Episode #231: Dave Monahan – Why You Need A Membership Plan

Dr. Eric Block: Welcome to the Stress-Free Dentist Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Eric Block. As always, I want to inspire, entertain, and educate you on the best tools and technologies out there. My goal is to help make your practice and career more profitable, efficient, and most importantly, more enjoyable. And check out all of my nonfiction and children’s books on Amazon, and check out thestressfreedentist.com  for any upcoming events. And if you’re feeling you’re a dental professional that’s burnt out, or you just feel stuck or want to get to that next level, visit the International Academy of Dental Life Coaches or www.iadlc.com,  and we’ll get you matched up with a life coach that understands dentistry.

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Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode, and today I am joined by Dave Monahan, who’s the CEO of Kleer. Uh, Dave, thanks for joining us.

Dave Monahan: Thanks, Eric. Thanks for having me on.

Dr. Eric Block: Actually, uh, Dave, is it, is it Kleer Membersy? Is that the name of the company?

Dave Monahan: It is, yeah. It’s a lot of whatever syllables. But yeah, we merged Kleer and Membersy about 11 months ago. So officially right now we’re Kleer Membersy. I’ll, uh, foreshadow: we are going to be rebranding, uh, the company fairly soon, so there’ll be a new name.

Dr. Eric Block: Gotcha. And, um, yeah, tell me, tell me—actually, tell me first how you even got involved in dentistry and, and membership plans, and, uh, what was your journey like there?

Dave Monahan: So, I actually, I had, I had no plans and no history in dentistry until I started Kleer. But the reason I got involved was I had another company. I’m an engineer by training. Uh, I am a technologist, probably at heart, and I had built up a company that did wearable devices, and we basically built devices that you could put on your body and it would track, you know, cardiovascular system, uh, energy expenditure, you know, activity, things like that.

Then that was—we built devices, we built, uh, wireless, uh, uh, data services, and we, uh, built a bunch of applications with third parties, like hospitals and wellness providers and fitness providers. We built applications on top of our data and our device infrastructure. So I had a deep passion around connecting technology and healthcare—was sort of my core.

I ran into somebody who owned six dental practices. He had a little, uh, group practice, and we started talking. He started sharing with me some of the woes of dentistry, which I didn’t know about at all. I just went every six months and figured, you know, dentists and the insurers got along and everything was fine. But he started sharing that, uh, patients didn’t come in as often as they should, and number two is that the insurers were impossible to deal with, and they were having a lot of issues there.

So he piqued my interest, and I hired a, uh, third-party, uh, research firm who—and basically we talked to uninsured patients. We talked to dentists, uh, front desk, like we did focus groups. We did one-on-one interviews. We did a national, uh, survey. And what we learned was everything you already know and everybody in the industry already knows, but that, you know, uh, getting uninsured patients into practice was difficult. And number two, insurers were becoming impossible to deal with from a financial perspective and an administration perspective.

So that was the genesis for Kleer. And we launched Kleer in 2018 based on that research.

Dr. Eric Block: Uh, wow. So that was, uh, back in 2018. ‘Cause there’s just so much more, you know, awareness now, and, and I think dentists moving more towards reducing their insurance dependence. Um, and now tell me about, um, uh, I think first—can you just even explain what a membership plan is, uh, to some of the dentists out there that may not know?

Dave Monahan: Uh, absolutely. So a membership plan is basically a subscription you offer directly to your patients. And so there’s no middleman in the way, there’s nobody determining what your reimbursements are. You get to decide that. And so what we have done is created a platform that manages the design, the management of that, the, you know, patient side of that, the, you know, obviously the practice side of that. And basically, our platform enables you to design a subscription for your patients.

And so, and, and these can get very creative or they can be really simple. Let me just go on the spectrum of, okay, really simple. We have some practices and DSOs who just offer a discount off of treatment. So it might be something like $49 a year, and you get, let’s say, maybe an exam and an X-ray are free as part of that, but then you pay, uh, for everything else, but maybe you get a 30% discount off of, uh, full fee.

