hey guys it's dr amanda with straight smile solutions straightsmilesolutions.com
and today we're going to be talking about a financial worksheet for your ortho component
of your practice and i've mostly created this for the general and pediatric dentists that are
out there because orthodontists usually have ones already there are programs for this there's ortho
vi there's different apps there's sliders but if you're just getting started with ortho in your
practice first of all you should i've got so many getting started videos you should also look at my
book if you go to straightsmilesolutions.com and click on the link at the top it takes you to my
book there's tons of tricks and tips in there also within my youtube site there's over almost
a thousand videos and also my gpwebinar.com site tons of content in there to help you it's all free
so i put it out there i don't make money off this so i put it out there just to help you because
sometimes my clients are asking so you know free information but i kind of generated this financial
worksheet that's done in excel as a template for you getting started on this conversation you might
have i mean this is just for aligners obviously it's going to be slightly different if you have
braces if you have phase one this is just getting you started if you'd like a copy of this template
it will be free for any of my actual clients um anyone that's a regular client not an a la carte
client so just contact me and i will be glad to give you a copy of it totally free if you are not
a client you can become one or the fee is 20 for the copy of the document and you can contact me
and i will send you an invoice or you can go to my store and purchase it so in any case let's
go over kind of how you use it and you should definitely watch my other video i have won a
few videos before where i kind of dive into this a little bit more and how i use it in the practice
but basically in a nutshell i think everyone should offer invisalign oh spelt wrong nice um
that helps sorry that's going to drive me crazy um i think everyone should offer invisalign as well
as an off label in-house aligner alternative aligner alternative system of aligner two
different price points obviously the invisalign i do believe that everyone should be doing moderate
or comprehensive only um you know that way you get everything done perfectly and for the
alternative or in-house aligners you can do things more improved slightly lower price point doesn't
mean you have to make them inside you can you can outsource there's ones that include revisions
refinements tons of videos and tons of content on that just watch my other videos slightly different
price points right um with invisalign obviously you're coughing up a big hefty down payment
you know like a lab fee up front so you need to make sure you're getting your money so the way
i don't think you should charge more for a liners than braces i think she starts the same you could
charge the same price for alternative aligners and braces and invisalign could be more i'd be fine
with that i don't think that you should penalize people that have financial circumstances one
of the biggest mistakes that i see doctors make is that they'll require a huge down payment for
invisalign but not for braces and then everyone goes braces but you end up having a way more
time by doing braces and you don't want to do that so i like to give the patients
options up front it can be very overwhelming they need to be able to see the numbers and then decide
again if you're a general or pediatric dentist you have just little gold mine of potential low
hanging fruit opportunities you don't need to wait for doctors or patients to ask for
it every patient should be screened for ortho it is standard of care especially if it's functional
and most patients that are adults and kids are functional you know because it it is progressive
malocclusion is progressive condition it will get worse over time it is a liability for you
if you didn't point it out whether you're going to treat it in-house or you're going to refer it
to an ortho it is a liability for you there are cases on the books where doctors you know didn't
point out malocclusion didn't refer and things got worse and it came back to bite them which is
why everyone should be screened whether you're going to do it or you're going to refer it out
you might do half and half let them know what the conditions are let them know the prognosis
you can point out all kinds of things from periodontal disease to decay
attrition abstractions erosion i mean a lot of things are airway issues sleep issues are caused
by ortho you know or malocclusion so let's say for example i'm just going to kind of go over
how my worksheet works um for example let's say my invisalign fee for this let's say this patient
hypothetical patient she's 16. not that hard of a case moderate case about 20 ish aligners so for me
20 aligners could be done with either invisalign 20 25 i'm just guessing and if you don't know
that's something we at straight smile solutions would be glad to teach you how to how to guess
you know effectively because you really want to know before you give a quote i think one of the
biggest mistakes that page the doctors do is that they say oh yeah i think this could be a light
case or an express case it ends up being like way harder because they didn't really know and
then they end up losing money on the case so you definitely want to consult with an orthodontist
when you're just getting started if you don't know you shouldn't be doing this by yourself you
