Dr. Brett Wells has seen a glaring problem during the pandemic. Many people in the gig economy simply don't have health insurance, let alone dental insurance. Many who have retired don't keep their dental insurance. So how are dental practices supposed to attract new patients who don't have insurance? Dr. Wells has a solution - Dental HQ.
This episode of The Dental Experience Podcast is sponsored by Trident Lab. Dental Experience podcast listeners - that's you - you can write the code Dental Experience on your first case, and you can save up to $50. Simply visit tridentlab.com/dep for more details.
The Dental Experience Podcast is hosted by Ryan Vet and is edited by Earfluence.
Dr. Brett Wells has seen a glaring problem during the pandemic. Many people in the gig economy simply don't have health insurance, let alone dental insurance. Many who have retired don't keep their dental insurance. So how are dental practices supposed to attract new patients who don't have insurance? Dr. Wells has a solution - Dental HQ.
This episode of The Dental Experience Podcast is sponsored by Trident Lab. Dental Experience podcast listeners - that's you - you can write the code Dental Experience on your first case, and you can save up to $50. Simply visit tridentlab.com/dep for more details.
The Dental Experience Podcast is hosted by Ryan Vet and is edited by Earfluence.
Voiceover: Today on The Dental Experience podcast.
Ryan Vet: The first question is, am I going to lose money?
Dr Brett Wells: This has been a year of curve balls and challenges unlike no other. And hopefully, hopefully this is kind of the pinnacle - knock on wood - of our careers as far as like, challenges.
Ryan Vet: There's a lot of question about healthcare in particular, but dental is not always included in healthcare.
Dr Brett Wells: There are some silver linings of the pandemic. Our patients feel comfortable coming to see us right now; they don't feel comfortable going on vacation. I feel pretty positive about us being in the golden age of dentistry, and the future is incredibly bright. So, it's a super sticky solution.
Ryan Vet: 2020 seems to be full of surprises like that.
Voiceover: This is The Dental Experience podcast. Here's your host, Ryan Vet.
Ryan Vet: Welcome to another episode of The Dental Experience podcast, here in season three. I'm excited to have a good friend with me that I've been able to get to know over the years, and we've spent a lot of time getting to know each other, really, in this time where we're only a couple of miles apart, but we're worlds apart with technology due to COVID and other things. But I want to welcome Dr. Brett Wells, a practicing dentist, to the show and also founder of Dental HQ. Welcome, Brett.
Dr Brett Wells: Thanks, Ryan. I am more than excited to be on here and sharing our story and our journey with your listeners.
Ryan Vet: Well, thank you so much. And I know that there is a lot that you have done with Dental HQ in the recent months to really positively impact the community. But before we get into that, I really want to hear what the last several months have been like for you as a practicing dentist who, who owns a practice and has to support a team, support your community. And I know that you've been faced with the challenges that many dentists have been faced with, but also some challenges that maybe some dentists have not been faced with. I'd love for you to share a little bit of your story.
Dr Brett Wells: Yeah. So, I mean, as I'm sure most of your listeners can attest, this has been a year of curve balls and challenges unlike no other.
And hopefully, hopefully this is kind of a pinnacle-knock on wood-of our careers as far as like challenges and uphill battles that we have to face. I mean, no one could have ever thought of some of the things you've had to deal with this year. And, you know, certainly COVID was the first big hit, right? So, you know, we shut down for eight weeks.
It was only eight weeks for us, it was more for everyone else, and managing that kind of, this common ground that we all had to deal with. And probably a week after coming back from that, you know, managing it, keeping everyone's spirits positive, communicating, getting the majority of the team back. We had our first in-office COVID case with our insurance coordinator in our biggest office.
And so, you know, that was the first big curve ball kind of, thrown at us where I'm sure at this point, probably many of your listeners have had a case in their office. And so, as you experience, you know, the entire team freaks out, all the momentum you had built and all the protections you had put in place got called into question, you know, got the whole team tested, got through that crisisand, you know, it was time to kind of move forward again.
