Sears and Montgomery Ward tried to do this in the late 1970's, and by 1988 most of the dental "franchises" were out of business or filing for bankruptcy. People won't trust Walmart for their dental needs, and I seriously doubt they can make enough money off of it to justify the expense of expanding this program.
Even a poorer population (which I would assume to be the target of these clinics) still wants good dental care, albeit at low cost, and I cannot see wal-mart filling that reputation.
Walmart dentistry is not going to fly.
Dentistry has strict city and state compliance codes... Radiation, infection control, hippa, to name a few. Who is going to pickup a gallon of milk, a roll of toilet paper and see their dentist across the isle?Normally I'd agree but Wal-Mart has ENORMOUS buying power. With that alone they probably can reduce their overhead to 50% while still having the lowest fees in town. Like I said overall I don't think it will have that great an impact on most private practices unless they are denture mills for bottom feeders.
Why do you think they won't fly?
Man I hate corporate america. I hope the ADA will set up policies to end this type of set up. If that does not happen maybe the tanking economy will take them out - as the poor are most effected and will eliminate their buying power.
In his magnificent and thought-provoking The Long Tail and Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson shows how someone can always do it cheaper or faster or even better than you, so if you're concerned with those things, there will be a "race to the bottom", especially in terms of cost. Ie., you can't out-Walmart Walmart.
In his magnificent and thought-provoking The Long Tail and Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Chris Anderson shows how someone can always do it cheaper or faster or even better than you, so if you're concerned with those things, there will be a "race to the bottom", especially in terms of cost. Ie., you can't out-Walmart Walmart.
From Free:
"So, in 1883, another French mathematician, Joseph Bertrand, decided to give Recherches a proper review. He hated it. As the Wikipedia entry on Cournot puts it, Bertrand argued that Cournot had reached the wrong conclusion on practically everything. Indeed, Bertrand thought that Cournots use of production volume as the key unit of competition was so arbitrary that he, half-jokingly, reworked Cournots model with prices, not output, as the key variable. Oddly, in doing so he found a model that was just as neat, if not neater. Bertrand concluded that rather than limit output to raise prices and increase profits, companies would more likely lower prices to gain market share. Indeed, they would attempt to undercut each other until the price was just above the cost of production, which is called marginal cost pricing. And if the lower prices encouraged greater demand, so much the better. Bertrand Competition can be shorthanded like this: In a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost."
"The other thing about Bertrand Competition is that it applies mostly to products that are similar. But if one product is vastly superior to another for your purposes the primary determinant of price is not marginal cost but marginal utilitywhat its worth to you."
Now hang in with me here, because Seth Godin takes it a step further in Linchpin:
"We cant profitably get more average. We cant get more homogenized, more obedient, or cheaper. We cant get faster, either. Weve gone against our true nature and corporatized, anonymized, and dehumanized as many of our systems as we possibly can. Even health care is a system now, not a human interaction. We could probably go even further, actually, but Im betting it wont be a fun or profitable journey. If all mortgages are the same, of course they can be chopped up and remixed and resold. But that means all bankers and all homes are the same, and so are all homeowners. Which means the cheap ones or the profitable ones are all that matter. If all online products at all online stores are the same, then of course Ill use a price-shopping Web site to find the cheapest product. If all employees are nothing but a résumé, and résumés can be scanned, then why are we surprised that our computers end up finding us anonymous average people to fill our anonymous average jobs? If every restaurant on the highway will give me precisely the same cheery service from the same robotic staff, at the same prices, then why does it matter where I stop? Do we need to be flatter and smaller? Its our desire to be treated like individuals that will end this cycle. Our passion for contribution and possibility, the passion weve drowned out in school and in the corporate worldthats the only way out. Every successful organization is built around people. Humans who do art. People who interact with other people. Men and women who dont merely shuffle money, but interact, give gifts, and connect. All these interactions are art. Art isnt only a painting; its anything that changes someone for the better, any nonanonymous interaction that leads to a human (not simply a commercial) conclusion."
Man, I bet I've read that passage a hundred times.
