NewsletterPractice Activator has been shown to increase dentists' take-home income by 15% to 30% with no expensive equipment to buy and maintain, no training, and no staff or doctor time to use, while improving the overall care dentists provide to their patients. Taking an unconventional approach that uniquely incorporates the best of computer science and artificial intelligence and applying it to dentistry, Practice Activator is an e-service that identifies and effectively reactivates patients who need dental care but are not getting it. This includes patients who are non-responsive (to recall cards, e-mails, or even phone calls) and those who need additional treatments but have not started or followed through, whether they have treatment plans or not. Practice Activator analyzes the electronic record of patients and creates personalized letters based on the targeted patients' history and demographics, then sends the letters on behalf of the dentist. The personalized nature of these letters consistently generates an unusually high return response from patients, resulting in remarkably high returns on investment (ROI) of 400% to 700%. This e-service does not replace existing staff recall efforts, but picks up where recall becomes unsuccessful or ineffective (and it invariably does at some point).
A GOOD INVESTMENT (1.) Data from 40+ dental practices shows the average ROI increasing as service length increases, reaching 600% to 700% in 4 to 5 months.
Figure 1 shows some very interesting trends based on data from actual customers. This data covers a wide range of time periods (1 to 9.5 months), office size (from $300,000 to $3 million in annual production) and total investment spent on Practice Activator ($300 to $10,400). Some interesting conclusions:
Optimal spending is proportional to office size. Even if a small office wants to spend more money to get a larger production increase, ActionRun would not recommend it. This is because Practice Activator works on analyzing and reactivating the existing patients of a practice, and the number of existing patients is proportional to the practice size. For a smaller practice, the number of patient records that can be analyzed and reactivated is smaller, and therefore the optimal investment is smaller. It is possible to get results with very small investments in a short period of time. For example, data from the New York practice Table 1 shows that in a mere 3 weeks, Practice Activator tripled the relatively modest $600 investment.
Over time, returns from Practice Activator service actually increased. As shown in Figure 1 and Table 1, returns have increased from 3x to 7x as length of service grew from 1 to 9.5 months. Practice Activator gets the patient to return by focusing on one or two top conditions based on the patient's health record. A consistently high number of non-responsive patients call back. It usually takes a letter recipient 2 to 3 weeks to call to set up an appointment, and several more weeks to get the work done. As a result, a typical practice begins to see results in 2 to 3 weeks, with continued increases over time as more patients complete their appointments. It makes sense, then, that the ROI will increase and peak a couple months after the service begins; however, the actual results show continued ROI increases beyond the initial couple of months. The reason is that patients who have not been to a practice for a long time behave much like new patients. They typically need more than what was discovered by Practice Activator, which translates into many subsequent follow-up visits.
Because Practice Activator is an e-service, it runs over the Internet, with nothing to install or maintain; it is easy to use, makes money, and improves patients' dental health.
For more information, contact:
ActionRun, Inc
Phone: 800-896-7822 | Web: http://www.actionrun.com
Disclaimer
The preceding material was provided by the manufacturer. The statements and opinions contained therein are solely those of the manufacturer and not of the editors, publisher, or the Editorial Board of Inside Dentistry. The preceding is not a warranty, endorsement, or approval for the aforementioned products or services or their effectiveness, quality, or safety on the part of Inside Dentistry or AEGIS Communications. The publisher disclaims responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in the preceding material.
About the Author
This article was written by Larry Emmott, DDS. He can be reached at larryemmott@drlarryemmott.com.