know until you get your skill set up so let's say it's about a 20 aligner case pretty simple case
you know moderate malocclusion we can definitely fix it we could use either invisalign or we could
use an off-label aligner for me there's a variety of different options for off-label aligners some
include revisions refinements some don't you know so ultimately i've got to decide what i'm going to
use and my price is going to be accordingly but i would definitely have this one be a little bit
lower and more affordable um because i really want to incentivize patients to get started you know i
don't want finances to be an issue so let's say my invisalign fee is 5500 oopsies um okay so for
discounts i don't believe in doing all these kind of discounts that's a load of unless you're when
you patients always think you have a coupon then they knows you know it just cheapens things so the
discounts would be for insurance so you can you know talk about it being like that so obviously
if you if you're in network then you've got to put that as a discount um otherwise no discount so um
so let's say we'll just leave it like that that's the insurance discount um for in-house aligners
let's say my price is i love 39.99 i don't know that's one of my favorite numbers okay
um so these are these end up being the prices right so i definitely think everyone should have
a pay in full option i think you should have a hefty discount for the pay in full option
if that's what they're doing um at least five percent if not more maybe you're gonna have
different for cash than you will for credit but i think it shouldn't be like two percent
i mean it should be between five and ten percent depending on if they're using credit card or cash
okay so we want to incentivize them to pay in full you'd be surprised how many patients
would pay in full if there was enough of an incentive to do it and for me incentives you
know even like school tuition i get i don't know a little bit of an incentive to pay in
full and if i can i'm gonna do it if it's worth it if it's not worth it why would i do it right
um so you got that option then you should definitely have options um
for both no interest financing a matter of fact i don't think you should really have any interest
in your financing i think that patients and then credit checks and also also an issue so i think
you should have a with credit check option and i think you should have a no credit check option and
with credit check is going to be with no interest financing is going to be like your compassionate
your care credit some of these different ones um a lot of patients don't love that idea so um
you know it's not that popular it's very hard to get approved i can tell you just for kicks
i tried to get approved once and i didn't even get approved and that was like ridiculous just because
you know mortgage and student loans and it's like dude i pay all my bills really and i make
a decent income really i didn't get approved that's embarrassing so if i don't get approved
how is most patients are not going to get approved most regular patients so you can't only offer you
know the with credit check option but definitely if the patient is looking for extended payments
over 24 months then okay you know that's an option there we can get those payments really
really really low you know and that's what it would bring it down to so you want to be able to
plunk your number in and have all this populate and obviously if they're not an in-house you
know kind of candidate then you just delete this part out and then you're offering the invisalign
or the braces or whatever but here's how it is you know so with these ones with the no interest
with credit check you're gonna take a decent haircut you know um and that's your discount right
there you know what i mean so that you would have offered anyway so you as the doctor is going to be
penalized but you usually get your money for these up front so it's worth it you know maybe you take
a 10 15 haircut but you get your money up front and it's guaranteed so it's worth it and then
the patient gets to pay overtime then i think you should definitely have a no credit check option
as well so this could be one of two different options it could be an in-house financing option
if you really i mean i would try to really limit your in-house financing i think that it requires
you to hire more staff to chase down patients more especially i think the economy is going
to really tank this year i just i'm pretty sure it is and i think there's been a lot of defaults
like there was back in 2009 i was practicing back then and i remember it just being just a
big old mess with people defaulting right and left on ortho and if you've already started
their treatment and you've done ipr you've done extractions you have to finish it especially if
it's a kid so i think right now is the time to really button up your financial procedures to
get a good financial contract keep in mind this is not a contract so you have to take how you're
doing things and you need to extrapolate into a financial contract i do have other videos on
how to make those but i think you should still consult an attorney on that because i think if
you don't get your financial house in order you're gonna get really screwed this year with payments
um i just predict it you know everything happens in cycles so i would start really limiting your
in-house financing if you're gonna do it then i require a hefty down payment of a good 33
