DentalBuzz – a jolt of current…

Actually, William Shatner has nothing to do with dentistry. And that’s a good thing.

The familiarity with Priceline’s marketing is a good place to start, though. Mix in a few thousand medical and dental professionals who are willing to try a similar technique to improve their new patient flow and you’ve got a website called PriceDoc.

For an average of about $50 per month for a spot on the PriceDoc website, you can give percentage discounts, allow patients to negotiate for prices, or simply state your fee for specific procedures. Like a porcelain crown. Can you imagine someone on the internet seeing that your crown fee is less than the other dentist down the street, and then coming to you instead, and paying cash?

Or if you put the shoe on the other foot, have you tried shopping for that gall bladder surgery that you’ve been needing for a while?

PriceDoc went national about six months ago, and has yet to post any impressive procedure price wars between healthcare providers. There’s also no way to know if a dentist is as good as they say they are on their advertisement, so it’s difficult to predict whether or not this type of marketing will appeal to those dentists who value quality care over production quotas. Currently the only requirement for setting up a provider account is a credit card.

It’s a great idea in concept, especially for patients without insurance and dentists that prefer consumer-driven care instead of insurance-dictated treatment. If enough healers are ready to take a leap of faith, PriceDoc may become a force that changes healthcare forever.

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You’ve watched way too many movies.

If you’ve got images of Star Trek’s Geordi LaForge, nerdy sidekicks in 80′s new-wave glasses a la John Hughes’ teen films, or the horrors of Total Recall memory augmentation burned into your retinas, then please, let those prejudiced views slide gently outside of your peripheral vision and consider that Virtual Reality glasses may actually be good and cheap enough these days to make them part of your patient comfort collection.

We want to heavily discourage dentists from spending thousands of dollars in wall or ceiling-mounted screens just so that patients can have something to look at besides your ugly mug while you’re fixing their teeth.

We’re not kidding.

The problem with screens like that, during dentistry, is that your head keeps getting in the way while your patient is trying to remain distracted.

There’s lots of other details that can end up complicating the whole thing, so instead of making this a gripe session about overbloated dental amenities, we’ve created a few tracks that will make it inexpensive and easy for you to start using VR glasses in your practice.

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Internal Memo, Bright Happy Smile Dental Associates

From: Dr. Stan Freebie

To: All office personnel at Bright Happy Smile Dental

My dear team:

It is with great joy that I share this news with you! Starting next month, we will begin offering all of our patient services free of charge. This in no way affects your paycheck because our funding will come from generous sponsors instead of from the patients themselves.

Our insurance coordinator, Kathy, will be changing positions in the practice to take over the duty of implementing this new and exciting program. In order to qualify for this sponsorship, we will all need to modify our office routines in the following ways to allow for maximum product placement:      Read the rest of this entry »