4 Things We Learned at Women in DSO's Empower and Grow Event

In March a few members of the Membersy team joined over 800 other industry colleagues out in Vegas for the Women in DSO’s annual Empower and Grow Event. It was a high-energy event with a lot of great opportunities for networking, inspiration, and business planning. With a day and a half full of presentations and learning sessions, we definitely walked away feeling inspired and educated by all the speakers and panels that shared their knowledge and insights. 

Today we want to share some of the themes and key takeaways we left with after attending Empower and Grow.

People Investment is a Top Priority

The most common theme heard across many different speakers was the importance of investing in the people who make up your practice staff. Organizations are still struggling from staffing shortages that started over three years ago as an effect of the pandemic, and these struggles have not gone away. Organizations are putting more time and money behind growing their dental assistants and hygienists and developing career growth plans to encourage stronger employee retention. As one speaker said, “If you aren’t investing in your people, that’s the biggest opportunity to grow your revenue.” 

Use Technology to Fill the Gaps

Getting more creative with how technology and services can play a role in your organization to help fill gaps left behind from staffing shortages is more important than ever. Specifically, there have been challenges around filling people roles around accounts payable, billing, and insurance verification, so looking into tools and resources that are out there to automate or streamline processes tied up in these types of jobs can help alleviate the burden of being understaffed.

Changing up the tech stack within your practice can often come with resistance and fear of change from staff so ensuring you partner with businesses that are a strong partner in helping with change management is an important consideration when looking at new tools and services.

Be Customer (or Patient) Obsessed, Especially with Marketing Efforts

Patient growth is always at the forefront of every practice’s goals and strategy. As a facilitator of improving new patient growth, the data and knowledge around your existing patient base is gold. Every practice is different when it comes to their patient base and the demographics that make up that base, and those details can play a big part in your overall practice strategy.

To reiterate the importance of your existing patient base, what if you put more efforts towards creating more stickiness and more value so that you can increase your retention rates by just a few percentage points? Some of the most talked about marketing strategies at the event were focused around shifting from transactional marketing to relational marketing by creating experiences WITH the patients, not for them. 

Doubling Down on Treatment Acceptance

Conversations around treatment acceptance are some of the biggest and most common conversations occurring on a daily basis in your dental practice. And, these conversations can be hardest with your cash paying patients when treatment plans have the highest out of pocket cost. Especially during uncertain economic times, patients are more and more apprehensive about how they spend their money. 

Offering an insurance alternative, like a membership plan that provides discounts for your cash paying patients is a great way to boost treatment acceptance rates and expand access to care that your patients need. Typically discount plans come at an annual cost and include a handful of “free” services - think x-rays, exams, and maybe even cleanings. As another perk of memberships, patients will also receive additional savings other services like fillings, crowns, and more. 

Interested in partnering with a membership plan administrator to kick off membership plans for your patients? Talk with our team today.