Dentistry and the 'Volkswagen Problem'

If you have been following the news lately, you have no doubt heard about the big trouble Volkswagen is in for cheating on emissions regulations. Apparently, they rigged the computers on as many as 11 million cars to only kick in full emission controls when they detected that an emissions test is happening. When not being tested, the controls were relaxed, allowing the cars to be more powerful – while releasing 10 to 40 times the legal limit for emissions.

This is a classic example of taking the wrong approach to tackling a problem. The problem was to bring their cars in line with legislated emissions limits. The “solution” they used was a deceitful workaround – one they should have realized would eventually be discovered and cause the company and its customers significant long-term pain.

This came up in a conversation with a group of dentists recently, and one of them asked me, “Don’t you think we are often guilty of the same kind of thing in dentistry? I don’t mean being deceitful, but just by always trying to find a workaround on the insurance issue – with fee restrictions and treatment restrictions – instead of just doing what we know is right?”

My response was that it was a complex question. Every good dentist knows that the level of treatment available in today’s dentistry, the level of treatment they want to provide to their patients, simply doesn’t align with the many restrictions of today’s insurance policies. (And patients know this!) At the same time, patients face an economic reality that usually makes them at least partly dependent on these plans. A good practice recognizes that reality and does everything to help patients get the most from their coverage, while at the same time never suggesting that the plan’s coverage should dictate treatment.

Having said that, it is true that in too many practices the response to the insurance problem remains a form of avoidance.  Rather than working on how to change patients’ perception on insurance and how much (or rather, how little) they can expect from it, they avoid having the difficult conversation and instead try to work around the issue. They base treatment on coverage rather than need, staging treatments to carry over into the next calendar year so as to accommodate annual insurance limits, for instance. Rather than learning how to effectively communicate the value of their dentistry to the point where the patient understands that insurance is just a supplemental benefit, they play the insurance game. And they end up spending huge amounts of energy on an approach that does not drive practice growth and is ultimately not in patients’ best interests.

As the recent Volkswagen fiasco has proved, taking the workaround route to a challenge is seldom a winning option. If you’re still playing the accommodation game with insurance, I urge you to look at ways to face it head on. Start adopting the right strategies, policies and conversation starters that will get all of your different types of patients to break free of limiting insurance mindsets and to recognize the real value of what you do.

(Like this article? Click this link for more articles by Imtiaz Manji. You can also find his free ebooks here.)