A quick review of our hiring process so far:

In Part 1: Where to place ads? – We reviewed how to attract candidates for your dental position. In Part 2: Telephone interview – I shared the questions and approach to eliminating unqualified candidates. Today, we will discuss how to do an onsite ½ hour interview.

Give Candidate Patient Brochure

When your candidate arrives, give them your patient brochure or some information about your practice. It’s best if you create a one page profile of your practice to answer the standard questions: what are the hours? What is the job description and career advancement opportunity? Give this profile page to your candidate to read – that also gives you a few minutes to wrap up with your patients and get to your interview.

Introduce Yourself and Discuss Your Interview Process

When you meet your candidate, introduce yourself (and your role if you’re a staff member) and shake hands. Invite your candidate to come to a private room and start out by letting her know that you’ll plan to spend 30 minutes together where you will ask a handful of questions, she can ask some questions and we’ll see if this position looks like a fit for her. This starts the meeting off in a positive manner.

Ask to See Copy of Candidate’s Resume

First, ask to see a copy of her resume. Read through her resume to look for a logical path of jobs and find out why she left each position and why she accepted the next one. If something doesn’t make sense in her explanation, ask follow up questions. Does accepting your position seem like a reasonable fit with her background and skills? By reviewing her resume, you can find out if she is a job hopper or if she has negative things to say about all her past employers – both warning signs.

Analyze Candidate’s Fit for Your Practice

Your next job at this interview is to make a decision about the appearance and professionalism of your candidate. While you were asking questions about her resume, how was her speech? Political correctness aside, this is your practice and you get to set the appearance guidelines for staff. If you decide that this person doesn’t match the professionalism you expect from your staff, then you can speed up the interview by asking a few questions and then letting the candidate leave.

Ask Questions

Now it’s time to ask a handful of questions. We ask:

1. What prompted you to call us regarding this position?
2. How would your present employer/co-workers describe you?
3. What’s the most important thing you’ve accomplished at work this year?
4. What did you learn from your last job?
5. What do you see as the next step in your career development?
6. Have you ever read a book that had a deep and lasting effect on you? Tell me about it.
7. What have you done in work situations to improve teamwork?
8. Tell me something you have recently done for yourself.
9. Have you ever committed to a class or project that required one evening/week of your time? What was it? When?
10. To build your career at HealthPark, it will take 2-3 hours/week of your own time to complete our training. It will take 3 years of this time commitment to move into level 5, how do you feel about that?

On to Step 4

Step 4 in the hiring process is the observation day. If you’ve handled the onsite interviews well, then you should have no more than 3-4 candidates coming in to observe. The telephone interview and the onsite interviews usually happen in the same week. So although this seems like a lot of work, it drastically improves your hiring process and it can go quickly. Here’s to hiring successfully in 2012!

Your Onsite Interview Tips

Do you have any tips for the onsite interview that you’ve seen work especially well in determining a candidate’s potential fit with your practice? Please leave them in a comment below.

The word “dentist” brings fear and trembling to many people. That’s why it’s vital to have a welcoming office, so that your clients will feel safe and want to return. Here are some tips to make your patients feel at ease in your office.

1. Hire a Friendly Office Manager

The person sitting at the front desk will give patients the first impression of your entire office. Interview as many candidates as you can and choose the one who will make every patient feel comfortable and at home the moment they step in the door.

2. Introduce Everyone

Make sure the office manager, dental hygienist, dental assistant, and anyone who will be working with the patient, introduces themselves to the patients. For returning patients, ensure every staff member greets patients by name. The patients will feel like they are seeing a friend, and new patients will notice and sense the warm atmosphere.

3. Make Gentle Contact with Patients

Give them a handshake and let that be your first contact with them, even better if they are still in the waiting room. This first friendly gesture makes them feel more at ease once you are clinically touching them in the dentist’s chair. Also, as you start examining them, be slow and confident in your movements so patients feel you are being gentle.

4. Give Patients Control

Patients many times feel like they have no control when they are with their dentist or dental hygienist. Before starting the exam, sit with your patients, without your mask and gloves, and chat with them. Ask how you can help them, if they have any dental fears, etc. Let them share any problems or issues so they can have a say in their dental work. Then explain in detail what you will be doing to help them, so they will be more understanding of the procedures you perform.

