How the three models differ
A treatment bank is prepaid credit. The patient pays a fixed amount every month and the practice adds a small bonus, so the bank buys slightly more treatment than cash would. A discount club is a monthly fee in exchange for a lower price on the menu. An unlimited plan is a monthly fee for as much of one service as the patient wants. They look alike on a website and behave nothing alike on your books.
| Treatment bank | Discount club | Unlimited plan | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What the patient gets | Credit toward any treatment, plus a bonus for prepaying | A lower price on everything, or on a list | One service as often as they can book it |
| What it does to margin | Protects it: the bonus is the only give, and it is spent on treatment you were going to sell | Lowers it on every visit, including the visits that would have happened anyway | Depends entirely on usage; the heaviest member sets your cost |
| What it does to visit cadence | Pulls the next visit forward, because the credit is already sitting there | Little, unless the discount is tied to a visit rhythm | Pushes it up hard, which is the point and the risk |
| Churn risk | Leaving means walking away from credit | The fee is easy to question in a slow month | People quit when they stop using it, and they notice |
| Legal and accounting notes | Prepaid credit is a liability until used; auto-renew and expiry rules vary by state. Confirm with counsel and your accountant | Auto-renew disclosure rules apply. Confirm with counsel | Clinical frequency limits and consent for repeat treatment. Confirm with your medical director and counsel |
How to pick one for your treatment mix
- Tox and filler carry the practice: a treatment bank. Your patients already come back on the treatment's interval; the bank makes the next visit feel paid for and moves the booking up.
- Facials, peels and laser series carry it: a discount club or a bank sized to one service a month. The cadence is already monthly; the plan names it.
- A single low-product-cost service with empty provider hours: an unlimited plan can fill those hours. Model the heaviest realistic user, not the average, before you print a price.
- A mixed menu: one bank at two or three levels beats three programs. If the front desk cannot explain it in one breath, patients will not buy it.
Launch it to existing patients first
- Pull every patient with two or more visits in the last twelve months from your record system. They have already proven they come back; the membership gives them a reason to prepay for it.
- Message them from their provider, by name, with the single tier that fits their own visit history and a link that joins in one tap.
- Offer it at checkout for 30 days before it goes on the website. Give the front desk one sentence to say and the answer to the one question patients ask.
- Then put it on the site and in the new-patient flow, with the tier that fits a first visit, not the biggest one.
How to measure it, starting Monday
- Share of revenue recurring: membership billing divided by total revenue, every month. This is the number that changes what the practice is worth.
- Visits per member: member visits in the quarter divided by members. Compare it to the same patients' cadence before they joined; if it did not move, the plan is a discount, not a membership.
- Cancellation rate: members who cancelled in the month divided by members at the start of it. A rising rate is a value problem before it is a price problem.
- Unused credit: banked value that has not been spent. It is a liability on your books and a comeback message waiting to be sent.
Where it goes wrong
Discounting the whole menu to everyone, which teaches your best patients to wait. Pricing an unlimited plan for the average member when the heavy members are the ones who join. Letting credit expire with no warning, which costs the patient and the relationship. And nobody owning the monthly message, so members pay and forget. How credit expires, renews and is refunded is regulated differently from state to state; confirm the terms with counsel before the first patient signs.
What to do next
NorthCore's Bring patients back solution builds the membership engine on your record system: the invite segment, the monthly credit nudge in the provider's voice, and the recurring-revenue line on the dashboard. Scoped in writing and covered by the promise on this site: results in 90 days, or we keep working until you have them.
