dr Anderson um uh all my team members we we pay for a membership for all of our our team members here at boom Cloud the same thing we do we we help a lot of optometrists create membership programs as well Dr uh uh gray what's up uh we are members we are members of his optometry clinic membership program I saw that I saw that all of our all of our uh employees are well we're actually just crafting a plan for all of our place

we haven't done that yet that's that's that's the goal um and the interesting thing is every Community has an optometrist every Community has a medical uh practice private medical practice they go to network with those types of people that have health oriented patients and create a referral engine to drive membership patients right so that is an out of of the boox way to get more membership patience aside from the digital marketing right uh agencies that you can hire that help you get more patience right so

those are ways to grow it it's really important to not it's easy to set up a plan it's it's it's can be challenging if you don't have the right internal and external Marketing Systems that your team does to grow the membership program so those would be my my quick tips I can probably spend three episodes on talking about me growing a membership program but I think at the core it's all going to come down to your patients experience I mean that is the core well because

then then then membership patients refer membership patients just you saw my video the other day on Facebook I posted that I signed up for Dr Gray's Optometric membership program that was so cool in Le in Lehigh Utah right why did I do that because well I'm a members I'm an uninsured membership patient and I liked his plan he took care of my daughter right I signed it up for my daughter um and she got glasses and he took care of her right and I enjoyed the

experience so much I posted about it and I got more referrals for his clinic right that is so cool because I believe in what he's doing and I was I was delighted right how he took care of my my my daughter right so that's what that's what a membership program automatically does it creates Delight to your patients right they want to they want to refer and talk about um the membership plan and you get more PA and it serves as a great retention tool as well

so I yes which is which is always the no matter what business you you're in retention is King right that's how that's how you really grow a business is is retaining your your patience rate right reducing your churn yep reduce that churn that or attrition whatever word you use I use churn but uh yeah that that's another way that another benefit that we didn't even talk about with membership plans is is a retention strategy yeah definitely I mean again we could probably geek out on this

for another hour like five more hours yeah I know oh my God I learned so much about me ship plans that's amazing yeah so we have a ton of resources on our website uh I write every day articles for for practice owners um so we've got a a Blog it's called the revenue and retention blog so go check check that out go to boomcloud apps.com check out uh all my writings that I'm doing every day uh I have a podcast that practices can visit it's called

the automatic patient podcast and if you're really interested in scaling your membership program you can go to boomcloud apps.com and schedule a demo and see if our software platform is a right fit for your practice so those are ways you can find me and what I'm doing every day here in the geeky world of dental membership plans awesome awesome well I I would love uh to see more about the software myself yeah absolutely we need to schedule a demo so you can see it and yeah

and get educated on how we we help scale for sure definitely okay with that said we hope everyone has a rocking day yeah yeah