And then that's when the riots hit. So then, for us it, was the COVID and then the riots. So we have an office in downtown Raleigh, right in the heart of the city, you know, a block from the Capitol building, and that was the main street where all the riots in Raleigh took place. So our, our business got smashed, you know, we have floor to ceiling windows, beautiful office overlooking downtown Raleigh, and, you know, just got completely smashed, beer bottles and Brickstone into the lobby. So, you know, that was the next big challenge and it just seemed like, what else can the world throw at us?
And so, you know, we've gotten through them. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger, right? So, I'm working through all that. And it's just, you know, it's tested my leadership skills, but I think it's made me a stronger leader.
Ryan Vet: Well, I really appreciate you sharing that. And I know many have been through some of the challenges that you've been through, but you've, you've definitely been thrown one after another as, as many of us have 2020 seems to be full of surprises like that. But, I love how you've led well through them, and really, what's always impressed me about you since we first met was the desire you have to really further the industry, but not just the industry, but the community that the industry serves. So you, you just have a heart for patients and making sure that the patients are served well through various adventures and endeavors that you've had the opportunity to, to be a part of.
And I think the one that I would really love to talk about today because of some of the profound things you've put into place specifically around this time to help dentists support their local communities is Dental HQ. So, can we briefly just chat about what Dental HQ is and then we'll get into how you can support your community and how you can really make an impact in your community in these times that are trying for everyone?
Dr Brett Wells: Yeah. So Dental HQ was kinda, you know, we all have those "aha" moments and mine, one of mine-I've had many in life-but one of mine was probably seven or eight years ago at the Hinman Dental Conference. Listened to a lecture from Dr. Charles Blair, where he began to talk about these inhouse plans dentists were beginning to offer their patients that included things like cleanings, exams and x-rays, and then - for a package price - and then a discount on treatment.
And for me, it was kind of like the light bulb went off. I was like, this is so cool. I'm going to go back. I'm going to make like, Wells Family Dental like, membership playing cards, and I got like a special printer, and we printed the cards and did the annual plans. I think we charged $400 a year. And I was like, this is so cool. How do I go out into the community and sell this? And so I talked to some of my friends who are in sales and I was like, "Hey, we gotta sell these. I'll give you commission if you sell our membership plan." And I kind of quickly realized that at $400 a year, for somebody who didn't know the practice, like it just was a nonstarter.
So $400 membership plans are great for retaining patients, but for acquiring new patients, it's just too much money. And so, I started looking at options to break this down into a monthly plan and, you know, the different - there weren't many solutions then, probably four years ago, and the ones that I did find, I didn't like. They weren't customizable enough, it didn't allow me to offer everything I wanted. So, I sat down this path of building technology. And so, we started designing and then built Dental HQ to, essentially, be a fully customizable program to help dentist - myself and other dentists - create an automated in-house membership program, you know, help with the marketing, allow monthly and annual members and then, you know, you price it, and you customize it to be whatever you want it to be. It's got, you know - white labeled and branded with your practice logo and everything on it. So, we launched that three years ago and then, you know, we kind of got it to a point where I felt like it's a really fantastic - I think it's the best it's out there in terms of software and our program, and then we can kind of start innovating and doing new stuff that doesn't really exist. And that's kind of what you mentioned with our more community driven initiatives and business driven initiatives that we'd built into Dental HQ.
Ryan Vet: Yeah, I think that's so great. And really talking about how you can leverage a program to impact what we've often talked about as the changing economy and workforce and how people are working.
But more importantly, during this time, how can you serve the community and maybe some of those underserved communities as well. So, Brett, we're going to listen to a word from our sponsors and when we come back, I'd love to share how you can help dentists empower and impact their communities.
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And now we're back to talk about how we can impact our communities through dental membership plans and other programs. And Brett, welcome back to the show, and I am excited to hear really, about this community aspect. You've added to Dental HQ.
Dr Brett Wells: Yeah, Ryan. So just, kind of, so your listeners understand a little bit about my vision for Dental HQ and membership plans, like it is my vision, you know, I'm going to work towards that, and I think we have some opportunities to allow us this over the next few years, but to truly kind of compete with dental insurance and replace dental insurance. A membership plan, you know, it's becoming very popular in dentistry, but consumers still, generally, aren't really aware of this.