Dave Monahan: So something really, really simple where it’s one size fits all patients. Then we have other practices on the other side of the spectrum who will have four or five care plans. And these care plans can be a child plan, an adult plan, a perio plan, a senior’s plan, and they will build in your cleanings, your exams, your X-rays. Uh, they’ll build in things like if you want to add, let’s say you’re an Invisalign practice, maybe you give a $200 credit to Invisalign treatment. Uh, you can throw a whitening in there. So they take all kinds of shapes and sizes and forms.

The average on that side, from a subscription standpoint, is the practices charge about $350 on average for those annual subscriptions. And they can be broken into monthly payments or annual payments. Like, you have flexibility there, uh, as a provider. So that is, to answer your question, a subscription is offered to patients. You control ’em, you design ’em, you base ’em on your patient demographics and your desire and your goals of the membership plan. Uh, and we work with you to do that. And then the platform manages all of it.

Dr. Eric Block: I guess every practice is different in what their goals are and if they’re, you know, urban, suburban, rural, uh, you know, what their, what their culture is. Um, so some can be simple, some can be, like you said, more complicated. Um, what do you—where do you recommend starting? Do you do, do you do like an interview with the office to figure out what their goals are and go from there? Um, or do you typically recommend to start simple?

Dave Monahan: Yeah, we do a, uh, consultation with the practice. So it’s a free consultation, takes 45 minutes to an hour, depending on sort of the situation. Typically, we’ll ask the practice for some information prior to the consultation. And then, based on all the history we have—over, uh, about 20,000 dentists on our platform—so we have a monstrous, you know, uh, sort of database and, um, sort of, you know, case studies and things that we can compare to.

So we interview basically the office, and we’ll just ask things like, what’s the goal of your membership plan? What do your patient demographics look like? What are your treatment protocols, right? And we’ll get an assessment, sort of, of what they’re trying to do with the plan, what they like to do from a treatment perspective, what their patients look like. And then we’ll come back and say, this is what we would recommend.

Now, it’s up to the practice to decide. They actually, on the platform, they officially have to go in and approve the plans. Uh, but that is—we’ll design it based on our knowledge and also the feedback we get from the office and how they like to, uh, design it.

Dr. Eric Block: And now, personally, you know, my office, we’ve, we’ve gone completely outta network. And you know, for me, it’s, uh, patients are either—they have insurance or they’re, they’re on our membership plan. It’s kind of—they’re in two buckets. And I’m really trying to grow the membership plan aspect of it. Um, but I feel like it’s a must to have a membership plan if, if you plan to strategically go outta network.

What are you seeing out there? Do most offices that are reducing their insurance dependence offer a membership plan?

Dave Monahan: They are, yeah. So a big impetus is, you know, trying to get away from insurance dependence, and it’s—I mean, the ADA put a bunch of information or, like, data out there over the last few months, and I think it summarizes really well why people are driving towards membership plans. So, you know, every office is dealing with rising costs, right? Inflation and things are getting more and more expensive, but the reimbursements on the insurance side haven’t moved, right?

And so eventually the insurance becomes unprofitable, right? I mean, it just—it has to happen unless they’re gonna suddenly raise reimbursements, which I don’t see coming, right? If we’re waiting for that to happen, I think we’ve got problems. So, practices are being forced into doing something. And what they realized, I think, fairly quickly is if you go full out of network, now you gotta engage your patients to come in more often—because just by having coverage, they come in more often, right?

And so what ends up happening is a lot of times they start exploring ideas, and the membership plan really jumps out as the answer to all of it, where you provide coverage, but you control it. And I can go through some stats, but the net is when you get your uninsured patients onto a membership plan, the visits go way up, the production goes way up, treatment acceptance goes way up. And so you start to learn very quickly that these turn into your best patients.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. And, you know, every patient that comes in our door now that’s new is so valuable. Uh, I remember I used to be asked, you know, what’s the value of a new patient? And, you know, being completely outta network, it’s just exponentially more valuable for every patient that comes in—whether they’re already, uh, you know, an existing patient or they’re coming in from their membership plan or they’re, um, outta network—it’s just so much more valuable.

And, um, you mentioned the reimbursement rates going down. Um, it’s also the staff costs that are going up. Um, the difficulty in finding staff and—and personally, we were at a capacity issue when we were in network. We were, you know, running around with our heads cut off, and we had to hire temporary hygiene, and it just wasn’t sustainable. So we really focused on, on strategically dropping insurance, uh, dependence and going outta network.

