Once again, we find ourselves at that time of year when Mom and Dad want to talk now and start Junior’s treatment later – later here being after January 1st, when flex funds become available. You can’t blame your patients for thinking that way; it makes perfectly good economic sense to them to wait.
At the same time, having the parents put off starting treatment has some potential drawbacks to your practice. Most of you would like to start these cases this year in order to avoid adding to the glut of starts in January, but I have a bigger concern. When there are weeks of time in between the consultation and the future planned start, you run a real risk of losing these pending cases to competitors between now and when January rolls around. So your goal should be to have a firm commitment to start at the conclusion of the initial visit – firm being more than a verbal ‘we plan to do this’. Firm means that the patient is formally and mentally “in”, and you can count on the new business being there in January.
So with flex spending, the patient has a practical reason for delaying the start of treatment. Have you given them a reason to start now? There are several ways to do this. Some that I have seen be effective include:
- Allowing the patient to start treatment now with a signed agreement and two (2) accounts for automatic draft, one primary and one secondary/backup, and postponing payment until January. I know, some of you are afraid to do this because you think that you won’t be paid. I disagree with that logic; it may happen on a rare occasion, but it will not be a regular occurrence. Besides, with automatic draft in place, you are much more likely to avoid problems of that nature to begin with. Experiment with this.
- Allowing the patient to start treatment now with a very small down payment now ($50 or $75), the balance of the down-payment due in January, and the same auto-draft arrangement for payment noted previously. The token deposit here is solely a commitment step; once money has changed hands, even a small amount, the patient considers the matter closed and will not shop you around.
- Offering a financial discount to start now, with a financial benefit that exceeds that of postponing starting payments in January. The “why” here, if the patient were to ask, would be due to the fact that having patients start now eases your January work-load and is therefore worth the discount to your practice.
- Point out the $2500 annual benefit limit that was imposed this past year; this can in some cases work to your benefit by negating some of the incentive for postponement. Educate your practice visitors on this point and look for ways to spread payments to start them now and ensure that they max out their allotment in the upcoming calendar years.
There are other options. Understanding what will motivate your visitors to act now vs. later – and giving them a reason to do it – will do more than spread out your patient flow after the holidays. It will also help to ensure that the patient starts treatment with your practice instead of with someone else in January.