If I were going to buy something nice: a good meal, a weekend in a nice hotel or a new gadget, that £180 I pay the Council would be very useful. In fact, it would be very nice to spend it on something for me, personally. I would likely be happy to spend more than that, as a treat.
What I am getting at is that I would appreciate or ‘value’ the personal spend more than I value the faceless council tax. Therefore the £180+ I may spend on ‘me’ holds more value than the £180 I reluctantly hand-over to my local governors.
Many of you may disagree with me, and truly value your local council services. That’s expected, as we all value things differently. Value, then, by definition is ‘Personal’
When something is ‘free’, how much do we really value it? Buy One, Get One Free, seems great, but how much do we really appreciate that free bottle of bleach. It’s rarely an offer on Whisky, is it?
NHS dentistry is often perceived as ‘Free’ – Our leaders in Westminster bang on about how healthcare under the NHS is free at the point of delivery. I wonder if this is why many of our patients don’t value what we do very highly?
What a patient values is, again, personal. It is unlikely that they will value a crown or RCT but they will value the outcome it delivers: a realistic replacement tooth, the ability to eat properly or no more pain in the case of the RCT, perhaps?
In my opinion, dentistry is not expensive. However, the price paid becomes more important when we don’t value what we are buying highly enough. The current £222.50 patient charge for a Band 3 treatment is incredible value, in my view. A crown, if cared for properly, will last at least 10 years. That means it has cost the patient less than £23.00 per year. Even a private crown at say, £500.00 is only costing them around £50.00 per year – A lot less than they spend on many other things.
Back in the early 1980’s, when I was a junior sales representative selling toothbrushes to dentists, there were many dental dealers or retailers: Minerva, Cottrell, Wrights, DS&E, Baxters, Claudius-Ash, J & S Davis, to name but a few. Their representatives were, in general, well respected and ‘valued’ by the profession as a great source of knowledge about new products and procedures. The service their companies provided was average to good – If you ordered on Monday you would likely receive your goods in two or three days.
Then, a pharmacist in the Southeast got in to conversation with his dentist who was complaining about the slow delivery and high prices he had to pay for anesthetic. The pharmacist said that he could improve both those issues for him. Not only could he deliver twice a day, if required, he would also do it at a much lower price. That was the birth of Rexodent, the first ‘mail-order’ dental retailer in the UK. Rexodent soon started to supply a whole range of dental consumables, faster and cheaper than any other supplier at that time.
One of the main reasons that Rexodent could supply the same products at a much lower price was the fact that they had no sales staff to pay – Lower overheads = Lower retail prices.
However, the knowledge of the Dental Representative that practice owners valued was not available from Rexodent. I wonder how many dentists sought the knowledge of their favourite rep and then purchased the product from Rexodent? I am guessing many did, because Rexodent grew and grew until Henry-Schein decided to buy them and the UK dental market changed forever.
Interestingly, now all the retailers in dentistry have catalogues, web shops and knowledgeable, field-based representatives but are still able to supply at the very lowest prices and guarantee next-day delivery. Incredible value! In my last year at KaVo UK in 1994, a Super Torque hand piece would sell for £715.00. Now you can almost buy three for that price!
Most practices achieve discounts from the retailers ‘catalogue price’ of up to 20%. I question, then, why some insist on asking a member of the practice team to spend hours a week seeking lower prices and shopping around. Surely the ‘value’ of that team member’s time is higher and would be better-spent giving excellent service to the patients? An additional treatment accepted will more than outweigh the savings made.
The national average of practice spend on consumables is around 9% of sales. Let’s assume your practice has a turnover of £200,000 per year, which means your consumables will be costing around £18,000.00. If you negotiated really, really hard with your supplier, you may squeeze an additional percentage point or two out of them. That would deliver a saving of what – £360.00 or so?
Food for thought
How much time do you and your team spend with patients finding out what they value about your practice, your service and the way you treat them? What difference would it make to the treatment plan acceptance rate in your practice if you found out what were truly important to each and every patient?
How much do you value your dental representative? Are they a source of useful information to you or just a means to an end? Do you take all their knowledge and expertise and then spend hours seeking out where to buy the products cheaper? What could you do in those hours that is more productive or of higher value to you?
What is the value of a really good dental technician? If the crowns always fit, first time, are they worth paying a bit more for?
What is your service worth? Currently, UDA’s range from £6.00 to £46.00 – The average is £22.00. That means for a Band 3 treatment an average income will be £264.00. Privately it could be £500.00 – Both very good value, in my personal opinion.
What do you value?