Dr. Eric Block: And for patients that are looking to just get rid of their insurance altogether, then you gotta have something to offer them. Otherwise, you know, they may just leave. Um, but for the new patients that are calling, uh, it’s, it’s so great to have something to offer, um, for that—for that new patient. They feel that, that, you know, they’re getting something, um, whether it’s a discount or they feel like they’re part of a, you know, a, a group. Um, they get their, you know, their package, their, their cleanings and X-rays and exams. I think, uh, psychologically it’s so important to have something to offer those patients.

Dave Monahan: Yeah. So Eric, you really summarized it well. All that research we had done proved out to be true once we started going into market and talking to the offices and talking to the patients. So what you’re dealing with is the patients who don’t have coverage—these uninsured patients—they’re very concerned about coming in, right? So they think they’re paying too much, they’re worried about the cost of care. They have no, you know, transparency into cost. They don’t know how much they should be paying, right? And they’re totally uncomfortable negotiating with you on price.

So what the membership plan does is it opens up—hey, you’re going to, you know, you’re getting a good deal, right? You’re gonna get some, you know, savings, uh, on, on your, uh, care. But also, now you’re part of our practice. You’re a member of our practice, right? And what we always tell offices is, treat ’em special, you know—thank ’em for being a member, right? And make them feel like part of your, you know, community and your family right in the office. And it goes a long way. Like, these patients are scared, they’re worried about spending too much money, so it eases them in and enables them to, you know, feel part of the practice. And it works really, really well when you do that.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. And then you get those patients that maybe they, you know, they lost their job or they retired and, you know, they’re, they’re losing their insurance. And it’s so great to have, uh, to offer something.

Now, uh, you know, why would an office—and I’m asking this rhetorically—if they have some cash-paying patients, let’s say they have, you know, a large bucket of PPO patients, maybe 90%, and then they have 10% cash-paying patients, why would a dental office want to go and mess that up and, and add a, add a membership plan?

Dave Monahan: There’s, uh, a lot of good reasons to do it. Uh, so we integrate with the practice management systems, and we can pull the data back and look at how patients are behaving. So we can look at how your cash patients are behaving, how your membership plan patients are behaving, and how your insured patients are behaving. And we have this across thousands of practices. So we have tons of data.

And let me, let me give you the average, to answer your question—why would you offer some savings, right, to uninsured patients? Um, on average, those uninsured patients come in about 1 to 1.2 times a year. If you look at the average of all your uninsured patients, it feels like they’re coming in, but they’re not coming in very consistently. When they’re on a membership plan—and for that sake, even if they’re underinsured—they’re coming in about 1.8 times a year.

Dave Monahan: And so you get this huge uplift in visits. What do visits do? Obviously they’re gonna drive production through, uh, your hygiene department, but also they lead to treatment acceptance. So what we see with our patients, uh, relative to your cash patients, is they’ll accept twice the amount of treatment of your cash patients. So they’re coming in about 80 or 90% more often, and they’re accepting over twice the care.

And so, if you provide—on the average, our platform, the average discount is 15% across the whole platform. So the question I always ask practices is, would you double production for a 15% discount, right? And when you think about it that way, you’ll do that every day.

Here’s another stat—that we’ll look at the cash patients and the discounts provided to them. So, as you know, you know, a lot of offices give day-of-treatment discounts. All right, well, the average discount provided to a cash patient outside of a membership—I’m just saying I’m a cash patient, I’m there and I’m gonna pay cash—is about 14%. So in reality, you’re actually not even giving any more of a discount, but you’re including ’em in the subscription, you’re making ’em a member, you’re giving ’em their cleanings as part of the subscription. So they come in and they get treatment, uh, and they drive your production.

So it’s really all about that. They get engaged, they come in more often, they accept more treatment, they drive production up.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. And the reason I mentioned, uh, the word "rhetorical" is that, you know, I feel like those were cash-paying patients, you know, technically, but like you said, they’re still getting a discount. And they were—you know, uh, for my patients, um, and I—you know, I know you’re technically not supposed to do this if you have, um, contracts with in-net—you know, with insurance providers. You’re not supposed to give, um, your cash-paying patients discounts, but people do it. And they get, you know, discounts, whether it’s 25% or whatever it is. Those cash-paying patients aren’t necessarily, you know, paying full fee.

