In-House Financing

In-office payment plans can provide major advantages for both your practice and your patients.

Benefits of offering dental in-house financing include increasing revenue with higher levels of treatment uptake and making it more affordable for patients to get the dental care they need.

How In-House Financing Can Benefit Your Practice

Offering in-house financing enables you to broaden the scope of affordable treatments and increase your practice’s profitability.

It does this by:

  • Opening up the possibility of introducing more costly treatments your patients may otherwise be unable to afford.
  • Increasing treatment acceptance – paying for treatment in installments makes it easier for patients to proceed with treatments.
  • Securing instant business – with an in-house financing package that makes it easy for patients to sign up immediately.
  • Improving cash flow – by minimizing the risk of payment defaults.
  • Eliminating the hassle of dealing with third parties and cutting out payments to middlemen.

In-practice financing may also appeal to patients who’re seeing the return on their savings dwindle – account interest rates dropped three times in 2019 alone – while credit card interest payments remain notoriously high.

Attracting New Patients

In-house financing can help you attract new patients who may have been unable to find an affordable treatment payment plan elsewhere. Being able to spread the cost of paying for goods or services has become a priority among many consumers – and dental treatment is no exception.

For the same reason, in-house financing can also be a valuable tool in patient retention – once a patient has found a better way to afford dental care, they’re likely to stay with the practice that offers it.

Offering in-house financing can also attract new patients who may have been putting off seeing a dentist for some time because of concerns about how to meet the costs.

A 2018 survey into adult oral surgeon for health and wellbeing found that 42 percent of Americans don't see a dentist as often as they would like to, although 85 percent of respondents said they understood the connection between healthy teeth and gums and their overall wellbeing.

Key In-House Financing Benefits for Patients

In-house financing means your patients can get the treatment they want, when they want it, by spreading the cost with a repayment deal that fits their budget. This also gives them access to a wider range of treatment options.

A streamlined in-house financing package allows patients to see exactly how their repayment installments will work out and makes it easy for them to sign up. It also bypasses the need to apply for third-party financing through systems such as CareCredit, with the associated substantial interest charges.

Incorporating a soft credit check in your in-house financing system will also protect your patients’ credit scores.

In-house financing not only allows patients to get restorative treatments to repair or replace teeth but also provides them with affordable cosmetic options to enhance their smile, such as veneers and teeth whitening – treatments they may otherwise be reluctant to proceed with on the grounds of cost.

Resolving Dental Insurance and Benefits Issues With In-house financing

In-house financing can be an attractive proposition for patients with limited dental insurance that may not cover the procedure they need or desire, particularly for more costly dental treatments.

Not everyone has dental insurance, and in-house financing offers them an affordable means of getting treatment. This enables your practice to encourage a new stream of patients while avoiding the bother and cost of having to deal with insurance companies.

In-house financing gives both patients with or without dental insurance or other dental benefits the peace of mind that they can go ahead with treatment without worrying about a hefty bill afterward.

As the National Association of Dental Plans (NADP) points out, individuals with dental benefits experience better oral and general health because they’re more likely to see the dentist – and make sure their children get oral health care, too.

On the other hand, those without dental benefits are more prone to illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, and osteoporosis, through failing to get professional preventive dental care such as teeth cleaning or early treatment that avoids more serious dental problems.

In-house financing removes a major barrier to people like these getting dental treatment – affordability.

Why You Should Be Considering Offering In-House Finance

Not all dentists offer in-house financing. This may be due to concerns about departing from more traditional dental care payment plan models or apprehension over how to implement an efficient in-house finance system.

These obstacles can be easily overcome thanks to the advanced technology behind digital dental in-house financing.

In fact, setting up dental in-house financing has never been more straightforward, with comprehensive packages designed to:

  • Make it easy for patients to sign up for your in-house financing plan online, either in-office or at home.
  • Virtually eliminate the risk of payment default, with the backing of leading credit agencies.
  • Allow patients to easily visualize their installments with payment sliders.
  • Avoid the possibility of damage to patients’ credit score, with a soft credit inquiry.

Other benefits of offering in-house dental financing include fostering patient loyalty and attracting new patients.

Existing patients will see the integration of in-house financing into your practice as a valuable service demonstrating your commitment to patient care.

Potential patients will also be attracted to an affordable means of getting treatment they may be unable to find from other dental practices.

Patient-Friendly In-House Financing Systems

In-house financing gives dental practices a new way to offer more affordable treatment to more patients across more procedures.

This increases your revenue and adds a further valuable service to your practice that allows patients to get the dental care they need for long-lasting oral health and general wellbeing, or to proceed with more costly cosmetic treatments.

Once a daunting prospect, setting up and maintaining an efficient in-house financing plan is more straightforward than ever, with the help of digital technology that enables a patient-friendly service including soft credit checks and payment visualization tools.

DentalROI offers several innovative patient payment solutions, including in-house financing packages, dental membership plans, and payment-by-text solutions.