In every business, owners strive to find new ways to make more profits. Most general dentists refer dental implant cases to specialists. But did you know that keeping a few cases in-house is one of the easiest ways to grow your operations and increase revenue? As you grow your revenue, your skillset also increases, which means more income.
Many general dentists ponder how to start offering dental implant service but get stuck trying to figure it out. The truth is that any dentist can build a profitable dental implant practice. We’ll walk you through the main steps you should follow for starting a dental implant practice and making it lucrative.
Profitable Dental Implant Practice
If you’re looking to become profitable in the dental industry, you’ll need to learn new skills. When a patient goes to a general dentist with an implant case, the chances are they’ll be referred to a specialist. Keep in mind that for every referral you make, you’re losing money. Patients are more likely to visit a general dentist before going to a specialist. If you keep referring them to specialists, you’ll be left to deal with low-profit procedures such as cleaning and filling.
It’s advisable to start learning specialized dental care procedures, as this will help you acquire more revenue. The best way to learn is to start with the basics. With time, you’ll understand specialized dental treatments and be in a position to perform up to 60% of all implant cases in-house.
Who Can Do Implant Surgery?
The best person to dive into the implant field is a general dentist who does restorative dentistry. If you perform simple surgeries, such as impacted molars and other minor procedures, you’re the right person to do implant surgery. Most of all, if your practice mostly involves endodontics, you’ll naturally progress into dental implant surgery.
How to Start Offering Dental Implant Service
If you gradually begin to incorporate specialized dental treatments, you can be sure that your practice will be much more comprehensive in the next five years. Typically, you’ll be doing 40% restorative dentistry, 15% endodontics and 10% dental implant surgery. This will catapult your business into a far more profitable position. The more services you offer, the less likely you are to be hit by economic changes in the dentistry field.
How to Add Dental Implants to Your Business
Consider what you want to achieve from starting a dental implant business and set final goals that you can quickly realize. In the real world, grossing hundreds of thousands of dollars in a short period is impractical. So, customize your figures and numbers one year at a time. Then, write down the steps you’ll follow to get there. Some of these steps may include:
- Evaluating your current skillset.
- Exploring the available anesthetic options within your locality.
- Meeting up with your preferred dental implant specialist and talking to them about dental implant surgery. Choose an implant system that serves the needs of many patients. One huge benefit of picking similar implant technology is that the implant company you choose will most likely have a strong presence in your area and may allocate more resources to your practice.
- Choosing the easiest implant possible from your current pool of patients. Ideally, start with mini-implant surgery.
- Encouraging patients who want tooth extraction to get dental implants.
- Extracting teeth in a way that you preserve the entire width of the bone.
- Attending a short dental implant course dedicated to teaching surgery.
- Scheduling a few easy implant surgery cases to perform once you complete your course so you can gauge your competency level.
- Purchasing all the equipment you’ll need and planning to complete five to 10 dental implant surgeries within the next year.
- Talking to your specialist at the end of the year and then assessing your performance and financial goals.
Five-Year Financial Forecast
Let’s do some quick math. Say the average cost of prosthetic implants in your office is $1,000, and the cost of surgical implants is $1,000. Then, let’s assume you’re currently doing 10 prosthetic implants a year and referring 10 surgical implant cases to your specialist.
If you slowly increase your service base within the next three years and do 100 prosthetic implants a year, and 30% of those are implant surgeries, you’ll be making a gross income of $130,000 per year.
Progressing forward into the 4th year, and if you’re doing 60% of the surgeries and referring 40% to a specialist, then you’ll be grossing an additional $30,000.
Both parties will be happy because you’ll be referring more cases to your specialist while simultaneously increasing your revenue. The bottom line is that your dental implant business will be generating an additional $200,000 in yearly income over the next five years.
If you want to make this a reality, you can. Involve specialists who are good at implant surgeries. Share your goals with them and learn from their experiences. This is a journey that will require patience, but with persistence and effort, your dental implant business will soon be lucrative.
If you want to learn more about starting a dental implant practice, please get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to help.