5. Details Matter

There are habits you or your staff may be doing that affect your patients negatively, such as eating food that leaves bad breath, or even standing with your arms crossed in an unfriendly manner. Even if you are the best dentist and have great personnel, these odors and appearances can give your patients distaste for being near you or your staff.

Always tell your staff and yourself to think how you would want to be treated as a patient and do the same for those who enter your hospitable office.

How do you create a friendly dental office?

Give us your tips for creating a friendly dental office in a comment below.

Before you understand how to approach a pre-plan for your marketing efforts, it’s important to understand if your practice is ready for such an effort. Take a look at a previous post we wrote to help you make this analysis: How do you know if your practice is ready for marketing.

Before another word is uttered, let’s get one fact out in the open. Dentistry is an industry and dental offices are a business. If it weren’t, the atrophy within the dental community will be so rapid and severe; the public would lose access to competitive dental care within one generation. Armed with the fact that dentistry is a business, it is important to then treat its functioning, its planning and its benchmarking as such. The first thing that a dental practice must do, even before thinking about marketing is to carve out a niche they will occupy. It is absolutely fine to carve out a small niche then plan to expand it over the years.

Carving A Niche

A niche, in Shakespeare’s words, should be carved like a dish fit for Gods not hewed like a carcass for the dogs. Sage advice even in business. The niche must be meticulously carved out and not haphazardly hacked. The niche must rise from the ashes of careful reflection and study. The study in itself can be categorized into four quadrants known as a SWOT analysis. SWOT is the acronym for Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat. The process is iterative and factors can be placed under more than one column if considered appropriate.

Strength

Simply defined, strength is a positive attribute within the practices’ sphere of influence. The strength column must be an honest evaluation of all attributes of the principle and his/her practice that represents positive consequences. A large database of clients is an example of strength. Experienced staff is also an example. Equipment that is housed internally for surgery and x rays are all examples of strengths.

Weakness

Weaknesses describe exactly where the principle, key staff and business are not performing well. Usual areas include high customer turnover. Anything that is within the control of the practice that it is not doing well is a weakness.

Opportunities

Opportunities are the first of two external factors, unlike Strength and Weaknesses which are internal attributes. An Opportunity is a market condition that the practice has no control over but is perfectly poised to take advantage of. Business typically seeks to match strengths with Opportunities to grow and match strength with Threats to mitigate.

Threats

Threats are market forces that have negative implications for the business. It too, like Opportunities, are beyond the business’s control. It is environmental. A threat is something that businesses try to mitigate with one of their strengths. If a threat is dangerously poised over an internal weakness, it is the worse possible scenario and steps must be taken to correct.

Place the four factors in a grid with each heading occupying one quadrant and begin a brainstorming session, throwing everything the mind can think of. Then eliminate one by one and match them accordingly. What synthesizes from here is the niche one should occupy and a strategy to move forward can be chiseled out.

Your Pre-Planning Tips?

What are some of your favorite tips for pre-planning dental marketing campaigns within your practice? Please share in a comment below.

Are you an iPhone user? Check out a recent post highlighting the top free dental iPhone apps of 2012.

Whether you want to be a dental genius—or just have the knowhow to care for your pearly whites like one—there are a ton of mobile tools that can help you stay on top of oral hygiene. The good news, is that regardless of if you’re brushing up for dental school or an up-coming annual check-up, there are a ton of smart phone apps available to help you brush and floss more effectively, connect dentists and patients from a distance, keep you appraised of the latest and greatest dental lingo to impress your friends at parties, and , is that we live in the age of smart phones, which means there are a number of ways we can improve our oral hygiene, study up for dental school, or even tools that will prepare you for more in-depth dental surgeries and teeth whitening treatments by just consulting our handy Android devices.

