How to be prepared for the coming government dental scheme

Dr Phillip Palmer, March 2013 - In the wake of the cancelled government dental scheme last year (the CDDS), the dental industry gave little attention given to the new $4.1 billion Dental Reform package announced to start in 2014.

This is probably due to the healthy scepticism as to whether this scheme will ever actually eventuate and, if so, what compromises might be put in place beforehand. However, assuming for a minute, that it does go ahead, there will no doubt be rewards for those practices that have positioned themselves correctly. So how should a practice position itself to make the most of the coming scheme?

There were three initiatives announced as part of the package. This article will focus on just one: the Child Dental Benefits Schedule (CDBS) due to be introduced 1 January 2014. The details of this initiative that were released are:

• Around 3.4 million children aged 2-17 in families who meet a means test will be eligible for benefits each year.
• Services for basic essential dental treatment, such as check-ups, x-rays, fillings and extractions will be included. The total benefit entitlements will be capped at $1,000 per child over a two year period. High-end (crowns, bridges, root canal) and orthodontic items are excluded.

Why should you care ?

I know many dentists who don’t enjoy seeing kids for one reason or another: they are often difficult patients to deal with, have a higher than average incidence of dentist-phobia and from a purely financial point of view they may not be particularly profitable patients either. So why should you care about kids? here are 5 reasons:

1. If the much prophesised oversupply of dentists is as bad as reports would have us believe, we can’t really afford to exclude large demographics in our patient base.
2. There will be some practices that will be able to be built on the back of this scheme (just as there were on the last scheme) because there is no more effective advertising for any expensive service than “You won’t have to pay for it”.
3. While high end (crowns, bridges, root canal) and orthodontic items are excluded from the scheme, having patients come in on the scheme will no doubt bring opportunities for diagnosis of work that would have to be done outside the scheme.
4. A mother will often go where the kids go (why would she go somewhere else herself if she didn’t have to).
5. There is a reason Apple and many other top companies give discounts to students – kids grow up!

How do you position yourself for this scheme?

The first way a practice should position itself for this scheme is to make sure your practice is child friendly. There are the obvious ways, like making sure the waiting room has children’s toys, magazines, books or video games and not fragile items and sharp corners on the coffee table. Having children’s toothbrushes and toothpaste on hand instead of just the adult versions is also a good idea.

For those of you who want to really embrace the child market there is also dental equipment and education aids geared towards children. The attached photos show some examples that we saw at the IDS in Cologne in March this year.

Another way to position your practice for the scheme is to develop relationships with the local schools and/ or sports teams. I have seen practices sponsor childrens sports teams or give free mouthguards to a school sporting team. I’ve also seen dental practices manage a booth at school fetes.

You could also do some courses in clinical work that children 2-17 are likely to need, such as orthodontics.

What if you do all of this and the scheme doesn’t happen?

As mentioned above, there is a lot of healthy scepticism as to whether this scheme will ever eventuate and, if so, what compromises might be put in place beforehand. It may well be that these new government initiatives were just political posturing in order to allow them to cancel the previous scheme with minimised backlash from the public. It may well be that the scheme is postponed, compromised or cancelled before it ever starts. It wouldn’t be the first time the government announced a plan for something that didn’t eventuate.

However, if this proposed scheme doesn’t happen and you have gone through the preparation above - what have you lost? You still reap the rewards of making your practice more desirable to a large demographic in your potential patient base. The preparation done for this scheme will reap you rewards regardless of whether the scheme goes ahead or not.