The History of Private Practice
Well, it used to be profitable…
You have come to Empower DDS because something is wrong with your practice. You cannot put your finger on it, but things are not working like they used to. You feel like you are working harder, but making the same or less. How is this happening?
The answer…lies in lowered reimbursements!
Our results suggest that for 69% of adults, total spending after including premiums actually exceeds the “market” value of their dental care.
ADA HPI Brief – An Analysis of Dental Spending Among Adults with Private Dental Benefits
Running a practice used to be a lot easier.
You provide great dentistry and you get paid fairly for it, simple right? Sometime around 2010, your reimbursements started staying the same or going down, and your costs kept going up.
When was the last time you received a significant raise in your fee schedule? Sure, you may get one or two codes lifted, but the majority continue to shrink further and further. Now we’re even starting to see that offices are losing money in their hygiene department.
Yes, it is possible to come to work and lose money.
Suggested overhead for General Dentists is 59%, yet the median overhead for practices is 74.62%.
Dental Economics – How does your overhead compare to national averages?
All of this indicates that patients must not be paying anything for their insurance, right? Wrong! Dental benefit costs have been steadily increasing over the last 20 years. So what is happening?
The patient is paying more and the office is receiving less. Take a guess where all that money going.
14.4% of patients bypass treatment because they either cannot afford it or insurance will not cover the procedure. That is over 1,000,000 patients per year!
- All of this has lead to issues within your practice.
- Your patients are starting to only accept treatment that insurance “covers”.
- It is becoming borderline unprofitable to run your own practice?
- Do you feel like the water is coming in and you are close to drowning in it all?