And it’s nice to standardize, um, you know, what they are paying, because I used to work in, uh—I used to associate in an office, and everyone that came in that was cash-paying got a discount. Yeah. And those discounts were often different, you know, depending on the day and who came in.

But when you have a plan, it’s standardized, and you have a policy, and it’s all on paper, it’s all, you know, in the computer, and it, it kinda sets the tone. Um, so, you know, those cash-paying patients, uh, seem great, but, you know, a lot of times they’re getting that extra discount too.

Dave Monahan: Yeah, absolutely. And just on that—you made a comment about, uh, offering discounts if you’re in network—so the, the sort of paragraph or legalese that some of these insurers have put into their contracts is that you can’t offer a discount more than what the PPO or the insurer is providing, right? So if you go below that—basically, if you go below their discounts—you need to give that fee to the insurers, right?

You will never, and I mean never, in a membership plan go below the discount that a PPO provides or an insurer provides. So the average discount on insurance is about 40% off UCR. Our average discount is 15%. So you’ll never cross into that zone.

And by the way, a lot of the agreements now—the insurance agreements—don’t include that, because that’s an overreach. They’ve actually overreached their legal, uh, place. But that’s a separate conversation. But I’ll just, uh, just let your audience know: you will never discount like you would under an insurer.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. I used to compare, you know, patients coming in, uh, off of, you know, the, the PPO website. They see our name and they come in, they have a big sign in front of ’em that says, “Hi, I get 45% off.”

Dr. Eric Block: That’s their, that’s their typical write-off. You know, some are higher, some are a little bit lower, but I feel like 45% was about our average. And, you know, now with our membership plan, it’s—I, it’s either 10 or 15%. I’d have to check. We did change it. But, um, uh, so it’s, you know, it’s much, much lower.

And, um, we also offer, you know, plans for like ex-employees, um, you know, staff—you can do it for their families. You know, you can get creative with it. But it’s nice to have something set in place, uh, so that everyone knows and everyone’s on, on the same page.

Dave Monahan: Yeah, absolutely. It’s standardization too. We get that feedback all the time. Like, leaving it up to some, like a hygienist or front desk—or even the providers, right?—it, it gets random. Uh, and some patients get upset, right? Because somebody else got a bigger discount.

We actually have some offices that will say, “Hey, you know, we are doing this through Kleer Membersy, and you know, they have rules that you had to put in place,” right? So they can even take the heat off themselves, uh, if somebody’s really pressing for a discount. So yeah, it gives you that outlet.

Dr. Eric Block: Definitely. Now what’s, what’s the legality? You mentioned, um, a bit about, you know, the paragraph about, uh, about PPOs, but is every state different in how, how you can handle a membership plan?

Dave Monahan: Yeah, so there’s—uh, let me start at the federal level, then I’ll go into the state level. So at the federal level, you got a number of things you need to follow. Like obviously HIPAA is, uh, one you need to follow. You also have some security, data security requirements that you have to follow, uh, like PCI, uh, compliance and things like that. So these broad, you know, overarching federal, uh, regulations.

But where it gets complicated, uh, as you were referring to, is the state level. So about 35 states have—they’re called discount plan organization laws or discount medical plan organization laws—uh, DNPO or DPO. And you need to read into those. There’s some similarities by state, then each state will take ’em and sort of customize them.

And so you need to get licensed, uh, for those in certain states—I think there’s 27, 28 states where you actually officially have to get a license. You have to put a bond, uh, down, you have to report back to them on an annual basis, you gotta get renewed. Even in some, you gotta do audits, uh, of your plan. And so there are about 27 states like that.

There’s another 10 or so—10 or 12—states that have regulations. You don’t need to get licensed, but you have to follow the regulations. And then some of the other states just have some random things outside of those laws that you need to follow. So you need to really understand that at a state level.

And then things get a little special in California. So in California, you need a DMHC license that sort of manages all of healthcare in, in California. That’s the one that’s by far the most complicated, uh, regulation that you need to follow.

So yeah, it varies by state. And, uh, and we’re just—we’re licensed in all states, and we actually have a chief compliance officer who manages all that and has, uh, uh, relationships with the regulators and just makes sure we’re in good shape.

