dr amanda with straightsmilesolutionstreetsmilesolutions.com and
today i'm going to be talking to you a little bit more about how to pay if you're an owner doctor
or even a dsl how to pay your associate dentist for invisalign cases that they do
and this is a huge mistake that i see a lot of dentists doing a lot of owner dentists um but
or even practice owners they pay they don't pay right it's not about how much you pay it's about
how you pay and you can get really creative with this i've definitely been a part of a lot
of practices helping them build their invisalign and with that you know there's multiple doctors um
so there's all different things that go into it of course you got the lab fees you've got the
quality of the treatment plan do they know what they're doing with the treatment plan you know
are they optimizing the treatment plan um you got the liability portion of it and all of that
and course insurance and everything like that so first thing i like to tell owner doctors um owner
doctors or clinical managers or whatever you want to call it don't let your associates do anything
that you can't handle yourself so you need to look at if you are the owner doctor you need
to be looking at every single treatment plan to make sure it's appropriately treatment planned
a lot of times it's not um a lot of times there's a lot of poor treatment planning that goes on
that is irreversible um damage can be done to the patient you can't just trust the treatment
planning software to do things correctly so if you're hands off and you're just letting your
associates do whatever they want with treatment planning again this comes down to is your let's
start with the beginning is your associate a w-2 or 1099 okay so obviously if there are 1099
then you have to be hands-off but in that case they should be using their own invisalign account
to work on these patients they also should be paying their own lab fees and they're also
responsible for their own patient so if they up and go you know then the patient goes with them so
that's the first thing i would start so you need to make sure that's clear what you don't want is
you don't want them up and going and then you're stuck with the patient unless they're a w-2 and in
that case it's your patient anyways it's in your account but in that case you should know exactly
you should have seen the treatment plan before it was approved and make sure it's something that you
feel comfortable with and it's done appropriately does that make sense so you need to have a little
bit of um accountability over the top so i'd start with that right and there's so many doctors
out there that are being super sketchy they're putting their associates as 1099s when they really
aren't 10.99 so you need to follow the laws there so that's the first thing i would get straight how
is this going to work whose account is it in now there's a benefit for you being an owner doctor
um having more volume coming out of your account because that's going to help to raise
your chances of getting a volume discount all you've got to get that eight percent
you've got to do something like 24 complete or moderate cases comprehensive or moderate cases
in a six-month period it's not that hard to do that if you have multiple doctors so
that's the benefit of running it under your account right um you can create staff logins
and work with your territory manager to create logins that work so that you know your stuff
is separate from everyone else's stuff and the staff and you should do that and that's one of
the benefits of invisalign definitely that has over any other aligner company is they have that
dashboard that's really easy to kind of segregate and outsource certain things to certain people um
so it is convenient okay so let's start with that that would be my recommendation um obviously let's
go back again if they are a 1099 i would be having them pay their um la fees fully you know and then
of course they're gonna get a bigger chunk of the production whatever that chunk looks like let's
say you're charging five thousand dollars for a case they're paying two thousand dollar lab fee
obviously um you know you're gonna want if collections are five thousand dollars you're
gonna want to make sure whatever they're making whether it's 60 or 70 percent of collections
is you know and they're paying the full lab fees at least going to give them some type of profit
you know net the lab fee so that would be my recommendation keep it higher but have them pay
their full lab fee have them keep it in their account that's what i would do with a 10.99 in
that case that works good because if they leave they got to take the patient with them no matter
where they go or they got to make sure that that patient gets taken care of and compensate
another doctor to take it so now they're fully responsible for their patient their treatment plan
their finish and everything so that's your 10.99 that's easy right you know um they're getting 60
70 75 percent of collections but they also pay their full lab fee so basically it's kind of
nice because you know you as the owner doctor you got no responsibility plus you know you're making
some money just for them using your chairs okay so that's easy we'll put that aside um w-2 completely
different story sometimes w-2s have to pay for partial lab fees usually i'd say it's up to 50
production is going to really depend on you know usually it's going to be
25 30 35 collections plus a certain portion of labview paid but
this is where a lot of doctors make a huge mistake first of all you do not pay the production or well
if it's collections that's up to you if you're going to pay it as it comes in then that's choice
if it's production you do not want to pay that all up front it's a 5 000 case they're paying 50 lab
fee and they're maybe making 30 35 production you don't want to pay it all at the start
you want to pay a little bit at the start and the rest at the end so you can do 50 50.
so okay um five thousand dollars down i don't even have my calculator in front of me you're paying
half the laffy which is a thousand you know and then they're also making say 35 production you
can have half that production be recognized at the start when they deliver the aligners and
the other half must be recognized either over time but even better if you recognize it at the finish
that's the most important thing when the patient and doctor sign off so patient has to sign off
too i have a form called the congratulations form it's super important you always want your ortho
patients to be signing a congratulations for them at the end which recognizes that they are indeed
satisfied with the outcome and they are pleased and they agree that their treatment is done and
they understand the importance of retainers always have your patients sign that always always always
otherwise it's he said she said when you get to the end and of course you do not recognize
the additional production until the retainers are delivered a retention plan is in place and they
have final records and the patient has signed the congratulations form all of the above are
done that way boom case is closed patients can't complain everything's done everything's delivered
and everyone's happy and that's what you do because that motivates the associate doctor
to make an ideal treatment plan keep the patients in compliance keep that accountability loop going
checking in regularly making sure they're tracking making sure that they have their eye on the prize
which is finishing that case for the long term also i've seen it too many times where
a patient associate doctor comes in yeah yeah i do invisalign they do all this invisalign starts
they get all the money recognized and then they up and go and you're stuck finishing all these
patients now don't get me wrong it's a good deal for me because that's when doctors call me and ask
for my help thank you i appreciate it i like the business but it is not cool for the owner doctor
who now is stuck finishing all these cases that perhaps were treatment plan crappy to begin with
and now it's taking a ton of chair time and money for the owner doctor to finish the cases that's
what we don't want so anyways that's my tips for how to pay an associate dentist for invisalign
treatment they may not love the way it is but you know what if they're really in it for the
long haul with you and your office they will think that's totally fine if they are really confident
about their treatment planning skills and their ability to keep a tight eye accountability loop on
compliance they understand the concept of tracking they use virtual resources again that will work
out just fine they will not be afraid of that so i say go for it invisalign is very very easy if it's
done right and if cases are patients are selected appropriately treatment plans are done right and
you have a good accountability loop and you're using virtual resources it's not hard at all
but you know aligners are for the long haul it's not something that is done in a flash you know for
good outcomes it's going to take a year year and a half for most cases so you know eye on the prize
you know it's a marathon not a sprint let's finish it up all right thanks so much