Hi, everyone. This is Brian Zimmerman with the
Becker's Healthcare podcast.
Thank you so much for tuning in today.
I'm joined today by Chelsea Pava,
enterprise customer success manager groups at Clear and
MemberC for a conversation focused on dental practice
same store growth. Chelsea, thanks so much for
being on the podcast today.
Of course. It's great to be here. Thanks
for having me.
Of course. And and and to lay the
groundwork here for the conversation to come, can
you just share a bit more about your
your professional background,
FLIR, and just, you know, give give our
listeners some context as we move into the
conversation here?
Yeah. Of course. I mean, like you said,
I'm enterprise customer success manager at Clear and
Membersy.
So
we are the all in one membership plan
solution.
We serve over 20,000 dentists across the US,
and I personally support
our large groups and DSOs
in driving same store growth through these dental
membership plans. My main focus
is to form beneficial partnerships,
leverage technology,
strategic insights,
and just improve operational efficiency,
maximize bottom line impact.
I work with executive teams across the board
to make sure that the DSOs are operating
at the highest level possible.
Excellent. I I appreciate you laying that out.
And I wanna start with a with a
high level question here just to, again, sort
of give folks some context to work with.
How would you really describe the concept of
same store growth,
and why is this concept particularly relevant to
dental practices right now?
I would say for dental teams, same store
growth is,
you know, the primary focus on maximizing
efficiencies and cash flow across existing practice locations
compared to the previous year. So
looking at today versus last year, how are
we doing?
Rather than working to drive growth through acquisitions.
And there's a lot of reasons why practices
are making same store growth a priority.
I think that the primary driver is inflation
these days.
If we look within, we have large opportunity
rather than acquiring new, so I'm excited to
get into that.
Absolutely. And and when you see folks sort
of undertake some of these same store growth
initiatives, you know, really trying to drive
drive that revenue, drive that growth
without an acquisition. I guess, what are some
common pitfalls or mistakes you see dental practices
make when they're doing that work?
I think it's easy to first prioritize new
patient acquisition,
but that's allocating money and time and resources
and looking for fast results.
But, you know, looking into research,
it's only 40% of new patients complete a
second appointment.
This is wasting
marketing expenses.
It's losing revenue each year. And it's not
that you shouldn't prioritize new patients,
but it becomes harder to forecast and and
assess the long term ROI
if systems aren't built to improve patient loyalty
and retention from the start. So
looking within
instead of looking out for new,
again, huge opportunity there,
across the board.
Yeah. And that's a that's sort of easy
to to conceptualize too. If you're getting distracted
trying to bring in new patients, it's easy
to
to think that that might translate into you're
not focusing as much on those patients that
you do have in terms of, how you
allocate resources. Am I am I reading that
correctly?
Exactly. We wanna increase loyalty. We want our
patients to continue to come back. New is
great, but how do we maximize the folks
that we know? How do we build better
relationships
with the patients that are coming in? How
do we get them to behave in a
way that helps us with this same store
growth?
Yeah. And and digging in that into that
how to then, Chelsea, what tools or strategies
would you recommend
to dental practices really striving to to to
achieve that same store growth?
Any specific case studies or success stories come
to mind that really highlight this?
Yeah. Of course. I would say a case
study that comes to mind for me is,
Pearl Street Dental Partners. This is a partner
that, I've been working with for a long
time.
They looked inside,
to manage patient relationships.
Their team had set their sights on improving
case acceptance,
production, and retention, like we were saying, through
membership plans.
So by choosing Clear and MemberSeq,
as a partner, they've generated over $2,000,000
in subscription revenue.
That's
not insurance. That is not reimbursements.
That is dollars and cents directly back to
the practices.
It equated to a 150%
increase in production,
and this was only across 18 locations.
So the opportunity is is huge. It's vast.
I would say even on a smaller scale,
a smaller group has the same opportunity.
Cataluchi Dental Group, they're based in North Carolina.
They have about 35,000
patients. Their goal was very similar, improve coverage
for patients,
reduce the high cost of dealing with insurance,
and drive revenue into the business.
They have about 4 locations. I wanna say
maybe 5 now.
$400,000
in subscription revenue. So,
you know, the impact is huge
in in
looking at same store growth, and this was
not new patients. This was looking at their
current
inventory of uninsured patients and maximizing that opportunity.
And you mentioned there are a couple of
ways that these these practices were thinking about
success, you know, case acceptance,
reducing costs.
Can you say more about sort of the
the metrics and benchmarks
practice leaders should really pay attention to here
when they're trying to to tell that success
story to to measure it?
Of course. I think it begins in looking
at production per visit.
You know, it's looking at retention. A specific
benchmark where we measure success is
a 75%
retention rate on these uninsured patients.
And if you have
incomplete treatment plans,
you're not gonna get to that retention rate.
I think retention is a huge factor here.
So anywhere between 65 to 75%
is a really good
goal to aim for when when you're looking
at something like this.
I appreciate that. Let's let's zoom in now
on sort of the role
membership plans can play here in driving same
store growth. Can can you share some of
the key steps and considerations for really starting
out or or getting a strategy like that
off the ground? And what excites you about
the future potential and possibilities for for this
the membership plan strategy in particular?
Of course. Yeah. You you know, you likely
have a database of
inactive and uninsured patients who are avoiding care
and treatment due to lack of access to
coverage. So the question to ask yourself is
how you can start to maximize the value
of these patients.
Working to bridge the coverage gap is huge
opportunity for dental teams. It not only ensures
patients access to care, but fosters a level
of loyalty
and moves patients closer to your business.
So looking at
those metrics internally,
looking at your uninsured patient base, making sure
that you're looking at unscheduled treatment,
likely they are out there, and it's an
opportunity to jump on by using a membership
plan
as the catalyst to move that forward.
You know, what excites me about this is
there are millions
of people that do not have dental insurance.
The dental membership plan is the perfect way
to give access to care to these patients,
get people to agree to hygiene, to make
sure that they are healthy, that they are
loyal to your practice, and that is a
bonus to your community
as a dental practice.
Well, Chelsea, I appreciate you coming on today.
I think you've given our listeners a lot
of,
truly actionable insights and and really helped unpack
this idea of same store growth
and where folks can be effective here. Is
there anything we didn't cover or any final
thoughts, anything you'd like to reemphasize with our
listeners before I let you go?
I would say that, the only thing that
I would close with here is, you know,
whether you are a dentist with one location,
multiple locations, or you're a DSO with many
offices,
now is the time to focus on the
growth of your existing practice.
With the help of a dental membership,
you can easily increase your cash flow by
focusing on
maximizing the value of your existing patients.
It's a solution that is cheaper, it's easier,
and more effective than a sole focus on
acquisition.
So
A strong way to end the conversation. Thank
you so much, Chelsea. Thanks for coming on
the podcast. Thank you.
I'd also like to thank CLEAR Membersey
as well for sponsoring this episode. You can
tune to more podcasts from Becker's Healthcare by
visiting our podcast page atbeckerspodcast.com.