Dr. Eric Block: Now, what are you seeing out there? What are some common mistakes that dentists are making, uh, with their do-it-yourself in-house plans versus a, you know, a third-party company like Kleer?

Dave Monahan: Yeah, there’s a number of things. Um, so, uh, just since we just talked about compliance—they never meet the compliance requirements. They just—it requires a lot of things that you gotta do in the background in order to make these things compliant. Uh, I’ve yet to see one who did one correctly. Uh, but anyway, that’s one.

But the other one is just, how do you scale it, right? And so once you understand the value of a membership plan, you’re gonna want every uninsured patient on it. And so what typically they’ll do is they’ll have a spreadsheet, or they’ll put notes in, like, their PMS system, but nobody knows, you know, exactly how to manage the program. And so you don’t know if somebody’s actually active—did they actually pay their bill, right? You don’t know when their renewal dates are. Uh, there’s nothing in the background sort of managing all that, right?

Dave Monahan: And just making sure it’s all automated. And so that runs in the background. So, like, on our platform—and these are simple, you know, features—we have automated renewal, right? When somebody signs up, they agree to auto-renewal. They can turn it off if they want to. We, we enable, uh, patients to do that, but you don’t need to think about it, right? We have all their information, we have their credit card information. If the credit card goes bad, we will automatically reach out to the patient. So little things like that turn into big pain in the ass, right?

So if a credit card expired and they were on a subscription and they’re paying on a monthly basis, now what is your team going to do? First, do they even know it? Number two is, they need to renew it. What are they gonna do to go renew it?

Dave Monahan: Um, so there’s all kinds of management things like that. And what we end up doing with, uh, our platform is it automates all that for your front desk, right? You were talking about how it’s difficult to hire people, right? And it is difficult to keep them. Well, do you really want people rotating in and out, right? And your membership plan, right, is being managed by different people at different times—and maybe even people forget about it, right? So just keeping it running in the background.

And once it gets to, you know, scale—let’s say 25, 30, 40, 50, you know, a hundred people—it’s just impossible for somebody at the front desk to manage that. Uh, it becomes an absolute nightmare, almost a full-time job, which you just don’t want. Um, and so management is a big thing—a big thing—and automation.

Dave Monahan: The other thing is on the—and so automation, you know, management, uh, compliance. The other thing though is we integrate into the practice management systems. So we can actually show you how your membership plan is doing. So we can actually say, “Hey, you know, your membership plan patients are visiting X amount of times a year versus your, you know, cash patients versus your insured patients.” They’re producing X versus Y, right, for your uninsured. They’re coming in, right? They’ve got a number of visits per year versus your cash.

So you can actually see—is it working? That’s important, because if it’s not working or not getting the result you want, we want to work with you to figure out what changes do we need to make to it, right? And that’s really critical—that you stay on top of all of that.

Dave Monahan: And then the other thing we can do when we integrate—there’s the value propositions. We offer really three core ones. One is your current uninsured patients will come in twice as often and buy twice as much care, right? So there’s value number one. And obviously we can help with that, you know, by offering a membership plan.

Number two is your dormant patients—you can reactivate about 5 or 10% of them. Now, reactivating dormant patients—when we integrate with your practice management system, we can do that automatically. We have automated marketing on our platform that will reach out to your dormant patients. And practices love this feature, right? They’re almost like new patients coming back into the office. A lot of them aren’t coming in because they are worried about care—they don’t have coverage. So now you offer the membership plan, they activate.

And so, coming back to answer your question—that’s very difficult for you to do on your own.

Dave Monahan: And so we can do that as part of the platform and drive those dormant patients back into your office. And then the third value proposition is new patients. And you were mentioning this—like, when a new patient walks in the door, you know, you don’t want them walking back out the door. But unfortunately, about 60% of them walk out the door and never come back. If you get ’em on a membership plan, over 90% of them will come back into your office. So you increase that new, uh, patient, uh, retention, and we can help with that as well through messaging to those new patients.

So there’s—and there’s other things—but, you know, results and performance, you know, driving more patients into your membership plan, compliance, and automation are some critical ones.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. And it, it could be overwhelming for someone that’s, you know, doing this for the first time to, to do it on their own. And, you know, like we’ve mentioned, you know, sometimes there just isn’t the staff available to, to help you. You may have to be doing all this on your own—and doing all the renewals and the management and compliance, um, and the tracking. It just seems like it could be, um, putting, you know, more stress on your plate than, than you need.

