BRINGO Blog

BRINGOdentist has gone from a good idea, to a successful (but still young) match-making service. We have started driving more consumer traffic into our Chicago area dentists, and have already gotten great traction in several parts of the city. Several dental offices have had appointments made, even more have had attempted calls, and we are getting great feedback from our consumers as well.

Like anything new, somethings are harder than we expected and somethings easier. Getting licenses and the other stuff from our partner dentists is often slow. But, once the office gets committed to trying out BRINGO, we have had a great time training local dental offices and getting to know the people who make the offices run (the office managers and receptionists). Of course, we enjoy nothing more than following back up with an office that has had a “connect” to get feedback, and find out what happened. We appreciate our dentist partners and are committed to making ongoing improvements based on your feedback.

Over the coming 6 months we will continue to slowly increase the volume of traffic we are creating for our partner dentists to make sure it’s “the right kind of traffic,” but there’s nothing more exciting for us than watching the match-making in action. Of course, it’s still up to the dental office to turn a prospective patient into a new patient (we can connect you, but we can’t work that final magic like you can)….but practice breeds success.

I’m pleased to report, my very own Dr. Tedford has even signed up….so things better go well or I won’t be laughing the next time he gives me the laughing gas.

I’ll leave this is a standing question…but please dentists and dental offices continue to give us feedback about how the platform is working and can be improved…we are often calling you, but feel free to leave comments below on your own real-life experiences.

For those of you also in Chicago, spring is definitely (and finally) in the air…

Enjoy

-mg

There are always important milestones in launching a business, and today was another key milestone for our www.bringodentist.com We have had enough momentum with dentists in Chicago who are signing up to participate in the BRINGO program that today we really started driving consumer traffic. We are getting smarter by the day on our key metrics (conversion, click throughs, etc…), so this represents yet another step forward for us.

Over the past two weeks, we have been training our Chicago dental offices and getting them ready for the consumer traffic. We then tested those offices by sending out some “sample” calls from one of our team members to see whether they would be accepted or not (meaning did the office understand the training and the platform). The acceptance ratio was through the roof, and the general feeling was that the platform was as easy-to-use as we thought. In fact, one pleasant receptionist wondered aloud whether we really needed to test as the platform was so simple (the quote was more along the lines of… what to you think…I’m stupid?).

We continue to look for good dentists in Chicago that fit our profile to fill out the geographic area….and are in the process of training up dentists in Atlanta, and will stay focused on using our proprietary matching technology to get the right patient with the right dentist at the right time.

So, champagne glasses raised as we pass through one more milestone. We have many more as we stay focused on making the right connections…

Cheers. L’chaim. And even nasdrovia.

It’s good to know we are not alone in our quest to make sense of technology for dentists….as a critical tool for improving everything in their operation (not just patient acquisition).

Today the Wall Street Journal ran a front page story about micropractices, which said “Some physicians and institutions are trying to harness technology to make family practices more manageable and profitable for doctors.” Amen to that, I say.

Well, I’ve got news for you: Dentists need to do this, too! In fact, in this competitive day and age, dentists have no choice. The bigger message dentists should take away from this article is that technology is not an add-on anymore, it’s a necessity if you want to improve your practice’s profitability, growth, and customer satisfaction.

Here’s why…tech can help you improve your patient experience from start to finish…from finding you, to the reminder platform for appointments, ongoing newsletters made easy, customized wellness mailings based on diagnosis, getting timely feedback from your patients, sharing with them positive anecdotes, creating two-way communication via ‘ask the dentist’ features on a web-site, etc…

It helps you with profitability as you can better plan your days and utilization of your time and your staff, you can process your claims faster (one of our board members Fred Horowitz has a great electronic claims management company named www.ansdirect.com - one of many players in the area but they help dentists get reimbursed much faster, lessen the hassle of dealing with the carriers, etc…), reduce appointment no-shows, and lower the costs of mailings, etc…Fred’s so passionate about it, he leads an industry association on the topic http://www.cooperativeexchange.org/

Personally, as a happy dental patient (thank you Dr. Tedford), I can tell you that I appreciate immediate access to tips from my dentist, emergency questions and answers, targeted content, etc…if you are not thinking about this, someone else will.

And it’s great to see more and more dentists—and reporters—finally coming around to this reality. Over on The Solo Practitioner blog, Dr. Vincent Pedre is spot-on in his passionate assessment of micropractices. I couldn’t agree more that modern technology makes it easier to achieve an ideal practice environment without extra staff or expenses.

