Dr. Allen Nazeri (DDS, MBA) explains why dental patients often "pick and choose" items from treatment plans: itemized, code-heavy lists commoditize care and confuse patients, prompting them to question specific procedures. He recommends presenting the desired outcome and benefits (e.g., "we need two root canals and a couple of crowns to save and protect your teeth") along with a single total fee to obtain emotional commitment before providing detailed, insurance-oriented itemization. He illustrates the point with a furniture-shopping anecdote showing how seeing detailed line items can undermine perceived value and prompt second-guessing.
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Hi There, this is Dr. Allen. Welcome to my IGTV. This is a continuation of a post that I did earlier about a question that came from a dentist regarding his patients tearing a power to his treatment plan. Basically, he presents a treatment plan and they look at it and they, you know, on the certain line items or certain procedures they don't want to do. So he was asking me, what can they. What, what can he do? Well, I think one of the important things to realize is how you're presenting your treatment plan. Well, as we have talked before and you have seen my previous post, you know, we need to focus on the benefit of the treatment rather than the detail of the treatment. When you're presenting a patient with a printed out, itemized list of everything, you're basically commoditizing your work. And that is what insurance companies have done to the medical and dental professionals by creating all these procedure codes, trying to make an art and the science of medicine or dentistry into more of a commodity for their own benefits. Okay, so when we present patients with a detailed treatment such as that, patients don't understand the process, so obviously they tend to question it. So, for example, if you're presenting a patient for a tooth that needs a root canal and a crown, you probably have a tooth, a root canal, a crown, post, and a buildup. So many patients may not understand what the post and buildup is. So when you're presenting to them, they say, well, doc, can I not do the post? Can I not do the buildup? And then you start having this. Or if you're doing implants, for example, there are many.
Different CDT codes that goes into the dental implants as well. And this can become a source of confusion for patients. So my recommendation is to focus on the benefit of the treatment. So instead of having your office manager yourself presenting the patient with detailed treatment, I would just say, you know, you actually need two root canals and a couple of crowns so we can save your tooth and protect it for a very long time. And the total would be X$2000. Would that be cash, check or credit card? So it is that simple. And the question often I get asked at my seminars from my clients and their office managers is, well, doctor, I can't do that. I have to send this to the insurance company or I have to present the patient with the detail. Well, I'm not saying you don't do that. You absolutely need to do that. But first you need to have the emotional commitment of the patient that this is the desired outcome that they're looking for, and you're going to provide them with that. This reminds me of a story. I went shopping for some furniture with my wife several years ago. And we walked into this. It was an Ethan Gallery. Ethan Gallery, I think it was called in the States.
And there was a very professional salesperson that was there. He came around and he asked me how big your house is. And I give him some sort of square footage, how many bedrooms you have. And this was a brand new home. So he asked me what was my budget for the house. And I can't remember. I probably said something about 40 or $50,000 to, to furnish the entire house. And he said, okay, no problem, let's go around the showroom. And he took us around and he showed us, you know, he said, just pick whatever you want here and you know, I'll put it in the order. And you know, these sections are what, you know, would probably fit into your budget. And we all did that. And at the end of the session, you know, which lasted about, you know, maybe 45 minutes, he presented us with the total cost, which was, oh, about maybe thousand or a couple thousand dollars below our budget. So we felt very good. So we signed the papers, gave him the credit card, came back to the car, sat down with my wife and kind of went through the list. And then I saw, wow, that chair that we picked was $2,000 or the other table was $5,000. So what I was doing, in my mind, I was picking out all of the details and I was second guessing my decision. Obviously I did not go back in to, you know, cancel the order or anything like that, but this, what happens to the patient in my situation, I had already made the emotional commitment, assigned and paid for it. But when, if, if I was presented by the detail of this up front, I would probably, you know, did not have much value for $2,000 chair. Okay. And this is the whole idea. So my recommendation is to make the.
Treatment plan more, you know, approach it in such a way that is more about the benefits that the patient gets, the desired results. Once they have the emotional commitment, you're welcome to give them an itemized list file of the insurance company and so forth. If there are any other questions, please feel free to email me doctoralamcimail.com or direct message me at Instagram. I appreciate all of the questions coming in. These are all wonderful, wonderful questions. Thank you very much.