or something like that at least that covers your invisalign lab fee for the most part um and then
their monthly payment is over six months way less than the amount of treatment that you expect um
yeah i mean and you know most patients are pretty honest but there's always some that aren't
the other thing you could do for no interest financing no credit check without the in-house is
you can use a company like verity i think there's a few other ones that are out there that will do
ortho now that do dental that don't require a credit check that accept most patients they
do have monthly fees that go to the patient it comes out to a very small percentage it comes
out to about 20 a month you know if you're extending it over 24 months or whatever
um they don't accept all doctors so that's what i like about it is that they do vet the doctors um
to make sure you're a good fit for their practice so that's really the vetting process so you might
not get picked if you're interested in verity contact me for the no interest financing no
credit check financing again the fees will small fee that's monthly will be applied to the patient
they'll let you know exactly how much it is it depends on how much and how long they're
financing it for so i didn't write it in here i don't have verdi's code but you know just to talk
about it in addition you're also going to take as a doctor a small haircut so it's not as much
of a haircut as you get with your care credit and compassionate getting your money up front
you will not be getting your money up front though you'll also be getting your money every month
um you know as they pay you get paid but it's guaranteed so if the patient defaults and goes
bankrupt you're still getting your money verity's not getting their money you're getting your money
so they're taking that they're assuming the risk you're taking a haircut patient's taking a minor
haircut but 20 bucks a month or whatever is not it's usually fine you know for most patients to be
able to spread it out and they don't check credit so they're looking at the patient's responsibility
from a different standpoint you know do they pay their rent do they pay their mortgage do they pay
their phone bill things like that um and a bunch of other questions that they do but they assume
the liability so um i do one other option that i talked about in my other video that i'm not
really extrapolating here but just things you can talk about is if you're doing there's a variety
of white label and off-label aligner companies that are out there where you can do what we did
a long time ago which is produce the lenders in batches so you can just do the first five or the
first three you know obviously you're going to pay probably an additional fee for that convenience
and the shipping but you can have the patients do a no down payment you know just a monthly payment
um you could do in-house in this case um if you wanted to or you could do something like verity or
you know compassionate or care credit um but this will allow you just to kind of make the aligners
as you go um obviously i wouldn't want to do this on extraction cases and i wouldn't necessarily
want to do this on aggressive ipr cases because once you've done the ipr you actually have to
it's a liability you have to finish the case so it would be one of those cases and you wouldn't
want to pick a case where you're going to be in this like transitional dentition you know
sometimes if you have like an anterior crossbite in order to fix the anterior crossbite you
kind of get in this pivoty unstable occlusion before you get back into the stable occlusion
you can't make them worse from where they started that's the key to these type of things at any time
or leave them in a worse position because they'd be at risk for trauma so or breakage or you know
fremantis or perio issues and then you as a doctor would be liable so you need to pick the cases
carefully i would call this a super easy breezy case that is known to know almost i'd say no ipr
um something where we could just do it in batches and take our time and the patients
could pay as they go um but yeah i mean that's another and i know some doctors that are doing
this and it's working really well for them a lot of times patients are like you know i only want
give me what i can get in five aligners that's all i want even
with just an improvement and you do that and then later they might pay for the additional
five more aligners you know and you can even have them pay per liner if you wanted to
you know three hundred dollars per line or four hundred dollars per line or something you know
well that wouldn't really make sense i'd say maybe 200 per liner would make sense because that way if
you had like a five upper and lower that's ten aligners times two hundred dollars right so you
know that sound sounds reasonable to me um or even you can even do 150 but i think that's a
really cool way to market it as a per aligner fee you know we can pay per aligner and my fee is 20
per line or plus 90 per set up so i mean there's a significant markup on that but you know that
covers my my chair time my treatment planning time and everything like that so all right hopefully
this is helpful again if you want a copy of this worksheet feel if you're a client go ahead and
contact me an existing client if you are not a client you just want a copy of it the fee is 20
i will hopefully get it up in my store eventually if you want to automate it but if not just contact
us i'll send you the invoice you know whatever um hopefully this is helpful all right thanks so much
you