hey this is dr amanda with straight smile solutions straight smile solutions.com
and today we're going to be talking about virtual consoles specifically for invisalign
clear correct braces or any type of orthodontics how to
implement them in your office or in your practice easily without a ton of money and this is kind of
my go-to plan you can create your own plan for sure and there's some turnkey systems that are
out there but this is like a real legit way to do this without too much money down without too much
work from your team i'm gonna kind of walk you through my recommendations if you want to see the
blog version of this you can go to my website at straightsmilesolutions.com click on
about us and click on blog and it's october 2020 at the moment it's the most recent blog
that's on there but if not you can put in virtual console and it should pop up or just virtual in
the search bar but anyways this is my suggestion this will work for both orthodontist and general
and pediatric dentists who want to do ortho so these are two totally different animals obviously
orthodontists have been doing this for some time a lot of orthos really aggressively started doing
this during covid because it was the only way they could still get a revenue stream in their practice
um so i've been following a few orthos and how they're doing it and then we started implementing
this um with some general dentists and some pediatric dentists as well and it's great because
people are i follow a lot of um forums and chat rooms and stuff um that are consumer facing and
this is something consumers are actually searching for and they're actually looking for so they're
actually searching for invisalign virtual consult you know clear aligners virtual console so let's
high level again first of all you need to know your own dental practice act there are some states
that is not legal to do a complete virtual console i don't call this a complete or teledentistry
isn't legal in a few states so i call this a screening process this is not unnecessarily i'm
not building something from the exam necessarily you know this is a way to screen them and see
if they're good fit to my for my practice and to really qualify the start or the exam yes sometimes
you might be able to send them the paperwork and finish it and get them all contracted of course
but for the most part it's going to put a high quality potential start in your chair by screening
them out so you should have some idea if you're doing ortho and if you have especially if you're
an orthodontist you have some idea of your of your rate of acceptance you know i know i remember i
would have a rate of you know of the starts that come in what percentage were actually qualified
starts like they were ready to start i said yes you're a good candidate for something that
i have to offer you know and then from there of those that were qualified starts what percentage
actually started so this will really boost that rate if you do this and it's great because you're
going to save chair time right now it's so precious office time chair time with kova you
do not need to be having some of these patients coming in you can a lot of these conversations
you can have through zoom um and patients actually the vast majority of patients actually prefer this
when you ask them they would love this you know especially if you don't charge anything for it
so i'm going to take you through how much it costs how to do it what the steps are and how
to implement it with your team so all right so first of all two different things we want to talk
about there's asynchronous and synchronous virtual consoles so asynchronous is when you're getting in
like some pictures and some information and then you're messaging them back you know um or you're
emailing them back on a hip and apply an email or some type of dashboard or something like that
which is okay but that's gonna have a much lower conversion rate than a synchronous virtual consult
which is when there's actually somebody on their end somebody on your end either you or a tc or
an om that's actually chatting you know that's completely different that's going to have a much
higher conversion rate so my suggestion is to do both okay so first of all i like the idea of
getting one of these widgets and a widget is something that you can embed in your website
with some code all you got to do is create it give your code to your website developer they'll
plunk it in and it'll be like hey click here for a virtual consult for orthodontic for orthodontics
and implants or anything like that you know um the two widgets that i vetted and i liked are smile
snap which is a turnkey virtual console widget it came out even before covet i was using it way
before then it was a little harder to get people to hop on board but since then it's been very easy
and another one that was developed again before covid by a general dentist is not a you know
um what do you call it can it's not an industry professional it's an actual general dentist that
created this gporthotracking.com letter g letter p orthotracking.com um and the price point i think
to start these sometimes they have a no no cost to set it up in general it's maybe 100 or 200
to get it set up um to put your branding on it stuff like that and to get that code that
can get plunked into your website and then from there some some of them have like a per
a per submission type thing but most of them just have an unlimited submission form you know it's
basically like a form it's a hipaa compliant google form that goes to you through email um
and i think it's maybe between 100 and 200 a month for unlimited submissions for both of these
so you can have tons of people coming in and you can actually start marketing for virtual consults
you know on facebook ads instagram hey click here for virtual consult talk to our dentist
find out if you're a candidate find how much your aligners are now my suggestion before
you do this is that you create a little bit more transparent pricing and put your pricing
on your website because you don't want people thinking they're going to be spending
900 for aligners and then you're like i'm sorry this would be 5 000 and they
you know completely wasted their time i think you should have very transparent pricing
you know i'm you can see some of my other um video blogs on youtube about pricing and what the going
rates are and what people are doing so you should definitely watch those um from there i like the
idea of the patients 24 hours a day seven days a week being able to submit that form with selfie
photos so it actually shows um what the photos should look like how they should be oriented how
they should upload them where they upload them and gives them instructions um it recommends that they
use chopsticks or spoons to go ahead and retract on the biting pictures it shows exactly what you
need um you can put your branding on it et cetera so um if you want to make it even cooler you can
always have say click here and we'll send you a retractor but then that delays it and it makes
them have to wait till the retractor comes in so i like the idea of them just being able to do it
when they find it you know so then you're going to get a hipaa compliant form that's going to
come in with the six or eight selfie pictures you know they can just do this from their phone
you know obviously front side side top bottom and a couple of facial pictures
as well as some idea of what they're looking for chief complaint what they're looking for i'm
looking for braces and looking for a liner so this form will be created for your team um and then you
can have unlimited submissions and then you know it'll say something to the patient like thanks so
much for submitting your selfie pics um our doctor will get back to you in one to two business days