1. Brushy (Free – for Android)

Particularly helpful for kids and adults who think they’re giving their chompers a good brush every morning and night, when in fact, they’re missing spots, the Brushy app is a simple 2 minute brush timer. Launch the app and it will count down two minute brush sessions at a time while it targets which area of the mouth to clean. The Brushy app will tell you exactly when you’ve spent thorough time brushing your teeth and ensure you commit to the 2-minute cleaning time that the majority of dentists recommend.

2. My Dentist – Dental Anywhere (Free – for Android)

It’s nice to know that you’re cared about—even from a distance. So the next time your dentist goes on vacation or to that annual dental conference in Poughkeepsie, you can stay connected via the My Dentist – Dental Anywhere app. This app keeps dentists in tune to their patients, opening the lines of communication from afar. Say you have a question about what kind of floss to buy, you can launch the Dental Anywhere app and the question will reach your dentist via his or her smart phone for immediate attention.

3. Tooth Protection Tips(Free – for Android)

The Tooth Protection app for Android provides general dental advice and tips on all oral-related health—such as brushing, flossing, calcium-rich foods, how to prevent tooth decay, safe whitening procedures, and more! So if you happen to be at the store looking at the teeth whitening products, you can consult the Tooth Protection App and know you’re receiving sound advice on your oral health.

4. Dental Video Lexicon (Free – for Android)

The Dental Video Lexicon is a handy app for both dental students and inquisitive patients. The app features a comprehensive Lexicon (or dictionary and vocabulary tool) that will help you answer almost any query relevant to dentistry with colorful, step-by-step visuals and picture examples. For instance, if you’re scheduled to get braces, you may want to look up information about braces fittings, duration of where, maintenance, foods to stir clear of, and pros of cons of wearing braces on your teeth. On the other hand, if you’re a dental student, you might want to look up various dental procedures like these to prepare yourself to fit braces on your patients.

5. 1000 Dental Flashcards & Quiz ($1.99 – for Android)

The 1000 Dental Flashcards & Quiz app provides 1000 useful dental references to educate you on topics related to dental hygiene, mouth and tooth anatomy, popular dental treatments, and surgeries. The app offers all of this information in engaging flashcard format, so it’s ideal if you are interested in dentistry or plan to pursue it as a career.

Your Favorite Android Dental Apps

Have you tried any of the apps above? Which is your favorite? Are there other dental apps for the Android that other Dental Heroes’ readers should check out? Please let us know in a comment below.

This way, loyalty is earned. Bonus programs, loyalty reward programs and complex promotions will not amount to anything if the customer is not comfortable to visit your chair.

Trust

There is a level of familiarity and comfort a patient must feel for them to develop a level of trust that strengthens over time. Causes for doubt quickly shake this trust, evidence of wellbeing slowly builds it. Only a patient who experience a level of service that is sufficient to overcome the already burgeoning apprehension of a dentist visit will be able to store a positive memory of the experience.

Loyalty marketing is a fairly new term for an old truism – do unto other as you would have them do unto you. As long as this is adhered to, loyalty marketing is half way done. A person’s loyalty to a dentist, or even a mechanic is based upon how they perceive the service. And that really comes down to culture. If a clinic puts out New York manners in a southern rural town, don’t expect to have patients for long. Loyalty can only be earned.

Connections

A survey of dentists across the country repeatedly attribute their continued success to the relationships they forge with their patients. This relationship works better to cement the bond and guarantee a returning patient more than frequent flier miles ever could. Dentistry is about relationships. And it is the relationships that carry the loyalty of a patient.

As such, first and foremost is the relationship. All else that is used in the furtherance of effective marketing is really only to preserve relationships and is by no means in itself a successful strategy. If there is an email reminder program, it should be with a fairly personal note from the dentist to the patient. That goes a lot farther than a template message. Wishes of birthday’s and holidays should be done with a personal touch. When visiting, time should be taken to understand the patient. All other academic formulas to increase patient count and revenue will pale in comparison if a little humanity is brought to bear on the relationship

If you missed Part 1 of this series, be sure to check out, “How to Hire Great Dental Staff: Part I.” If you’ve already read Part I – read on.

So, now you have a stack of resumes and a list of names with phone numbers of people interested in your position – what’s next? The telephone interview.

