Episode 400: What I’ve Learned After Coaching Over 400 Practices to Successfully Reduce Their Insurance Dependence with Gary Takacs

Ashton Rogers: Welcome to the Less Insurance Dependence podcast. I’m your host, Ashton Rogers, and this show is dedicated to helping dental professionals build stronger, more profitable practices with less reliance on insurance. Today I’m excited to welcome back Gary Takacs, founder of the Thriving Dentist Show podcast, and longtime co-host of this very podcast. Gary has spent over 46 years coaching more than 2,200 dental practices across all 50 states. And as a former owner of a dental practice himself, he personally led a full transition away from insurance dependence. Today’s episode is our 400th, and it’s called: What I’ve Learned After Coaching Over 400 Practices to Successfully Reduce Their Insurance Dependence. Gary, welcome back to the show.

Gary Takacs: Ashton, it’s great to be back. It’s hard to believe that this is the 400th episode of the Less Insurance Dependence podcast. That’s about eight years we haven’t missed a week in over eight years. It’s exciting to be back for this milestone episode.

Gary Takacs: The more things change, the more they stay the same. We’re in rather historic times in our profession. Inflation is very real in every dental practice today. Everything a dental office purchases, supplies, equipment, whatever, is more expensive today than it was in the recent past. One of the areas especially pronounced is wage inflation. Wages for our team members are at all-time highs. In order to be competitive today and attract and keep the best people, they have to pay more. And yet, in the face of all that inflation, dental insurance companies are not raising their fees under their contracted plans. In some states, the reimbursement you get for a hygiene appointment won’t even pay your hygienist’s hourly rate. Alone. Let alone all the other costs.

Gary Takacs: Here’s how the boiling frog parable goes. If you took a frog and dropped it into a boiling pot of water, the frog would instantly sense the heat and jump out to save its life. However, if you put a frog in a pot of lukewarm water on the stove and dial the heat up slowly, it’ll get to a boiling point where the frog will eventually die. In that parable, the dentist today is the frog. The insurance companies are dialing it up hotter and hotter and hotter.

Gary Takacs: The reason that less than 10% of practices are fee-for-service or have a reduced insurance footprint is one word: fear. I like to think of FEAR as an acronym, also Evidence Appearing Real. The fear dentists experience when considering resigning from a PPO plan is that they’re going to lose all their patients. That’s their fear. And it is false evidence appearing real. We’ve done this over 400 times in all 50 states. The result has been: I’ve lost patients, but fewer than I expected. And if you lose patients but now you’re paid your full fee, you’ll be better off at the finish line.

Gary Takacs: Do not send a letter to every one of your insurance patients telling them you’re resigning from their plan. Do not do that. We’ve seen the byproduct of that. So there are three criteria you can use to evaluate semi-objectively whether your practice is ready. I’m going to use the stoplight analogy: red, yellow, green. Number one: how relationship-driven is your practice? Without looking at your practice management software, can you name five patients who own their own business? Five who are school teachers? Five thwhore first responders? Five who recently retired? If you can rattle off answers to those questions without looking at your software, you’re relationship-driven. Number two: What does demand look like in your schedule? When is your first available non-emergency new patient appointment? When is your next available hygiene appointment? If you’re booked out five, six, seven months in hygiene, you have demand. You can afford to lose some patients. Number three: Do you have proven marketing in place? You are going to lose patients when you go out of network. Do you have marketing that can replace them?

Ashton Rogers: Resigning from PPOs isn’t just an insurance decision; it’s a business decision. And like any good business decision, it needs to be backed by a solid plan for growth. The team at Ekwa Marketing offers a complimentary marketing strategy meeting at lessinsurancedependence.com/msm.You can also book a complimentary Coaching Strategy Meeting with Gary Takacs at lessinsurancedependence.com/csm.

Gary Takacs: In our work at Thriving Dentist Coaching, we have often referred our coaching clients to Ekwa and have seen very, very good results. If you’re curious whether marketing is an area that needs attention, I would recommend Ekwa. Schedule that marketing strategy meeting and see how they can help you solve that third piece of the readiness and preparation factors.

Gary Takacs: This practice in 2023 produced $1.9 million in dentistry and collected $1.4 million. The $500,000 difference was almost all insurance adjustments. Now, let’s go to 202,4 where he’s completely out of network. His production went down to $1.8 million, but he collected $1.7 million. The $100,000 difference went to his in-office membership plan, a 10% courtesy. Now, I don’t love a 10% discount, but it’s a whole lot better than the discounts he was subjected to under the PPO plans. What would you prefer? Produce $1.9 million, collect $1.4 million, or produce $1.8 million, collect $1.7 million? And because his production went down by $100,000, his overhead went down by another $60,000. So the net gain was not just $300,000, it was $360,000 a year. In 2025, this office produced $2.2 million and collected $2.1 million.

Gary Takacs: There are patients for whom dentistry is a commodity. A crown’s a crown, doesn’t matter where you go. A client of mine recently did a research project: they looked at all of their Delta patients and asked, when we were in-network with Delta, what percent of our patients accepted elective treatment? The data showed that less than 8% of their Delta patients would accept something not covered by their insurance. Reverse that: 92% were saying, I’m only interested in having this done if it’s covered by insurance. The doctors concluded that the Delta patients were only in our practice to get their free cleaning. If you would like a practice where you’re attracting people that respect you that want to know, doctor, help me become as healthy as possible you’re way better off going out of network.

Gary Takacs: Knowing what you know now, how many of you would advise your son or daughter to become a dentist? Two-thirds said no. That saddens me. My view of dentistry is very different. I think dentistry rocks. It’s an amazing profession. But dentistry is a tale of two types of dentists: those who love what they do and those for whom it’s another day at the salt mine. Those who feel it’s another day at the salt mine are much more likely to be in-network dentists. I’m on a mission to change that. You can’t change people’s lives if the only thing they’re interested in is whether it’s covered by their insurance.

Gary Takacs: Have you ever heard the saying: if it’s been done before, it must be possible? Well, guys, this has been done before. We’ve done it over 400 times. If you’d like to join the ranks of those who have successfully reduced insurance dependence and you’d like some help doing that, let me invite you to schedule a coaching strategy meeting with me. Go to thrivingdentist.com/csm. That’ll open up my Zoom calendar. You’ll schedule a meeting with me. The purpose of that meeting is for me to get to know you, learn more about your goals, share a little bit about our coaching, and determine if it’s a good fit.

Ashton Rogers: And if more quality new patients is your priority, you can schedule a complimentary marketing strategy meeting with Ekwa Marketing at lessinsurancedependence.com/msm. And if you’d like to benefit from Gary’s experience in successfully guiding over 400 practices to reduce insurance dependence, you can book a complimentary coaching strategy meeting with Gary at lessinsurancedependence.com/csm. Reducing insurance dependence is one of those milestone decisions that can make all the difference in your practice. Thank you for listening to the Less Insurance Dependence podcast.