Australasian Dentist Issue 93

CATEGORY AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST 131 Introduction Dental dispensing is a great service for the patient and the dental practice it provides dentists and their teams with more control over the treatment, improved compliance and a reduction in the pain and discomfort patients experience after treatment. It’s great for the patient, convenient, easy to follow and saves time and often money if they can claim via item number 927 allowed for by most health funds. For the practice as a business, it provides an easy to establish additional income stream and improves patient retention and treatment satisfaction. One challenge with introducing a new program into a practice (that is often already very busy) is how to execute and set up systems and a team approach to ensure the program is easy to implement and maintain At Acumen Dental we provide all the resources, tools and tips to ensure a practice can implement dental dispensing easily with the least fuss and maximum economic benefit. Well-implemented in a practice, dispensing can add an additional $10,000 of EBIT per dentist per year while improving patient care. i. Case Summary Dental practices have been able to dispense medication since the 1980’s legally. In fact, most practices dispense every day in the form of an injection and other compounded materials such as composites. Dentists are provided with a script pad and have all the tools they need to dispense pain relief, antimicrobial treatment and calmatives if they follow a few simple processes. The issues and Acumen solutions have been: 1. dentists did not know how to set up such protocols, they are not taught how to dispense as part of their degree – Acumen Dental have provided a comprehensive On-line Resources and How to Guide 2. interpreting the legislation can be daunting – Acumen Dental have put the steps into plain language so the team can follow them step by step and comply with the legislation 3. pharmacy suppliers have been reluctant to provide products to dentist for fear of disenfranchising local pharmacies with spend much more with the wholesaler – Acumen Dental as a specialist pharmaceutical wholesaler can provide all the products dental teams need in one simple on-line location 4. The Resources and tools have in the past not been assembled in one place so that a practice can easily implement a dispensing program – Acumen Dental website www.acumen.dental has solved this 5. Dentists have looked at the cost (time) / benefit equation and considered it too much work – Acumen Dental suggests dentist not set up the program but that it is set up by an administration or clinical auxiliary team member as project leader and then implements the program by following the Acumen Dental – step by step plan. The dentist writes scripts as per normal but they are now filled in the practice. It’s that simple. 6. Economics of dental dispensing – consider a single dentist that sees between 12-16 patients per day say 4 days per week and say this dentist works 46 weeks per year (to be conservative) that’s around 3,000 appointments a year. Over the past 20 years we have noticed practices that implement the program well will provide/dispense either a medication or OTC (over the counter) product to about 25-30% of the patients they see so somewhere around 1,000 patients per year some of whom may buy repeats on subsequent visits – we recommend a flat fee of $29.95 so that would generate around $30,000 in extra revenue per dentist per year. But, they are the practices who implement the programperfectly as we do in our own family practice. The cost of the product is around $5-7 on average so the costs are around $6,000 leaving around $24,000 in gross margin per practitioner. However, even practices where the dentist does a third of this say 10% of patients that will still generate $10,000 in revenue and about $8,000 in EBIT – most are somewhere in the middle depending on their mix of dentistry and philosophy towards the products and solutions the patients need. ii. Central Concern(s) The primary roadblock is normally the philosophy of the dentist and the perceived amount of work verses reward. Our approach is to have a team member (not the dentist) be project leader. Secondly it is successful when the team sees an incentive so if a % of the profits goes to the team in the form of bonuses, Christmas parties etc. then it is amazing how well it is often implemented and compliance is improved. As it is a team effort the Resources provided FREE on the Acumen website for practices that support Acumen and the advice and customer service and back up, we provide makes it easy for the whole team to do their part in implementing and maintaining the plan – in a group setting – running a competition / league table of performance with a clear incentive for the best performing teams may be a way to “game-ify” the implementation. iii. Insight – what we have found that works The program needs to be presented as improving patient care and clinical outcomes – not about the additional income. It only really works with a team approach with no one person, especially not the dentist, carrying the project iv. Conclusion Acumen Dental provides all the resources a dental practice needs including advice in one easy to access location. For the first time there is no excuse for dental practice to send patients and income out of their practice to pharmacies and supermarkets when they can provide a time and cost effective solution to their patients. In fact, it could be said that dental practices have a duty of care to provide this solution if able to. Acumen Dental provides the introduction of an irresistible, implementable plan to keep more funds in your practices that will be a win-win for all involved. Acumen Dental is in a position to help you make this happen. u Dr Mike Ryan (DBA) – Acumen Dental Dispensing go to https://acumen.dental, see YouTube, contact at info@acumen.dental – fax to 03 9568 2885 or write to PO Box 608, Carnegie, Vic 3163 RE AILING CASE STUDY – Dental dispensing By Mike Ryan B. Ec, B. Jp MBA, DBA Mike Ryan