Telephone Interview Benefits

Using a telephone interview as your first step in the interviewing process has several benefits:

• You gain a picture of the candidate
• You determine the candidate’s level of enthusiasm and telephone etiquette
• You quickly weed out candidates that are not the right fit
• You save a mountain of time
• You control the volume of candidates in each stage of the process

To make these calls, use a fixed set of interview questions. When we ask every candidate the same questions, we can compare their answers. The magic is not in the questions themselves, it’s in the conversation – how do you feel this person matches up with the position you have available?

What We Look for in a Candidate

Here are some qualities we look for when hiring (in no particular order):

• Helper
• Bright
• Money not main concern
• Competent
• Energetic
• Sense of mission
• Realistic
• Wants a career
• Listens well
• Optimistic
• Team player
• Values health
• Good sense of humor
• Needs to work
• High self esteem

5 Sample Questions to Ask Candidates

When you talk with a candidate, use a fresh page of interview questions and put their name at the top. Here are the 5 questions we generally ask:

1. I’d like to begin by giving you an opportunity to tell me a bit about yourself. What would you like me to know about you?

2. Tell me a little about what prompted you to respond to our ad.

3. Tell me about your past work experiences and why you are interested in dentistry.

4. You would be expected to be part of a team. Tell me what experiences and skills you have which would help you fit in with us.

5. What goals do you have for yourself for the next 5 years?

Keep the Calls to 10-15 Minutes

Try to keep these calls to 10-15 minutes. As the candidate is talking you are noting her comments on the page and you are deciding whether to invite her in for the next interview or not. If you’re still not sure by the end of the call, ask “Is there anything else you’d like to add?” Occasionally, candidates will ask “How much is the pay?” and our standard response is “The pay varies with your experience. I can tell you that our pay is competitive in our area and that we go into detail on pay, benefits and bonuses with the candidate we offer the position to.”

Ask the Candidate What She Knows About Your Practice

If you like this candidate, ask “Now that I know a little about you, what questions can I answer for you about us?” This is just common courtesy, plus you may be impressed to find that some of your candidates have already researched your website, liked your Facebook page and are well informed about your practice – this makes you even more excited to meet them in person. Finally, invite them to come in for the onsite interview, I usually call it the ½ hour interview, so they know it’s just a short visit. Ask them to bring a copy of their resume and you’re done!

If Not a Fit, Let Them Down Gently

Now, if you decide that this candidate is not a fit, you want to let this person down with as much dignity as possible. Think how you would feel if you were on the other end of the phone. “Susie, I’ve had 2-3 candidates with experience as a dental assistant and I just have to give them preference. I’ve really enjoyed talking with you and I hope you find just the job you’re looking for.” This is far more honest and straightforward than telling someone that we’ll call you if we’re interested – and letting them wait and wonder.

Strive to Hire Within 10 Days

Don’t string your 1/2 hour interviews out. Try to complete the hiring process within 10 days of the ad appearing online. You may need to set aside 1/2 day or at least a 2 hour interval to do these interviews. By the end of the hiring process, it’s nice to have 2-3 candidates to choose from, since this is just the first step, expect to make 20-30 calls and invite about 6-8 in for ½ hour interviews. Next time we’ll review how to run on onsite ½ hour interview.

Your Tips

Do you have additional tips for the phone interview that have worked for your practice? Please leave them in a comment below.

How it Works

Each day in March, two male and two female celebrities will face off and the winners will advance based on your votes. Vote each day and enter to win a Whiter Image Prize Pack. The winning celebrity will be featured in Dear Doctor – Dentistry & Oral Health magazine.

What you can win

For participating and voting each day you can enter to win a daily Whiter Image Prize Pack. The winning celebrity will be featured in an upcoming issue of Dear Doctor – Dentistry & Oral Health magazine.

Where to Vote

To Learn more and start voting, visit the Dear Doctor Facebook Page.

Who has the best smile?

Which celebrity do you think has the best smile? Leave a comment below to let us know.

But, in what ways does pregnancy have a bearing on the parent-to-be’s oral health? Well, let’s take a look at some of the more common occurrences that will happen to women’s dental health during their 9 months of pregnancy.

