Managing a dental plan “in-house” can sometimes be perceived as a low-cost means of offering patients a membership plan. Still, it’s important to consider the pros and cons of adopting this approach versus working with a dental plan provider such as Patient Plan Direct (PPD). The cost-benefit analysis can often lean towards an “in-house” approach, which is more work than expected.
A service like GoCardless or Stripe or working with a plan solution primarily oriented only around administration without wider expert support can sometimes be a false economy.
As the most cost-effective major plan provider, with admin fees often 2-3 times less than other providers in the market, PPD identifies itself as the perfect middle-ground solution to ensure your practice can maximize the plan income it retains while benefiting from cloud-based technology, training, and support specifically tailored to the needs of dental practices.
Below are a range of considerations to help you weigh the pros and cons of an ‘in-house’ solution versus using a specific dental plan provider, such as PPD.
Payment Method
Standing orders
Collecting a recurring plan fee by standing orders relies on your patient setting up this fixed, regular payment with their bank, i.e., it’s an instruction from their bank to pay you regularly. The main issue with using standing orders is that when your practice needs to increase its plan fees, you are reliant on the patient making this amendment at their end. It can often be the case that some patients do and others don’t, leaving you with inconsistent plan fees and/or having to chase people.
Recurring card payments
Using a service such as Stripe to collect recurring card payments can be attractive due to a low processing fee (usually around 2% of the transaction value). Still, when the patient’s card expires every few years, there’s a necessary call to action for patients to update their card details, which, if not action, can result in missed payments.
Challenges with payment methods like standing orders and card payments can lead to extra admin work, which is not desirable in a dental practice’s already busy nature.
Direct Debit
Direct Debit is the best means of managing plan payment collections. A Direct Debit is an instruction from a patient to allow you to take a regular payment from them and change the amount in the future as long as you give patients advance notification (at least 10 days, although we advise at least one month, ideally longer) of any such change. If a patient changes their banks, then Direct Debits are automatically transferred. Direct Debit is the payment method PPD utilises.
It’s important to check a provider is an accredited facilities management provider under the Bacs scheme when working with a third party to manage Direct Debit’s on your behalf.
You could process Direct Debits yourself, but this requires your own sponsorship of the Bacs scheme, which isn’t guaranteed to be provided by your bank. Even with sponsorship, you’ll need staff trained in the rules surrounding Direct Debit collections, software to manage collections, and Bacs submissions directly or via a bureau service. In short, all very time-consuming and complex.
Day-to-day management and reporting
Reporting and tracking
It’s important to consider the admin associated with the solution you use to help reconcile, manage clinician remuneration, and easily keep track of KPIs such as:
- New joiners
- Cancellations
- Failed collections and any auto retry functionality (not all providers reattempt failed collections, but PPD do)
- Patient transitions from one plan to another
- Notifications when children turn a certain age may determine a change of plan.
- PPD’s cloud-based portal provides all of the above and a variety of other reports specifically tailored to dental practices at the click of a button.
Collection date/s
Some solutions may offer the ability to set up recurring collections on different days of the month. Be conscious that having multiple collection dates with funds hitting your practice bank account at various times of the month can make payroll management and general plan management more challenging.
PPD collects from patients on the 1st of each month and auto-retires any failed collections 10 days later to maximize the chances of successful collection and keep things consistent and simple to manage.
Talking to third-party platforms
General payment platforms and solutions are unlikely to be able to connect with other dental-specific software you may use in your practice. PPD’s cloud-based platform has a built-in API that allows it to talk to other third-party platforms automatically. Our range of reports are also built with compatibility in mind. Examples of how we have integrated with third-party platforms include:
- Reporting compatible with the DSO associate pay platform, Caragon
- API integration with practice management software (PMS)
Sign-up process and options
Some of the benefits of using PPD over a payment processing solution when it comes to patient sign-up include but are not limited to:
- Professional-looking sign-up forms in a practice’s branding versus using a generic fintech sign-up page/process
- Clarity for patients what their plan patient is related to thanks to an obvious bank reference; “Dental Practice”. An alternative generic reference on a patient’s bank statement may confuse them, resulting in them cancelling their plan payment
- Practices offering their own plan arrangements can often accumulate many plans, including different benefits at different price points. This can sometimes snowball, making things confusing. While PPD offers complete flexibility for you to offer any type of plan, we can also help you to keep things organized and optimised
- PPD offers a variety of sign-up options to suit different patient needs and maximise sign-up success:
- Online link
- QR code
- Form on device in practice
- Telephone
- Paper-based
- We offer the option to adopt plan terms and conditions specific to a dental plan. An alternative solution may require setting and managing your terms and conditions and/or sending them separately.
Support and training
- Working with a large fintech payments provider that may not be familiar with dentistry and/or plans could mean support is limited, often by email or chatbot rather than being able to pick up the phone with a real person. You may find you feel like a small fish in a big pond.
- Often, practices that manage things in-house risk having a single (or minimal) point of failure—one of two people in the practice who know how things work. If they are on annual leave, resign, maternity or paternity leave, etc., then the plan management processes can fail. With the support of PPD, you have the reassurance of a dedicated team available to train new team members and understand your practice’s unique plan arrangements inside out.
- Offering a plan is one thing, but consistently promoting it and nurturing strong sign-ups effectively is another. As PPD is not an admin-only service, we provide team training to nurture plant growth and act as an accountability partner to help you reach your respective plan objectives.
- When you want to increase your plan fees from time to time, PPD can support you with guidance around getting this right, communicating the change to patients (mail or email) in line with Direct Debit scheme rules, liaising with patients about the fee increase, and managing patient communications. Our dedicated team proactively engages with you to manage fee increases at any point throughout the year.
- Should your practice ever decide to manage any type of NHS conversion (full or partial), we have dedicated resources to help assess viability and manage such a transition as successfully as possible—not something you’ll get with a payment processing-only solution.
- PPD is committed to developing its service and technology specifically for the needs of dental practices and welcomes feedback and ideas to further enhance our overall proposition, unlike a solution operating across multiple sectors with a wide array of client types.
- PPD provides the design and printing of promo material as standard, easing the pressure of sorting this critical reference point under your own steam with an ‘in-house’ approach.
Fees
- PPD adopts a transparent tiered fee structure with an admin fee that includes VAT and a comprehensive global A&E cover for patients. We also have a “your investment explained” document that clearly outlines any other fees associated with our solution.
- When evaluating any payment processing solution, look for fees that exclude VAT—this is important for practices that are unable to offset VAT.
- Other fees may be charged in addition to processing admin fees. These could include extra costs for branded options, certain features, monthly management fees, processing fees, and minimum thresholds.
- PPD offers a net pay report showing the net amounts due to each clinician offering plan (after our admin fees). This can make managing payroll a lot easier. However, how fees are charged and reported with another solution complicates things.
Supplementary A&E cover
- A payment processing solution will not offer patients the supplementary global A&E cover PPD offers as standard, strengthening your plan proposition.
- Although A&E cover is not the core of any plan offering, it’s an amazing benefit that provides plenty of peace of mind.
- The cover benefits both the patient and the practice. For example, if a patient has a nasty accident covered under the A&E scheme, thanks to support from the scheme, they will limit their costs to access the treatment they require, and the practice could benefit from an extensive treatment plan.
Longer term
If you have an in-house plan, handing over to a new vendor when selling your practice can be more challenging, which could put potential buyers off. They may not want to take on the same admin processes, or the financial insight as part of a due diligence process may be more challenging without the support of a dedicated provider who understands the dynamics of a change of ownership.