So my goal, our vision with Dental HQ is to one day make membership plans so commonplace where consumers ask for it by name, where it's as common knowledge as dental insurance. And I think once we get do that, once we've adopted it as a profession and most dentists are offering it and can educate consumers, then we can really start at, kind of, chipping away at dental insurance and reducing the utilization of that, where a third party is determining our fee schedule. You know, a membership plan, we determine everything, we run it, and so the more we can run it ourselves, the more control we have and the more positive impact it has on our practice.
So, our vision is to build a consumer knowledge base around these membership plans really change the landscape of what's going on with, with payment options for patients. So, you know, we've kind of started building some of the early versions of some of the bigger things we're going to build down the road. Two of them are called Business Connect and Community Connect. So, the business connect is a solution we built where you can actually start going out, you can send out one of your practice administrators, your marketing person or yourself, or you can even, if you have a patient in your practice who owns a small business, you can allow small businesses around your practice to enroll their employees into your membership plan, and the business can choose to subsidize all or part of the cost of the membership plan, just like they would with health insurance or dental insurance normally. So it's pretty cool, it's fully automated, it's technology driven. We help you provide the marketing materials, so you can go out to the businesses in the future - we'll even provide a list of businesses.
And then, we create the technology that supports connection between you and that small business. So, that's a pretty powerful tool that we've built for dentists. And then, we've also, just recently, released Community Connect. It basically builds a coupon codes for different community groups around your practice. So for us, the first thing we're doing is we're going to all the retirement homes around our practice, we're building coupon codes that gives a discount for the members of that community group, a discount into our membership plan. So, we're creating a nice little marketing flyer for the members of that retirement home with a 10% off coupon. We're putting it in a basket of toothbrushes and koozies and whatnot with our practice information, and then we're delivering those to all the retirement homes, so they can then distribute them to their members, and then they can join our practice at a discount. So, it's a pretty cool program to help you market your membership plan to the different groups around you and kind of, sell these memberships in bulk instead of just waiting for patients to call you. So, I think pretty innovative.
You know, another thing, I think, for your listeners to really keep in mind is the changing landscape of the world right now. We've got a lot of people losing jobs, hopefully it's just a change of jobs, but in that, in that period between jobs, they're going to be losing dental insurance. And so many, as you know, we went through this and the 2008 crisis, instead of coming into their dental appointment without dental insurance, they're just canceling those appointments, and then you hope you recapture them three, four, five years down the road once they have a new job and dental insurance.
So, a membership plan is gonna allow you to recapture those patients immediately and not lose them to begin with. So having one in place now, I think, is more vital than ever. And also, you know, we're in the middle of "the big dip," as I call it, the, the huge drop off in our hygiene schedules. And one way to get patients back in to our offices during this dip is to offer a membership plan for those who might've lost their insurance.
So, contacting these patients by email and phone and letting them know that you now have this membership plan, you're likely going to get a lot of those patients who aren't coming in because they don't have dental insurance. So, you know, some awesome, great stuff going on behind membership plans. And we've got, we've got very, very big aspirations for big programs.
We're building for the future.
Ryan Vet: I love it, and I think there's two questions that a lot of people have with membership plans that might not be as familiar. And I think, obviously, now more than four years ago, when you first really got this running, people are more educated, but there's still a lot of questions around it.
So the first question is, am I going to lose money? Or, you know, what, what is the return? Like, why is it valuable for my practice? So that's the big first question that I think a lot of people have. And the second question I think a lot of people have is, who who's the ideal customer for a patient for a membership plan?
And I think the answer to that one might surprise a lot of people. So let's start with the first one. How is this beneficial to really, the bottom line of a practice? Obviously, it provides another service to the patient, so it's beneficial to patients, but how does this actually make sure that the practice isn't losing money by offering discounts and things like that?
