Australasian Dentist Issue 92

AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST 137 RETAILING D ental 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 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 a practice can add an additional $10,000 of EBIT per dentist per year while improving patient care. 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: 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 online resources and guide Interpreting the legislation can be daunting – Acumen Dental has put the steps into plain language so the team can follow them step by step and comply with the legislation Pharmacy suppliers have been reluctant to provide products to dentist for fear of disenfranchising local pharmacies who 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. 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. Dentists have looked at the cost time/ benefit equation and considered it too much work – Acumen Dental suggests that dentists 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. Economics of dental dispensing: consider a single dentist who sees around 3,000 appointments a year. Over the past 20 years we have observed practices that implement the program provide/dispense either a medication or OTC (over the counter) product to about 25-30% of the patients – around 1,000 patients per year. We recommend a flat fee of $29.95 so that would generate CASE STUDY – Dental dispensing By Mike Ryan B. Ec, B. Jp MBA, DBA around $30,000 in extra revenue per dentist per year. But, they are the practices who implement the program perfectly 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 will still generate $10,000 in revenue and about $8,000 in EBIT. 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. There is no excuse for a 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. u Mike Ryan