The most common dental problem for women during pregnancy is discomfort in the gums and this may be witnessed by the gums becoming more puffy, inflamed or more likely to bleed during brushing. These ailments are all common dental concerns for pregnant women and for most, they will only cause minor discomfort but, in some cases, pregnant women can experience more severe gum disease as a result of their pregnancy and in these cases, it is important to visit a suitable dental specialist.

The most important thing for pregnant women to remember during pregnancy is to make sure they don’t neglect their dental health routine. It is quite common for teeth to become loose or to move during pregnancy but if women ensure that their teeth are kept completely clean and dental plaque is removed completely, dental problems are unlikely to occur during pregnancy.

As with many dental problems, it may not be immediately obvious that there is a problem and that is why it is important for pregnant women to ensure they go for regular check-ups at their dentists throughout their pregnancy because this will allow any potential issues to be caught early and resolved before they become more serious. A dental hygienist will be able to supply important information for pregnant women on how they should be looking after their dental health throughout their pregnancy and it is important not to let looking after your teeth take a backseat whilst you are waiting to give birth.

You wouldn’t normally think smart phone apps could help make your mouth healthier—but they can! Technology is not just for surfing Facebook and sending text messages any longer. No, now you can use you iPhone to help you stay healthy and out of the dentist’s office too, as long as you have T-Mobile wireless or internet access.

Introducing 5 mouth-minded smart phone apps to help you prevent cavities, gum disease, seek information on things like braces, and teach kids to brush their teeth properly.

1. iBrush (Free – for iPhone)

Brushing your teeth seems like a no-brainer to adults, but for kids it might be a bit of convincing. The iBrush app guides kids through the proper brushing techniques with a game. The app gives them a 60-second challenge to clean as many dirty spots from the teeth on screen (by brushing their own) as many times as possible. And as they brush, the dirty spots on the teeth on screen will turn from yellow to white. This gets kids in the habit of brushing for the proper amount of time and teaches them about the importance of maintaining proper dental hygiene.

2. Dental Expert (Free – for iPhone)

The Dental Expert app is a patient’s guide to dentistry terms and procedures. Dental Expert features a FAQ on the most commonly asked dental questions answered by professionals in each field—including cosmetic dentistry, dentures, braces, dental surgery, and more. Plus, expert advice on general dental topics—such as teeth whitening, long-term dental health, advice on what to do during a dental emergency, and even tips for cutting down on family dental costs.

3. iBraces Help (Free – for iPhone)

The iBraces app will keep you smiling even if you dread getting braces. Think of this app as a source of information for patients who have braces or for those who are about to get orthodontic treatment and have braces fit. iBraces will guide patents through all steps of the treatment, using pictures and video examples, to help shed insight into the procedure and ease anxiety-ridden dental patients.

4. Mouth & Teeth (Free – for iPhone)

The Mouth & Teeth app covers the gamut of dental-related topics for curious patients—including things like general dental health, gum disease, oral cancer, braces and denture fittings, and tooth decay and disorders.

5. BrushyTime (Free – for iPhone)

And because there are not enough ways to protect your kids’ dental health—and convince them that brushing is vital at a young age—there’s the BrushyTime app. Like the name say, this app helps kids maintain the proper duration of tooth brushing with a fun, animated game! Simply choose your theme, e.g., from Pirate to Traditional Brush and tap “go”. The app will count out your brushing time via a digital clock display, and, for example, the Pirate Theme will move a pirate ship depending on how long the brushing lasts. A friendly parrot will guide you as you brush, notifying the half-way mark and when you’re about to reach the end.

Your Favorite iPhone Dental Apps

What dental apps have you added to your iPhone arsenal?

Realize the Potential of Your ‘Set’

As you know, Extreme Makeover home edition starts out with the bare bones – no fancy movie sets to be seen! However, these shows uncover lots of hidden potential with these real-life sets. So don’t be discouraged if you are starting from scratch. Are you ready to see what potential your hygiene department has?
The hygiene department is one very important department of a dental practice. It is one area of huge profitability in every dental practice. You may not see this fact in action yet at your own practice, but the potential is true for every dental practice in the 21st Century. No longer do we consider the dental hygiene department a loss leader.