Dr Brett Wells: Right. So, I mean, the beauty of a membership plan is you run it, not a third party insurance company. And so they're very sticky. So, we noticed with our members worship plan, with all of our members across all the, our offices, we have, we have about an 8% annual cancellation rate of their membership plans.
Well, we know through, you know, massive studies that have been done - I wrote a paper about this for dental economics - the attrition rate, in general, for practices is around 15% to 20%. So patients on a membership plan are much less likely to leave your practice than patients who aren't on a membership plan, so it's a super sticky solution that's going to keep those patients coming back. And in terms of losing money, the beauty of a membership plan, and the reason why it makes it affordable for your patients isn't necessarily that you're giving a discount. You're simply breaking up those two big annual chunks of costs when they come in for those cleanings into more affordable monthly payments.
So if you - the average costs of two cleanings, exams and x-rays across the U.S. is about $400. Well, that equals about $33 a month for a membership plan. If you tell somebody, "Hey, you can have all this work done for $33 a month," versus "It's going to cost you $200 every time you come in," they're going to think they're getting some kind of wildly amazing deal at $33 a month, when you're still getting your full fees.
You're just giving patients a more affordable way to pay for it.
Ryan Vet: Right, absolutely.
Dr Brett Wells: Yeah. And the discounts, you know, some offices offer discounts. What we do, we kind of increase our fees so we have a better leverage with the insurance networks to get higher reimbursement rates. And so, we hate to charge, you know, our non-insured patients, these full rates, and so we kind of protect them by offering bigger discounts with our membership plan. Like, we don't even necessarily want to get a hundred percent of our fee schedule. We want to get about 10% to 15% less because we've just inflated our fee schedule to have a better negotiating power with the insurance company.
So for us, we offer a discount with our treatment for our members; that's kind of an extra benefit of being in the membership plan, but you don't have to offer a discount. You know, some are - some of our offices just offer a monthly membership or an annual membership just as a way to keep those patients coming back and keep them in your practice and not going somewhere else.
Ryan Vet: Absolutely. And I think the idea of a member is so interesting, and American Express really turned the whole paradigm of membership on its head, which is providing extraordinary services every single day to its members. They weren't card holders, they weren't customers, they weren't clients, they were members.
And I think I've seen some practices do some really creative member-based marketing that just makes people feel more included in part of the community, which is, obviously a, a big, a big thing for many people is feeling part of the community and part of their, their local practice. Which brings me to the question of who is the ideal person? Because, I think, with the changing workforce in particular, I think a lot of people are misunderstanding who their members actually might be and who might be interested in this program.
So could you talk about the breakdown of the typical member? And I know there's, there's a couple subsets, but I would love to hear from you who those people might be.
Dr Brett Wells: Well, I think there's kind of two main demographics of the biggest bulk of these members. One is the pretty obvious, they're your retirees who are losing their insurance.
And, you know, we all have experienced it. "Hey, Dr. Wells, I'm losing my insurance. I'm, I'm retiring in three months, I'm losing my insurance. Make sure you get anything done - before I lose it - done," and then that's when we, you know, present them with our membership plan and then they're super excited because they can just continue to come in at an affordable monthly fee and get their dental work done.
So, a big chunk of our members, and I'm sure the members of those who have these plans, are going to be your over 65 retiree population. But what we're seeing is, especially in my urban practice in downtown Raleigh, where you have a lot of software technology, a lot of freelancers is this gig economy is really powering a lot of the membership plans and driving kind of that average age down.
Because as you know, Ryan, you can probably speak to the numbers better than I can, the gig economy in the U.S. is projected, I think, to either triple or quadruple over the next five to 10 years, and those are people who don't have employer based insurance. And so, these people are the, are the ones who love membership plans 'cause it's kind of innovative, it's new, it's technology driven. And so, you know, when we tell them about our membership plan, we have nearly a hundred percent adoption rate. So, at our downtown, more urban practice, we're certainly seeing a lot of younger millennials, gig workers, who are in our plans. And then across all of them, we're seeing the retirees as well.
