Making Dental Patients Smile with Convenient Payments

The Path to Customer Satisfaction and a Healthy Dental Practice

Meet Miranda. She is opening her mail and sees an invoice from her dentist showing the balance owed after insurance paid their portion from her most recent dental procedure. Miranda thinks – no big deal – I will pay the $85 easily! Then she notices the payment option provided is to mail a check. She has just lost all her motivation to pay.

This is a familiar story, and many dentists realize that patients need more than a check payment option, given the proliferation of mobile devices. Their patients live in a world where mobile, online and text payments are the new standard. Dental patients would rather reach for their phone to pay instead of logging into their bank for online bill pay or worse yet, finding the check book!

It’s important that dental practices, whether new or existing, offer their patients a way to pay that is convenient. That means providing multiple options in-office, via phone or via your website. In addition, providing payment plans and recurring billing to credit cards on file is a competitive advantage as it’s easy, helps a patient with their cash flow and ensures the practice receives timely payments for services.

As you plan for next year, consider implementing the following payment options most used by our dental customers:

• Online Payments – allow your patients to make a payment by visiting a secure, payment form on your website. Most dental practices put a button in the top right-hand corner that says, “Make a Payment”.
• Text & Email Payments – send a payment link to your patients via a text message or email. They simply click and pay – much faster and more convenient, improving your cash flow.
• Contactless Payments – in today’s environment, payment via Apple Pay or Google Pay allows for safe, healthy options without passing a credit card back and forth.
• Automated, Recurring Payments – some patients will need a payment plan and that’s where recurring, automated payments come in handy. Simply enter the credit card information in a secured payment vault, from your merchant services provider. Schedule the date and amount of the monthly payment. That’s all you need to do – the payment will be processed each month.

Back to Miranda – she realizes she has also received a text message from her dentist. With a sigh of relief, she clicks the link in the text, fills out the payment form and is done in minutes.

Now is the time to review your patient’s experience with payments and improve it. It could make the difference in retaining your patient or losing them to another practice.

Need to add additional payment options for your practice? Contact us here.