We used to think the main purpose of a dental hygienist was to perform a prophylaxis and limited adjunctive services. In fact, in at least half of general practices, dental hygienists spend most of their time exclusively focused on prophylaxis, x-rays, fluoride treatments for children, and occasionally periodontal probing. It is a rare occasion where the hygiene department provides other services. The keystone to your makeover is to change this paradigm. The entire dental team must view the hygiene department as an opportunity to increase patient care and production by adding more hygiene-related services.

Meet the Cast

The paradigm shift must begin with the lead role, the practice owner, or dentist. Once the dentist is willing to restructure the practice’s hygiene department, the dental practice can begin providing the highest level of patient care. At the same time, the practice will experience an increase in practice production.
The other “cast members” must follow suit. Every team member, including hygienists, dental assistants, financial coordinators, and administrative assistants, must play a supporting role in advancing practice production, with the two main profit centers of being unquestionably the doctor (restorative dentistry, implants, etc.) and dental hygiene department.

Patients are your final, key players, and how you communicate to them (and how they respond) depends on how well your team “glues” your set together.

Plan Your Dream Practice

What does your dream practice look like? Does your team share a common vision? If not, discuss this during your next team meeting. Items to consider in your vision are great management skills, team harmony, organized and structured business systems, quality patient treatment, and increased production and profits.
To truly make over your hygiene department, your vision must include every member of your team advocating and acting upon the idea that your hygiene team provides more than ‘just a cleaning’ (prophylaxis). Most successful general dental practices provide comprehensive, patient-centered preventive care.

Monitoring four key areas of a dental hygiene department that will provide success for every dental practice. Make these your priority during your makeover:

1. A Stellar Mix of Services

When the dental practice embraces the philosophy that the dental hygiene department provides more than cleanings, x-rays and fluoride treatments for children, the service menu will allow for higher production. Additional services for the hygiene department menu can include the following: Fluoride varnish for adult root exposure and use of Caries Management by Risk Assessmen,( usually called: CAMBRA) whitening impressions, occlusal guard impressions, periodontal probing and maintenance, etc. Sit down with your team and agree to start expanding these services – and see if you can come up with more ideas to add to the hygiene department.

2. Smart Scheduling

The dental hygiene appointment is typically 40-60 minutes in length. Not every hygiene patient needs 40 minutes or 60 minutes, but a tiered and pre-blocked schedule will allow appropriate time for individual patients and their specific needs.

3. Effective Communication

Throughout the appointment the hygiene conversation needs to be focused on the patient’s oral health and benefits of optimal oral health. Many times hygienists find themselves in a friend-type of relationship instead of a more professional, patient-healthcare provider relationship. Ideally, your conversation with patients should be 80 percent professional and 20 percent social. This will allow more time to discuss important treatment concerns before the doctor arrives for the examination. It is most important to communicate the oral health-systemic health relationship and how important optimal oral health is for a healthy lifestyle. When patients trust their dental professional and understand they need to schedule in advance for their next hygiene appointment, they are likely to take action, not only in scheduling their next appointment but making the appointment a priority. Many dental experts can provide information about effective communication to help you convince patients to make oral health a priority.

4. Relationship Building

Dental hygienists spend the most amount of one-on-one time with patients – and here’s where that 20 percent social conversation comes into play. In many offices you will find that patients build lasting relationships with their hygienist and they request to see the same hygienist each successive appointment. Use this to your advantage! Once the hygienist communicates effectively and builds a professional and trusting relationship, most patients look forward to returning for their hygiene appointment. This is a great way to combat those costly cancellations! (And not only costly to the dental practice!)

Stretch Your Potential

Extreme makeovers are all about discovering new ideas, as well as hidden treasures and then turning them into something remarkable. Make sure you know every opportunity where you can improve and expand. Schedule a training time with the entire team so that everyone understands what services are available for patients, such as comprehensive dentistry, comprehensive exams and full-mouth x-rays, cosmetic dentistry services, implants, and periodontal therapy (including referrals to a local periodontist). Your entire team – not just hygienists – must effectively communicate these services to patients. Idea: Develop scripts for communication with patients, and practice these scripts at another team meeting.