See? There will always be cheapest/fastest/mass market, all those things. But now more than ever, consumers are tired of that vibe and its relentless, escalating in-your-face advertising. We're bombarded everywhere by ads that promise an amazing experience and then experiences that don't live up to the expectations. Yet if we go the other way...
Mall dentistry (while not necessarily intrinsically "bad", btw) and corporate chains will stay around. But we can beat them easily by providing amazing experiences for our patients. In fact, yesterday I ran into a former student (saw his office in my doctor's building). His story is inspirational for new grads.
After being treated terribly as an associate by an owner doctor, he set out on his own and bought a practice. He knew that the previoius owners were slimy and that they would hide things. He paid an appropriate price though and found that only 100 patients were left- far less than he was told, even than he expected. By providing remarkable patient experiences, though, he's gained many of them back; he also gained 200 new patients in a short time from internal referrals, and things are going well.
Students and recent grads, pay attention: You can race to the bottom, or you can race to the top. The only thing that really prevents you is your Limiting Beliefs about yourself.
Try not to have any.
the human element controls EVERY aspect of the quality of the product placed in your mouth. And: "in the long term."
Normally I'd agree but Wal-Mart has ENORMOUS buying power. With that alone they probably can reduce their overhead to 50% while still having the lowest fees in town. Like I said overall I don't think it will have that great an impact on most private practices unless they are denture mills for bottom feeders.
Why do you think they won't fly?
exactly. the overhead generated by their dental services will only be a drop in the bucket.
The website in question is a dental franchise so it would be owned by a dentist but contracted to be in a Walmart.i thought laws in USA were set where a DENTIST must OWN the practice.
is that not the case?
wont work sears has done this with mixed reviews. because they draw mostly people just out of school and little experience, they have to deal with people screamibg, in pain and bloody not a good image. the eye doctor works bc its a "clean" "painless" field... not so with dentistry, last thing they want are complaints...
I would imagine Walmart wants to get into dentistry but is concerned of the look of people in pain sitting around waiting for the dentist to open or people with bloody gauze hanging out of their mouths leaving to go shopping for more gauze.
Not true in all cases. Certain states allow non dentist to own clinics...
Initially (especially considering today's economy) it may appear as a threat. However, in the long run I think private practice dentistry will continue to prevail. Dentistry is not equivalent to optometry or pharmacy. Pharmacy--of course I want to go to the place at which I can get the cheapest prescription (who cares if my pharmacist is competent; I know that my medical doctor who called in the prescription request is competent) and the prescription is the same, regardless of the pharmacist verifying it. Optometry--as long as I get prescription glasses that let me read the "yield" sign I'm approaching, are decent looking, and cheap, I'm all for it... Isn't this the thought process of the general public (esp. those that do not have the income to support taking their family to a private optometrist)? If they're getting the same drugs, they'll certainly go to the cheaper pharmacy.
IMO, dentistry has an ethical standard that I belive Walmart just won't be able to stand up to. We are in a field of highly competent and passionate individuals, and we will stop at nothing to make sure it stays that way, including in the low-income communities (especially!). Dentists not only have an obligation to their patients, but also to their community (including those who shop at Walmart, especially b/c those are the patients that can benefit the most from the generosity of dentists).
Patients may at first see this as a positive notion, but I think later will realize the value in going to a private practice that can offer them a welcoming, comfortable, reliable, and relatively inexpensive restoration of their oral health that will, in the end, save them more money due to long-lasting procedures. (I, of course, realize there are an infinite number of variables involved).
In all honesty, I just hope dentistry doesn't come to this--it would be unfortunate.
The big corporations are "killing" the avg dentist, bc they can undersell the avg dentist and offer payment plans as little as $10 a month.
Agree- that they are killing the average dentist. See my post above- in a race to the bottom, the only logical response is to race to the top. Another Seth Godin quote is apropos, followed by one from my friend Anne McCrossan:
"All we have left to sell is expectation and trust".
"When people and organizations cannot be trusted, we are inclined to give them less attention."