Ryan Vet: Absolutely. And it's been really interesting to watch those numbers on the gig economy climb drastically, especially with food delivery and more delivery services picking up throughout this COVID era, and people working from home and really being on conference calls and things from a delivery car. It's been fascinating to watch those numbers climb simultaneously in election season where we're seeing more and more regulation being put on how those workers are classified, and there's a lot of question about healthcare in particular, but dental is not always included in health care. So offering these membership plans to these gig workers who are a lot are leaving there full time job because they feel it's more secure to be their own boss and these geek type platforms, the membership plans are a perfect fit.
Dr Brett Wells: Exactly, yeah. I think they're only going to grow in popularity. So, you know, if you're thinking about a membership plan or if you're not thinking about it, it's something I would certainly really consider for your practice because I think in the next five or 10 years, 80%, 90% or more dental practices are going to have some sort of offering like that.
Ryan Vet: Absolutely. So I'd love to to, in our last couple minutes together, just to hear from you as a practicing dentist going through this time as a leader of a business that's just making a huge impact in offering new, new ways to engage the community in a time that they might be losing access to dental insurance and you're, you're providing a platform to give membership plans out. I'd love to hear any closing thoughts, encouragement to practice owners, those working in a practice on membership plans and just really navigating this, this unique time.
Dr Brett Wells: Look, I think it's an opportunity. I wouldn't take anything - there was nothing you could hand me to make me say I would rather have that over the pandemic. Like, there's nothing I would say that would make me want the pandemic to go away and undo any positive from it. Like, I would much rather this year have gone by with no pandemic in it.
But, I think there are some silver linings of the pandemic. You know, our patients feel comfortable coming to see us right now; they don't feel comfortable going on vacation. And so, a lot of our patients who would normally be traveling and on vacation are in town, and they're saving their money 'cause you're not going on vacation. They feel comfortable seeing us. So, we've seen that we're very busy. You know, we managed "the big dip" well, we've made it, we had a good plan for our reactivation, for reactivating patients and getting patients in. And so, we're busier than ever, and I think that's going to continue. Another big caveat is some of these global survey companies - I can't remember the name of it, I think it's the Stromae group - did the survey globally of, of citizens across the world, and the number one, kind of, discretionary expense that was on all of their lists was healthcare. So, healthcare has now risen to the top of everyone's list. So, I think as dentists, we're in a perfect space to kind of ride this tide up and, and be super busy. As long as you lead your team, as long as you have good strategies and a good approach to this, I think - whereas a lot of people think we're in the dark age - I think we're technically, well, not technically, but I feel pretty positive about us being in the golden age of dentistry, and the future is incredibly bright.
Ryan Vet: I love that perspective, Brett. Well, you always have great insights. You have great vision for the field of dentistry as a whole, both for your practices and the other businesses that you're involved in, like Dental HQ. How can people get in touch with you and learn more about Dental HQ?
Dr Brett Wells: So for Dental HQ, if you just go to our website at the upper right, you'll see a "request a demo button." It allows you to pick a date and a time, anything that works best for you, and schedule a demo and see what the software and the program is all about. It's more than just a software, we're a full program. It's a really advanced software and a program. We help you market, we help train your staff, we do everything. So, that's probably the easiest way. And then as always, if any of your listeners have specific questions for me, I'm Brett, B-R-E-T-T at dentalhq.com. I'm not the best at giving demos, my team actually probably knows our software better than I do at this point, just cause it's evolved so much, but I'm happy to answer questions about membership plans and anything else you got.
Ryan Vet: Awesome. Well, Brett, as always, it's great talking to you and catching up, and I appreciate your time on The Dental Experience podcast today.
And thank you, listeners, for listening to another episode. As always, we strive for five, like Len Tau, our good friend from Birdeye says, so if you have a moment, go ahead and give us five stars in the reviews, and let us know how we can better serve you and better provide content for your practice.
Thank you for listening.
Voiceover: Thank you for listening to The Dental Experience podcast. For show notes, to ask a question or for more information, visit www.thedentalpodcast.com. The ideas discussed during this episode are the opinions of the participants and do not serve as legal, financial or clinical advice.
Until next time, this is The Dental Experience podcast.