Introduction
Being in-network with insurance can feel like a trap.
Reimbursements keep getting squeezed. Overhead keeps climbing. You need more patients to keep the schedule full, but spending more on marketing feels impossible when your margins are already tight.
That creates a frustrating question for dental practice owners:
How do you grow when insurance is limiting how much you can make from each patient?
Dr. Blake Hamblin and Gary Bird believe the answer is not simply seeing more patients.
The better answer is building a practice that can turn more of the opportunities it already has into completed dentistry.
They break that down into three areas:
- Train your team to create more volume.
- Improve how you present treatment.
- Make treatment financially easier for patients to accept.
These aren’t massive changes that require rebuilding your entire practice.
They are systems that help you get more from the patients, leads, and treatment opportunities already coming through your doors.
“You have to change the systems that you have.”
1. Training Is the Foundation of Growth
A practice can’t grow beyond the capabilities of its team.
That sounds obvious, but there’s a problem that shows up in a lot of dental offices: the owner assumes the team already knows what to do.
Dr. Blake experienced this firsthand after bringing on new treatment coordinators.
He started spending just 10 to 15 minutes every day with them, working through language, expectations, and specific situations.
What surprised him was how much he thought had already been taught.
It hadn’t.
That realization changed how he viewed his role as an owner.
Instead of simply doing more dentistry, he started deliberately spending more time teaching the team the things he had learned through experience.
Your front desk can create a volume problem.
One of the biggest opportunities is the phone.
A new patient calls because they want something. Your team has the opportunity to get that patient into the practice quickly.
But scheduling a patient immediately creates additional work for the front desk.
Someone has to find the opening, adjust the schedule, coordinate the appointment, communicate with the patient, and handle everything that follows.
If the team isn’t trained to prioritize new-patient conversion, it can become easier for them to push the appointment out.
The result?
The practice owner thinks there isn’t enough demand.
The reality may be that the front desk is unintentionally filtering out demand.
That’s why training needs to cover more than clinical procedures.
Train your team on:
- How to answer common phone questions
- How quickly new patients should be scheduled
- How to communicate urgency
- How to present available appointment options
- How to handle common objections
- What language should be used consistently
Training doesn’t happen once.
One of the strongest points from the conversation is that telling someone something once isn’t training.
If a behavior matters, repeat it.
Then repeat it again.
Then find another way to reinforce it.
That can mean:
- Verbal training
- Written instructions
- Visual reminders
- Role-playing
- Reviewing real examples
- Repeating the expectation until it becomes normal behavior
Dr. Blake described using written reminders around the practice, while Gary emphasized the importance of repetition.
The point isn’t to annoy your team.
The point is to make the behavior impossible to forget.
“Anything that’s important is worth repeating.”
For a growing practice, training isn’t an expense that happens when you have extra time.
Training is part of the growth strategy.
2. Better Treatment Presentation Creates Better Case Acceptance
Once you have patients coming through the door, the next question is simple:
Are you helping them understand why they should move forward with treatment?
A treatment plan can be clinically correct and still sit untouched.
The problem isn’t always the treatment.
Sometimes it’s how the treatment is presented.
Stop selling the procedure. Explain the problem.
Dr. Blake uses a simple concept when teaching treatment presentation:
Loss aversion.
Patients often care more about what they stand to lose than what they stand to gain.
Think about the difference between these two conversations.
Approach one:
“You need a crown. It’s going to look great, match your teeth, and restore the tooth.”
Approach two:
“We’re trying to prevent this problem from becoming a root canal, a fractured tooth, or something more expensive later.”
The second conversation focuses on what the patient is trying to avoid.
That changes the interaction.
The patient isn’t being pushed to buy a crown.
They’re being helped to understand the consequences of waiting.
Give patients two clear paths
Gary describes another useful framework:
Option 1: Address the problem now.
Option 2: Wait and watch it.
Neither option needs to be disguised.
The patient gets to decide.
But they should understand what each option could mean.
A small problem may become a bigger problem. A filling may eventually become a root canal. A damaged tooth may eventually require an implant.
The point isn’t to scare patients.
The point is to make the consequences of the decision clear.
That makes the conversation feel less like sales and more like professional guidance.
Use language that removes pressure
Dr. Blake also shared a particularly useful response to a common patient question:
“So you’re telling me I need four crowns?”
His response is essentially:
You don’t need anything. These are your teeth. My job is to tell you what I would do and help you avoid bigger problems.
That distinction matters.
The patient owns the decision.
The dentist owns the responsibility to clearly explain the clinical recommendation.
When those roles are clear, the treatment conversation becomes much more comfortable.
“My job is to make sure that we avoid the big problems.”
3. Make the Treatment Financially Possible
Even when a patient understands the treatment, there can still be one major barrier:
They can’t afford the payment today.
This is where patient financing becomes part of the treatment conversation.
Dr. Blake initially had concerns about offering financing.
He worried about fees and what it might communicate about the practice.
Then he started looking at the problem from the patient’s perspective.
Someone may need a $500 filling, a $1,200 crown, or a much larger treatment plan.
That patient may genuinely want the treatment.
They may simply not have that amount of cash available today.
Don’t make the entire conversation about insurance.
One of the biggest advantages of presenting monthly payment options is that it can shift the conversation away from:
“How much does my insurance cover?”
Instead, the team can discuss the patient’s actual financial options.
For example, a large treatment plan can be framed around the total investment and a manageable monthly payment.
That changes the question from:
“Can I afford $20,000?”
to:
“Which payment option works for me?”
The treatment hasn’t changed.