Dental Practice Report had an article in the February issue by Keith Rossein that starts with….”Can a dental practice exist without a dot.com presence in 2007? Yes, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult.” Keith’s right.

Notice a trend here? We sure do and are happy to be a part of it. Just this week, I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Jackson of Planet DDS( http://www.planetdds.com/ ). They have built a web-based practice management platform that is much less expensive and easier to manage than the old software platforms dentists used to have to install (it’s the ASP model for those of you who know the jargon). If you are a dentist and you haven’t seen it, you should. Because it is hosted by them (think of your e-mail, which you can access securely from any computer with an internet connection), they can constantly upgrade it and improve it without the hassle of re-installing the software.

Be sure to watch this space to hear first-hand commentary from Chicago dentists who are using these technologies and more (including BRINGOdentist.com, of course!), and will discuss the benefits, challenges, and tips to using technology in your practice. There’s lots of good stuff just becoming available. The wave is building (so are the cliche’s).

Okay, that’s all for now. It’s Chicago and the midwinter meeting. I should be shmoozing, not posting.

Yours,

Mark

We have been live with bringodentist for nearly one month (I’m not good at anniversaries so don’t ask me the date) and momentum is building. Each day we get dentists signing up with us, asking more questions, giving us great suggestions/tips, and we are also learning more about what our consumers are looking for. In conversations with dentists from all over the country, I have been struck by a few common themes:

1) Over the years, many dentists have had bad experiences with various referral services that guarantee them a certain number of patients each month in return for some steep up-front costs. Unfortunately many of these referral services have earned reputations for delivering low quality patients to dentists, or more frequently not even delivering the minimum volume they guaranteed (but still taking their rich fees). In short, many dentists have gotten burned by using fixed price referral services that over-promise and under-deliver.

2) Dentists have responded to the BRINGO model very positively, as we do not charge up-front fees, always give the dentist the ability to reject patients based on their criteria, and have a pay as you go model. the BRINGO model is simple, honest, straightforward and effective. From one dentist I just spoke with in North Chicago, the pay-as-you-go model is “a ray of light.” While I thought his description was a bit dramatic, I think he’s right.

3) The number of dentists who are actively on-line is pretty small. We can take electronic claims as a good indicator. In this day and age, less than 35% of claims are processed electronically (according to my friend at the ADA). Hard to fathom, but it means 65% of practices still choose to complete paper claims forms, snail mail them to insurance carriers, and wait weeks for processing payments. While I’m not hear to lobby for electronic claims (although one of our board members certainly does that through http://www.cooperativeexchange.org/), I am here to help our dentist partners figure out how to tap into large number of prospective patients searching on the web for providers.

4) Prospective patients are hungry for a good way to find new dentists, and the internet does not have many good options. Bringodentist is bridging an important digital divide between dentists who are not really online, and prospective patients who are very much internet savvy and start every search at their computer. I had a drink with a very accomplished dentist from the NY area this weekend and he said he started taking the internet seriously when he realized two of his three children searched the internet to find their dentists when they moved to new cities over the past few years.

5) There are always great surprises when starting something new. While there have been several wonderful letters of appreciation, perhaps my favorite came from a psychologist in the South who works with people who have disabilities. He said our service helped to take the hard work out of finding a dentist, and is very valuable for his patients. Nice, ehh? I think they started by using our nophonetrees site, appreciated the stress it could eliminate and then moved onto bringodentist. Great feedback.

Given that I am sitting in Chicago, these days I would also like to develop BRINGO warm weather. Unbelievable how many consecutive days we can be below freezing. I was at dinner last night with Marcin (who also posts here) and was amazed to find he considered yesterday’s 20 degree temperatures finally warm enough to go for a walk. Numbed by the cold I say.

Stay warm and stay in touch,

Mark

Happy New Year!

As regular readers of this blog know, we’ve been hinting at our the next big thing for BRINGO for the past couple of months. Well, that time is finally here… We are proud to announce the (soft) launch of Bringodentist.com — a new way for patients to find local dentist to match their needs via the web. Using our unique web to telephone technology, BringoDentist allows potential patients to find a high quality dentist in their area, and does the hard work of calling around to make sure there is a match with their criteria (location, preferred form of payment, appointment times, etc.).

We are currently available in only limited areas, but are aggressively building our network of high-quality providers. Check back at this space for more details on local availability and success stories.