So to have a third-party company that can handle all that is, um, seems like it’s almost like just being an extension of the office—like an extra staff member.

Dave Monahan: Exactly. That’s exactly what it is. Yeah. And your staff will be very appreciative that they don’t—they don’t want to do this. I’ll, I’ll give you another, you know, sort of automation feature, just getting into a little bit of the detail. So when a subscription payment comes in, right, that gets processed, um, on a payment processor, and then we deposit it into your bank account.

If you’re doing it on your own, somebody needs to enter that information into your PMS system, right? And we can do that automatically. So we can post that payment into your, uh, ledger on your practice management system. So if you want to make, uh, you know, your staff happy, tell them they don’t have to do data entry right into the practice management system. They—they just absolutely hate doing that.

Dr. Eric Block: And if you really want to, you know, take this membership plan and really grow it, you know, this is the way to do it. You know, personally, I really want to take, you know, my membership plan, uh, and, and grow it by calling local small businesses. Um, I really feel like there’s just so much opportunity there with small businesses that don’t have insurance, you know, for themselves or their staff or their staff’s families. Uh, could be such a great way just by calling around and offering it.

Are you—are you having any dentists that are successful with that?

Dave Monahan: Yeah, so we actually have a capability on the platform where you can offer it to a local employer, and the employer can sponsor their employees into it, and they can give money to your membership plan. So they can say, "I’m gonna provide every one of my employees $50 or $100," right, to buy your membership plan. And then once you set up that employer with that—let’s say it’s $50 and your membership plan is, let’s say, $200—when they invite their employees in, the employee comes in and they see the price at $150. And we also show ’em that their employer has sponsored them for an extra $50 to take off the $200.

So the net is, you can set these up and offer ’em to local employers, and they can offer ’em to their employees. Now, coming to—have practices been successful? Some have been, but it takes commitment. Like, it doesn’t just happen, right? You have to have somebody going out, talking to the employers, making them feel comfortable, answering their questions, being there if they have questions in the future, right? You have to commit to it both from a marketing/sales perspective and then also a support perspective.

So I would say it’s been rare for offices to be successful, but it’s the commitment—if they’re committed to it, they can be successful.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. ‘Cause what’s the—what’s the data out there of, of how many patients that just don’t have insurance? Uh, and I’m talking about, you know, the local restaurant, the pizza place, um, you know, the local, um, you know, the local business—not the big chain Walmart, uh, where their staff has insurance. These are the, you know, the heartbeat of, of most towns.

What—what’s the data out there for, for people over, you know, in their adulthood that just don’t have insurance?

Dave Monahan: So it’s the number—I mean, I’ll answer the question about small businesses, but the number is about 100 million people don’t have, uh, insurance in the U.S. So everybody thinks everybody has insurance, but it’s—you know, it’s a whatever—it’s maybe over a third of the population that does not have insurance.

And two things happen. Well, initially—well, just year in and year out—about 70 to 80 million people don’t have dental insurance. It’s because they just don’t get it through their employer. Like, nobody buys dental insurance on their own—it all comes through the employer. So about 70 to 80 million people don’t get it, you know, through their, uh, employer.

And then another 20 or 25 million people have been added to that because of the pullback on Medicare and Medicaid that happened post-COVID. So they opened up those programs, right, as part of COVID—they’ve now pulled them back.

Dave Monahan: So another 20 or 25 million have been added on top of that 70–80 million. Uh, so we roughly say 90 to 100 million people.

Now, coming to your question about, you know, small businesses—yeah, everybody thinks, “Okay, they’re somebody’s employee, they get dental insurance.” Well, it is skewed big time toward the large employers versus the small employers. And I don’t have the stat in front of me, but I believe on the large enterprise side, it’s almost 100% of employers that offer dental insurance. On the SMB side, I think it’s about 40% that offer dental insurance.

So to answer your question, it’s like 60% or so of those small businesses do not offer dental insurance to their employees.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. There’s so much opportunity out there. Uh, you—you actually mentioned a point about people just buying their own dental insurance. It just—it doesn’t happen, and they’re not good plans.

