It may be difficult to understand how the types of payment options you provide in a dental office may affect overall patient dental care, but there is an important correlation.
More and more people today do not have dental insurance through their employer or through a private insurance plan, or they may have only a dental plan where they pay and then submit receipts to be reimbursed. For these patients, which will be the majority in most practices, the option to use a credit card makes all the difference.
A Patient’s Choice
Having the option to provide dental credit card processing in the office is going to impact the level and type of dental care the patient sees as affordable. Usually, when talking to a patient about a treatment or procedure the first question they will ask is the cost.
The next question will typically be if it needs to be completed immediately, and this usually indicates the patient is viewing the cost as an obstacle in obtaining the treatment as recommended.
When the patient has the choice to use credit, and this only happens when the office offers dental credit card processing, there is the ability to get the necessary treatment without delay and then pay off the credit card over time.
Payment Plans
In the past, offices that didn’t offer dental credit card processing may have offered payment plans to the patient. This may have included a percentage due at the completion of the treatment or procedure, and then a monthly payment until paid in full.
From a dental office efficiency point of view, this is a much less favorable option than simply processing the card at the time of the treatment. Payment plans come with the need for reminders, additional costs in mailing bills, issues with tracking down non-paying patients and even potential loss of patients over billing issues.
Payment plans also take up a lot of staff time. Not only does the staff have to monitor the accounts for payment, but they also have the enter each payment as it is submitted.
By using a credit card processing company that offers integration with the existing patient management software, this is all done as the credit card payment is processed. Simply having this in place can save hours in data entry, reconciling payments and patient records, and in dealing with errors that can occur between record and payment systems.