Patients have low expectations from corporate chains in general, and once burned by a chain in a certain industry (like ours) their trust falls off the charts. And in this new economy where Attention, capital 'A', is essentially more valuable than money per se, because money flows from respectful treatment of people's Attention, we can actually thrive more because of the contrast that our practice can provide to the chains that are out there.
Provide your patients with Certainty and Connection, real human non-anonymous Connection, and you will be unstoppable.
You get it.
Wal-Mart Dental may create a market, but it shouldn't draw patients from practices that DentinBond describes. Those are two very different markets.
What is next? Walmart Health care? Trauma dept next to Walmart tire...operating theater next to Men's fitting room Obgy next to women's fitting room ...oh yeah pediatircs next to kids section
Of course everything is Made-in-china..steam cell organs manufatured some where around shanghai !!!
Super Walmart got food, cloths and now they are in heath care..why don't people just live out of walmart? little cubby hole just for $0.99 (Wal mart Roll back special )
I agree with the two different markets comment.
Way to highlight the ridiculousness of this proposition of Walmart taking over. I can't imagine picking up my groceries, foods and veggies, and seeing an extraction taking place not too far from me, that would be so odd. There would be just too much at stake for the company, in my opinion. Dentistry is not always a clean job, can get bloody, what about sanitation control, etc? Yea, no...just don't see it happening..
Way to highlight the ridiculousness of this proposition of Walmart taking over. I can't imagine picking up my groceries, foods and veggies, and seeing an extraction taking place not too far from me, that would be so odd. There would be just too much at stake for the company, in my opinion. Dentistry is not always a clean job, can get bloody, what about sanitation control, etc? Yea, no...just don't see it happening..
oh, they will fly alright..
They have beaten every odd for almost 60 years, cant say no to waltmart. Specially with low prices.
People will go down 3 miles to fill up the tank just because it is 1 cent less than the gas station next to their house. What makes us think that people wont go there for $100.0 less?
This is amazing. They took on pharmacy, optometry, and now dentistry. Is medicine next target?
Please, don't hold such Limiting Beliefs. You can do so much more for your patients than the low-price, race-to-the-bottom people can. This is the main source of my essential optimism about dentistry. Race to the top, and let some others race to the bottom, they are two different things. See my post above. And not only don't worry about the practices that race to the bottom- don't worry about the patients that see things that way either. Let 'em go.
They'll be back.
And it bears repetition:
"The other thing about Bertrand Competition is that it applies mostly to products that are similar. But if one product is vastly superior to another for your purposes the primary determinant of price is not marginal cost but marginal utilitywhat its worth to you." -Chris Anderson in Free
What are we worth to our patients... That's the key.
It's already happening. If you look at their site, they have one location open in Louisiana. Another one coming soon... Actually the way I came across them is they had an ad for dentists on craigslist. It looks like they are hiring at a number of locations in TX, Louisiana, and elsewhere.
I find this to be a very sensible concept, regarding doctors' approach to dentistry and quality dental care. From the above posts, it seems people are arguing that this would be set up similar to an optometry practice, where the OD's work just next door to a bank, nail shop, etc. However, I still stand by the fact that dentistry is not always a clean profession-people bleed, kids may not always be properly controlled behavior-wise-how often do you encounter these same issues in a pharmacy or optometry office? And for the NP-run offices in places like HEB, I still wouldnt equate this to dentistry or medicine. I've witnessed a few of these and they essentially operate on a very simple scale-check your blood pressure, maybe a shot here and there for school-and thats it. These NP's are not performing surgeries next to the nail shop.. This is where dentistry is different. And similar to what DentinBond stated, if this is succesful, it is going to pull a whole different demographic of patients-essentially become a Medicaid Mill, and with the cheap ways of Walmart, I will not be surprised if the work that comes back from their labs are subpar, issues with improperly placed crowns and bridges,etc. If places like Small Smiles can get sued for similar issues, trust me, same thing will happen with Walmart. Bad Press will follow, and they will lose the public's trust in terms of dental care. And people will once again realize, you get what you pay for....