Simon Palmer, May 2013 - Over the last 6 months, Dental Patient Surveys (www.dentalpatientsurveys.com) has been receiving survey results and statistics on patient experiences from hundreds of practices in 4 countries and it is fair to say that the data and analysis we have received have given us an unparalleled view of a dental patient’s journey through a dental practice. What they like, what ticks them off, and where practices should focus their attention to make the biggest impact on patient growth and attrition.

The results of the surveys have been predictable in some areas and very surprising in others. For example, the two worst-rated parts of a patient’s experience in a dental practice relate to fees and punctuality. Fees being consistently rated the worst part of the experience.

You may say it is unsurprising that that patients think their dentist is expensive and don’t like it when they are kept waiting. However it is surprising when you look a little closer at the results.

High fees and dissatisfaction
If I asked people to tell me in advance what relationship they thought patient surveys would show between fees and satisfaction levels with those fees, most would say:

- Almost all patients will say that they feel that their dentist’s fees are too high.
- The higher the fees are, the lower the level of satisfaction will be with those fees.
- Patients in lower economic areas will probably rate their satisfaction with fees lower.

The surprising results
What was predictable is that almost all patients said they feel that their dentist’s fees are high. However, what is surprising is that high fees and dissatisfaction with those fees are not as strongly correlated as you would think.

We have found that:
1. Higher rates of dissatisfaction with fees don’t seem to correlatewith lower economic areas.
2. When two practices in the same socio-economic area have different fees, higher rates of dissatisfaction with fees don’t seem to correlate with the higher fee practices.
3. Two practitioners in the same practice, doing the same procedures with the same fees will have drastically different ratings for how their patients perceive fees.

What does this mean?
It is easy to look at the results of a patient survey, see the dissatisfaction about your practice’s fees, throw your arms up and say there is nothing you can do. However, the analysis of the statistics that we are seeing from patients tells a very different story. A patient’s judgement on the fees involved with any service is not a judgement on the amount of money involved in isolation. It is a judgement of the value for money.

Simply put: a dentist who wants to achieve higher levels of patient satisfaction regarding their fees doesn’t need to reduce their fees but raise the patient’s perception of value provided.

Making patients think that dental fees are cheap will indeed be near impossible. But this is not the challenge in front of you as a practice. The actual challenge is increasing the perception of value for money in the practice...and this is actually not that hard.

In order for your patients to perceive that you are providing value for an expensive service:
- the aesthetics of the practice need to be commensurate.
- the service levels provided by the team to be commensurate.

But this is not enough. The last surprising discovery that we mentioned above was that two dentists in the same practice, with the same fees, were getting drastically different ratings for how their patients perceived their fees... and when we checked....the fees were the same across the clinicians in the practice!

The only way this can be explained is that there is something that each dentist is themselves responsible for, that builds a sense of value in their patients’ minds. It most likely has to do with:
- a feeling of authority and confidence that the dentist has about themselves,
- the dentist’s ability to build rapport with the patient,
- the dentist’s ability to explain the treatment needed, which helps the patients understand the value that they are getting,
- the dentist’s ability to show empathy.

The communications skills gap in dental practices are further reflected in most negative feedback seen on review sites for dentists. The negative review is not usually that the fees of the practice are simply too high. The negative review usually says something like “You should have seen the way that the dentist tried to sell me treatment” or ”The dentist told me I needed thousands of dollars of treatment and went on to describe it AS A PREVENTATIVE MEASURE!?!”

Having good communication skills is not in ones’ genes. They are skills that can be taught, trained and need to be maintained like any skill.

Conclusion
The next time you hear a negative comment about your fees, don’t rush to drop them. The chances are that the problem is NOT with the level your fees are at. It is much more probable that there is a lack of perceived value, because of a gap in communication skills with the patient and/or practice.

The best way to analyse if this is the case in your practice is to implement patient surveys (www.dentalpatientsurveys.com) on an iPad at the reception post treatment and to look into learning the communication skills that help build rapport and explain treatment in such a way as to build the value proposition in the patient’s eyes. The Primespeak seminars (now only 1 day) teach this skill. It was developed in Australia and now it being taught in the US, UK, NZ, HK and Singapore.

As mentioned before, the second worst-rated part of the patient experience is punctuality. While again this is probably to be expected, there are some surprises that analysis of the statistics on this issue will show. We will discuss this in next month’s article.