The way the patient can access it has.
Financing can improve the treatment conversation.
Dr. Blake found that offering financing to every patient didn’t simply make treatment more affordable.
It also made treatment presentation easier.
If the team can say:
“This treatment is $20,000, or we can structure it at a monthly payment that works better for you. Which option would you prefer?”
The conversation has somewhere to go.
Without an alternative, the team can get stuck after presenting the total fee.
The patient says it’s too expensive.
The conversation ends.
With financing available, the team can continue helping the patient find a workable path.
Think about the emotional side of dentistry.
There is another part of affordability that is easy to miss.
Some patients haven’t been to the dentist in years.
They may already feel embarrassed.
Then they finally come in and receive a large treatment plan.
If the practice simply says, “Here’s your $6,000 treatment,” the patient may feel overwhelmed.
A better conversation acknowledges the reality:
“I know this is a lot. We want to make getting this taken care of as easy and affordable as possible.”
That’s not discounting dentistry.
It’s helping someone access care.
“Finding ways to make dentistry affordable is honestly kind of the duty of the dentist and the dental practice.”
Read: The 3-Step System Every Practice Needs to Grow Faster and Get More “Yes”
The 3-Pillar Growth System
Put the entire strategy together and you get a simple progression:
Pillar 1: Training
Get more opportunities into the practice.
Train the team on phones, speed to schedule, communication, and the behaviors that create volume.
Read: From 20 to 100 New Patients
Common Mistake
Blaming insurance before checking conversion.
Low reimbursement is a real constraint, but it isn’t the only variable. Before deciding the business model is broken, look at how quickly new patients are scheduled, how treatment is presented, and how often patients are given a realistic way to pay for care.
Pillar 2: Treatment Presentation
Convert more of those opportunities into accepted treatment.
Teach the team to explain the problem, the consequences of waiting, and the recommended solution without making the conversation feel salesy.
Pillar 3: Patient Financing
Remove the financial barrier.
Give patients a realistic way to move forward when the total treatment cost is difficult to pay upfront.
The sequence matters.
There is little value in generating more patients if the front desk isn’t converting them.
There is little value in getting patients into the practice if treatment isn’t being accepted.
And there is little value in presenting treatment perfectly if patients don’t have a realistic way to pay for it.
Growth happens when all three pieces work together.
SMC Insight
Training isn’t a meeting. It’s a behavior system.
If a behavior matters to the practice, don’t assume one conversation will change it. Train it, document it, reinforce it, and review it. Phone skills, scheduling expectations, treatment language, and financial conversations all become stronger when the team hears and practices them repeatedly.
What This Looks Like in a Real Practice
Imagine a PPO practice that feels stuck.
The owner believes the insurance reimbursement is the problem.
So they hesitate to spend money on marketing.
Meanwhile, the front desk is pushing some new patients further into the schedule because getting them in immediately creates more work.
The treatment coordinator presents a $12,000 treatment plan.
The patient says they’ll think about it.
Then the patient leaves.
The practice doesn’t necessarily have a demand problem.
It has a conversion system problem.
Now change the process.
Step 1: Train the phone team
New patients are contacted and scheduled as quickly as possible.
Step 2: Train treatment presentation
The patient understands the problem, what happens if it progresses, and the recommended solution.
Step 3: Present financial options
The team explains the total investment and available monthly payment options.
Now the practice has created more opportunities, improved case acceptance, and reduced the financial barrier.
That’s a very different growth model from simply trying to see more patients.
Read: How to Scale Without Burnout
Quick Tip
Present the consequence of waiting.
Patients don’t always respond to the benefits of treatment. They often respond more strongly when they understand what could happen if the problem gets worse. Explain the clinical progression clearly without using fear or pressure.
Key Takeaways
- PPO practices can still grow, but they need stronger systems around volume and conversion.
- Training isn’t a one-time event. Important behaviors need to be repeated and reinforced.
- Your front desk may be limiting growth if new patients aren’t being scheduled quickly.
- Treatment presentation should focus on the problem and the consequences of waiting, not simply the procedure.
- Loss aversion can make treatment conversations feel more natural because patients understand what they’re trying to prevent.
- Patients need choices. Give them a clear clinical recommendation while allowing them to decide what to do.
- Patient financing can remove a major barrier to care and make larger treatment plans easier to discuss.
- Growth is a system. More leads, better case presentation, and financial accessibility work together.
Practice Owner Reminder
Your team cannot execute what hasn’t been taught.
If you find yourself repeatedly correcting the same behavior, stop treating it like a one-off mistake. Turn it into a training system. Write down the expectation, teach it, practice it, and create reminders that reinforce it.
Conclusion
Being in-network doesn’t automatically mean your practice can’t grow.
It does mean you have to pay closer attention to the systems around the reimbursement.
You can’t always control what an insurance company pays.
You can control how well your team handles the phone.
You can control how quickly patients get scheduled.
You can control how clearly treatment is presented.
And you can give patients better financial options when they want treatment but can’t pay the entire amount upfront.
That’s the opportunity.
Instead of asking, “How do I make more money from insurance?”
Ask:
“How do I build a practice that converts more of the opportunities I already have?”
Start with training.
Then improve treatment presentation.
Then remove financial barriers.
Those three pillars can give a PPO practice a much stronger foundation for growth.
Read: Why Some Dentists Take Home More Without Working More
Listen to the Full Episode
Want to hear Dr. Blake Hamblin and Gary Bird break down the full framework, including how they apply these systems inside a real dental practice?
Listen to the full My Dental Playbook episode and hear the complete conversation.
