 Hello everybody, Andrew Maesky here with Dental L. So to charge or not to charge, that's the title of the video. We of course are going to charge everybody, you know, as you should be unless you wanna do a charity, which is great, but we have to pay the bills too. I'm going to talk to you guys about what to charge when you're starting out. And then sort of how I did it in my business, how I'm continuing to do it, and how I'm kind of tweaking things still with payments. And I'm going to be talking to you guys about things to say and things not to say, because I'm on a lot of groups on Facebook, like the Dental Hygiene Network, Independent Dental Hygiene Network, you know, all of those. And a lot of posts are simply asking, so does everybody charge for a new patient exam because I don't wanna charge them for it, it not be covered, and then they get mad at me. Or do you guys charge a new patient exam knowing it's not covered because the dentist had just done that, then they're gonna be mad at me. You know, so that's kind of a consistency or a consistent thing, is we are afraid to charge what we're worth. We don't wanna ask for money. We kind of cater to the dentists and the dental offices, but they don't cater to us. Trust me guys. So I'm taking a little spin on things. Don't cater to them, okay? Don't think, oh, I wanna charge this, but then if they go to the dental office, it's not gonna be covered. The dental office doesn't care if it's covered with you. So why should you care if it's covered for them, okay? Let the patient deal with it, okay? Seriously, let the patient deal with it. So if you're accepting cash, then you don't have to worry about insurance obviously. I tried this when I first started. I did not wanna have to deal with insurance companies because I'm just one person and I didn't know how to anyway. It has been like 15 years since I was a receptionist, so I didn't really know how anyway, but I didn't get a lot of patients. I was maybe seeing a patient a month, then three patients a month, that wasn't enough to just simply pay the bills, right? So I said to myself, okay, I'm going to start accepting insurance, so I will send everything through to insurance and then they just have to pay the difference. So I was charging when I first started about $99 for a cleaning and exam because I wanted to get patients in the door, but I was a mobile hygienist at the time. So that's a lot of work, you guys. When I was working at a dental office too, where easily they would be charging for a new patient exam, a cleaning, everything, they'd be paying a bill at the end of it like $400 and the patients wouldn't even care. Like they just, you know, they knew that they would be getting paid by their insurance company back, they didn't even care. Yet here I was charging $99 trying to get patients in to build my business. I was exhausted afterwards because I was lugging everything to and from, you know, trying to build a business, seeing as many people as I could being paid $99. That's still a lot of money, yes, but why not charge what you're worth, okay? You're not worth $99 for all of that hard work. Take, you know, initiative from those dental offices. They go by the fee guide. I have the fee guide on my laptop or sorry, my iPad and I just simply go by the fee guide. Another thing that I used to do, even if I was going by the fee guide, I would charge for an exam. I would charge for one unit scale, half a unit polish, done, okay? But when you go to think about all of the work you're doing, so are you only scaling for 15 minutes for one unit? I'm thinking, no, I'm not doing that. I'm scaling for like 45 minutes. So that's three units of scale. So now I charge for the exam, three units of scale, half a polish, whatever else they need. I go right by the fee guide. For a new patient exam, typically it could be $300, $400, depending on if I use a desensitizer, if I do sub-gingival oral irrigation. So it does depend on what I do, but I'm not afraid to charge that, okay? But having that said, when you're new you do kind of want to bring people in so you might be advertising. I'm less expensive than if you were to go to a dental office because I'm a dental hygienist. For this month only, all new patients, a full cleaning and exam for $99. So you know, pick a number, it's up to you. But I've seen some hygienists charging like this month only for a new patient exam including $49. Whoa, that's really cheap you guys. But it's great though to get patients in. But you know what else I wanna say is you're not attracting the right patients. Those patients will always expect a deal from you. They will see you, they'll have so much plaque, so much charter, you can't do the full cleaning anyway. So then you tell them to come back and then you're charging let's just say $300 because you are literally working so hard for an hour and a half getting everything off. They're gonna look at you like, oh, I thought the cleaning was $49 last time. Why is it now $200? Oh, well, because I was a promo and you have a lot of plaque and charter. All of your teeth are black because there's so much stain. It does take time to get off. They're not gonna care. They will always be expecting that deal, that sale. When I raised my prices for whatever reason I got more patients, more people. It was kind of surprising, but that's how it is. If you're confident in what you're charging and if you do the work, show them what they're paying for. If you simply see them, say hello, clean for 20 minutes and then be like, okay, bye, thank you. That will be $200. They're not going to come back to you because they're not gonna feel like they got their money's worth. Even if you're only charging $49, they're not going to feel like they're getting their money's worth. You can charge $400, but give them the best service ever. Talk to them. Talk to them about their medical history, dental history. Take intraoral photos. Show them those intraoral photos. Explain everything as you're cleaning. Explain to them. You have gingivitis. You have moderate periodontal disease on these teeth here. See this. See how the gums are bleeding. But don't worry with a good cleaning. Keep coming back. Things will improve so much. See this tooth back here? There's no tartar on that at all. How is that possible? You are doing an amazing job. But this too, there's a lot of tartar. There was black calculus under there. Do the good, do the bad, explain everything. I find if you're explaining everything to patients, they appreciate it. They see you as being the expert. They see you as being knowledgeable and they will pay for it. They will pay for it. Spend the full hour or more with them, not 20 minutes. Give them a good polish. Every tooth, be as meticulous as possible. Don't just polish like this and then be done, okay? Be the expert. Show them you know what you're doing. Show them you are the best. You can charge whatever you want if you do a good job. So my advice is go buy the Fee Guide. I have it on my iPad. I had purchased dental software a couple months ago. I just put in the coats and the fees automatically come up. The easiest thing for me ever, I love it. It just makes things easy. So you don't have to say, okay, for this patient, I'm gonna charge this because they're really nice. I'm just gonna charge this much or okay, well, this patient was kind of rude. I'm gonna charge a little bit more. No, go buy the Fee Guide, know what you're worth. As for sales and promotions, I do that often to you guys. So I do think it's a good idea, but don't do it too often where people wait for the next sale to book with you. The common sale that I have might be, okay, this month only with the teeth cleaning, you get a full teeth whitening for 150, whereas normally I charge $200. That kind of thing, right? So I give sales like that and that's another thing. I used to charge $99 for the whitening. Now I charge $200 and I'm getting more people than I did when I was charging the $99. So it's not always about the price. It's just about you being confident, okay? So I hope that helps. Let me know you guys if you have any questions. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Make sure to click like. So I know you're actually watching. Thank you guys, bye.