When—I haven’t had that conversation in a while, but when we were first building our plan and, and starting to go out of network, we had patients mention—or they, they, you know, they lost their job—that “I’m just gonna go out and get my own dental insurance,” and it’s just, um, the clauses they have in there and, and, uh, the amount they have to pay… Having your own membership plan is just so much better, um, for you and them.

Now, Dave, what would you say for a brand-new dental office? Um, I’m opening my practice tomorrow. I have no patients, I have no insurance. How would a membership plan help me from day one?

Dave Monahan: Uh, so I would—the—it’ll do everything I just sort of, uh, talked about. So if a new patient—obviously they’re all new patients if it’s a brand-new de novo office—but it makes that patient commit to care, right? And so what you’re getting right when they first walk into your office is a commitment to your office for at least 12 months. And you can do a lot in 12 months to keep them for another 12 months, right? And another 12 months.

So for me, for a new office, it’s about retaining, right? You’re spending a lot of money to get that office up and going. You get a patient to walk in the door—you just can’t afford for them to not come back. So it’s that retention. And then once they’re in the chair, you know, with the subscription, they’re going to, you know, purchase a lot more care.

Dave Monahan: So I think as a, uh, a new office, it’s the perfect thing to introduce right from the very get-go—that you are a membership, you know, sort of driven practice. And that’s something you should position to every patient in your office.

And you made a point, Eric, and I didn’t mention this, but even some, uh, patients with insurance—it’s—there’s no value in the insurance at all. Most insurance is probably that way, but there are some that are just horrendous, right? And so I’d also ask your patients who are coming in with insurance: what type of insurance do they have? Where did they get it, right? How much are they paying for it?

Because the membership plan would be much better for them in a lot of cases—’cause most insurance is pretty poor.

Dr. Eric Block: Yeah. And the psychological barriers that come along with, with the insurance regarding the annual maximum and, um, you know, “I just can’t do that treatment this year, I’ll wait until next year.” Um, most of that goes away when you have your own in-house plan.

Dave, this was, uh, an amazing, uh, episode. Um, I wanted to end with two final questions. Number one, how do we find out more about Kleer? And number two, what advice would you give to the young dental professional out there?

Dave Monahan: So to find out more about Kleer, just go to kleer.com.  And you can get all kinds of information out there. You can also, if you want, schedule a demo with our sales consultants, who will help you see the, the, you know, the actual platform. And they will also talk to you about the type of designs, uh, that you can go with. So, uh, that’s a good way to learn more.

And then as far as, uh, sort of advice, I think dentistry’s entering a really interesting phase. And like, between things like membership plans, you know, 3D imaging, you got AI—like, it’s changing, and it’s changing pretty rapidly.

And the one thing—I was—the advice I was given, actually, when I first entered dentistry, is “you’ll never be able to scale anything in dentistry.” Like, there’s just too—it’s like everybody’s telling me it’s like herding cats, right? There’s people all over the place and things have been done in a certain way for such a long period of time.

So my advice is—don’t let the future be dictated by the past. Like, rethink things through. Like, as far as look at AI, look at 3D imaging, look at membership plans. There’s all kinds of other things out there. Like, don’t just take that somebody used to do it in a way, right, and that’s the way it should be done in the future. Rethink it.

And set up your office to be—and yourself to be—successful, right? And, uh, I just think there’s so much opportunity there with these types of technologies to not get stuck in the past.

Dr. Eric Block: Uh, that is— that is such good advice. And I—I recommend to all the dentists out there—it is so re-energizing as a dentist to add something new. Uh, it could be something as big as a, you know, a 3D printer, CBCT, or as small as a new technique to get someone numb.

But when you add something new and you’re, you’re adding new treatments and technology, you overcome that hamster wheel of dentistry, and you re energize—re energize yourself. Uh, because otherwise this can be a long career. So, um, add—embrace—I agree—embrace the technology, you know, do it strategically, and get yourself educated.

But I love that advice—not to get hung up on the past. Um, that’s good stuff.

Um, Dave, thank you so much for joining us. Such a great interview. Dave Monahan.

Thanks again for listening to The Dentist Podcast. And don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at info@thestressfreedentist.com.  And if you haven’t already, please subscribe on your favorite platform and leave us a review.

Until the next episode, I’m Dr. Eric Block, the Stress Free Dentist.