Is Reducing PPOs Right for Your Practice?

One of the things that I help practices with is reducing their dependence on reduced fee insurance plans. These are situations where they sign up and they are required to reduce their fee in order to be in contract with an insurance company.As practices get busier, sometimes it makes sense to limit the number of PPOs they sign up with. When a practice comes to me and they have more patients than they know what to do with and they’re feeling really stressed out, sometimes a strategy that I’ll recommend is to reduce the number of PPOs they are in network with. You can have two practices that are at the same crossroads with making this decision. One practice really believes that dentistry changes lives and that a patient can’t find anything else more important they would spend discretionary dollars on than getting their mouth healthy. This practice really does believe that and their team embodies that and it’s their mission every single day to help deliver that level of care.Compare that to another practice where maybe from the business model standpoint it makes sense to reduce PPOs, but their team doesn’t value dentistry, the dentist doesn’t even necessarily value dentistry and they’re going through the same steps to reduce PPOs, but their mindset isn’t aligned with what it is they’re doing.I can give them the same verbal skills to help them successfully navigate away from those insurance companies, and how to communicate with their patients, but people don’t buy what you say, they buy the belief behind what you are saying.