or something like that you can come up with that and then from there you can go over this with
your team when they come in and be like yeah this looks like a candidate this is somebody that
you know you can kind of sort through i'd like to see this patient actually in my office obviously
if i saw like big decay or you know all kinds of things that needed to be addressed well you know
we need to see him in the office or if i saw a really weird funky bite i'm not sure about it
um i might want to see him in the office but if it looks like a pretty straightforward case or if
the patient's just looking for anterior alignment or they're just one to close a gap or something
pretty simple maybe we'll go ahead and schedule a synchronous consult so that would be the next step
so the next step we go ahead and have you either have the patient go to the website to create their
to finish their paperwork you know their regular office paperwork um or you can send them their
docusigns i love the idea of giving them a smile questionnaire as well i have templates for that um
just a little bit more about what they're looking for what things they like and don't like about
their smile same kind of thing you might be doing in office when you actually talk to the patient
during the consult you know but you can get it all in paper so at least it can lead those questions
and then you know from there you can decide like i said are they going to come into the
office and have a live consult or can we do a synchronous console
if you're going to do a synchronous virtual consult you can use zoom
zoom for healthcare is very affordable and you can create a private link and room for
each patient as it comes up once they've filled out their paperwork and their smile questionnaire
you can go ahead and send them i like calendly that's another one i like um you've probably seen
it before it is um for i think i spent 144 dollars a month for my calendly and that removes the
calendly bland branding so you won't necessarily know it's conley if you go to my website and you
schedule a phone call that's kind of like just to let you know it's really affordable i mean like 20
bucks a month and um you can just set aside i mean i love the idea of having a variety of different
appointments per week you know maybe you have an admin day every thursday and it's the whole day
that you have slots available maybe you're going to book them on the hour on the half
hour i would recommend booking them on the half hour because a lot of people probably won't
show up you know they'll be a certain no-show rate but hey it's a virtual no-show rate so
if they don't show up you just do something else right it's not like you're wasting a room
so you can even double book them um and have your tc run the show or your om run the show or your
back office rda or whoever knows ortho pretty well run the show they can man the virtual consults the
synchronous virtual consults and the patients show up in the waiting room you know you can
start the exam hey i see your smile questionnaire i see your selfie pictures doctor took a look
he thinks she'd be a great candidate let's talk about a little bit of what you're looking for
and then if it seems like a good qualified lead you know you get some idea if if they're ready
to get started right then you can always pull the doctor in you know as needed so doesn't mean the
doctor's going to sit down computer the whole day just they're pulled in when needed you know
obviously if they're saying oh i'm just interested for the future you know i'm
not really interested right now i don't have any money i'm thinking about in six months
well then you don't need to pull the doctor in you're just giving them some information
doctor did take a look at your pictures this is what he's thinking you know it's follow-up
in three months but you will find you will get some actual starts doing this and these
you know obviously if you're an orthodontist this is amazing you know this is a start that you can
start even on admin day you could be bringing in revenue you know that's crazy you'd be surprised
how many people actually will you know you can start send them the documents everything like
that of course you don't have x-rays or anything yet and you're gonna do that the first visit so
you know you've got a contract it can always be subject to change um as you figure it out i mean
some surprises happen when you take an x-ray right um you do the limited exam and you're
like oh shoot there's a few cavities here and in that case you know you just finish your work
first and then you start but um in any case i think it's pretty awesome that you can do this
it doesn't take up too much doctor time one team member can do one day a week with this or one half
day a week with this and um they don't have to be seeing patients so it could be someone that maybe
is um needing to quarantine or doing this from their home office as long as they have
a professional background or a green screen or something like that they can still be working
for your office and bringing in revenue while they're still working from home so
that's what i love about it so anyways that's pretty much the way it works um you can even go
ahead and you know open contracts and everything through docusign so i mean literally let's say
price point if you had if i had to say how much it would cost you to do this if you didn't already
have the software or anything like that um your calendar is going to be about 20 a month your
startup fees with smile stop or g3 ortho tracking is going to be 100 or 200 another 100 150 200 per
month so we're about 200. docusign i think cost me maybe four or five hundred dollars a year for
unlimited forms you can i think there's cheaper versions where you can have less forms but i mean
overall maybe 500 600 to get started and maybe 200 a month 200 300 a month i mean not too bad
um for an opportunity to get starts without even having patients in the office you know and using
admin days this is pretty awesome so yeah a lot of doctors are doing it and if you're a general
or pediatric dentist it's great because i mean this is a potential patient for your practice
as well and maybe you'll get the rest of them for general work i mean there's a huge value to this
um and if people really don't want to do it they can still come in and have an in-person
you know exam that's totally fine it just may not be as convenient about of ours and we want to
there's a lot of um what i call trickle trickle off so when you sometimes when you
have a consult appointment that's too far off a lot of times patients just don't show because
they go find their aligners or their case done somewhere else so you really want to always be
addressing potential console patients the same week if possible or even within a day or two if
possible and this way with virtual consults you can address everyone if they want if they're open
to being addressed that way if they're really insistent on in personal consult well that's
great you know but most people when you offer it um i think most people are pretty tech savvy with
zoom is something they're comfortable with um docusign is something they're comfortable with
the smile snap and gp worth of tracking maybe maybe not and you don't have to do that part
with the asynchronous you know in the selfie photos it's just going to help to screen out
patients a little bit more so you don't have to waste that time slot you don't have to waste that
in person visit if they're not a candidate so the pictures will be really helpful i think it'll save
you a lot of money in the long run if you do it that way all right thanks so much hopefully
that was helpful if you have any questions you can go to straight straightsmilesolutions.com