Also know your hygiene department’s diagnostic potential. Check with your state or country to understand if it is legal for a dental hygienist to make a clinical diagnosis and yet at the very least the hygienist can identify potential areas of concern for treatment and diagnosis by the dentist. The dental hygienist is in the perfect environment to explain what services the practice offers, and the hygiene appointment is the best time to have positive discussions with patients about the benefits of treatment prior to the doctor examining the patient.

Each 32 hours of hygiene a week, 50 weeks a year, the hygiene department has the potential to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars (Euros, pounds, etc.) to the dental practice. The kicker: This production and the potential profits depend upon how well the hygienist is trained to identify, educate, and motivate patients to complete treatment. Once the dentist enters the hygiene room for the patient exam the hygiene-dentist collaboration must be maximized. The hygienist should open conversation with the dentist with a brief overview of the appointment. Then, the hygienist should present his or her treatment recommendations, as well as patient concerns. It is O.K. and often beneficial for the hygienist to step outside the hygiene room to have a discussion with the dentist aout any patient challenges (emotional, financial, or dental) before the collaborative exam begins. Doing so provides the best opportunity to increase your practice profits. There are occasional opportunities where the hygienist may need to discuss a challenging or personal patient situation outside of the treatment room and in the presence of the patient.

Get Ready to Go Live

While you won’t be on live TV showcasing your practice makeover, you will certainly be live with the public. Be sure to awe them! The dental hygiene department should be the second largest profit center in every successful dental practice, yet it is one of THE most underutilized departments in most offices. However, when the dental hygienists are able to offer a diverse range of services to patients, provide a variety of services, and identify and communicate treatment plans, the dental hygiene department will create practice success and build huge profits for the dental practice. In turn, the dental hygienists will appear as respected colleagues and become extremely valuable to the dental practice. No longer will your hygiene team be thought to live in the “prophy palace.” There’s a whole new world left unexplored in most dental hygiene departments, so make it a point to pioneer it in your “Extreme

First of 5

So, you just received 2 weeks notice from a well-trained dental assistant or experienced dental secretary. Sorry to hear that. I know the work it takes to hire and train a new staff person. The good news is that you have the opportunity to add a positive, enthusiastic, intelligent person to your team that may help your whole practice move to the next level. This is the first of a series of 5 installments on hiring dental staff. We’re going to walk through the steps of an effective hiring process so you can be establish a clear system in your practice.

Develop the “Promote from Within” Philosophy

Before we jump into where to find great candidates, stop and think about your practice and the specific needs of this position. It is a real challenge to lose a top staff person – If you don’t have other well-trained staff. By constantly developing the skills of your staff, you are always ‘promoting from within’ and then when someone leaves, you have the opportunity to move everyone up. For example, let’s take the assistant team – let’s say you’re in a 2 GP practice with 1 EFDA, 2 experienced assistants and one less experienced assistant. BEFORE anyone leaves, your goal is to have each of these assistants continuously developing their skills – that way they are used to learning new tasks and are comfortable with change. You should have a list of the procedures you perform and licenses they can achieve for the 2 experienced assistants to review – and they should be gaining these new skills on a regular basis. Hopefully, at least one of these assistants is taking classes to achieve her EFDA license. That way, if your EFDA leaves, you don’t hire a brand new EFDA who has no idea how things run – instead, you promote from within – even if there is a few month delay while your next assistant completes her education.

The practice philosophy ‘we promote from within’ does 2 major things for you. First, it establishes a culture of continual learning – because no one ever knows when the next opportunity will arise, but they have to be prepared in advance so they can take advantage when it occurs. Second, it virtually eliminates the stress and drama of hiring. When you hire based on attitude and career-growth, you are confident that you can teach the dental skills and you are relatively less affected by staff turnover. As with anything, there is a trade-off here. If you want to enjoy a practice where staff turnover doesn’t cause major problems – then instead you will be spending your time developing the careers of your staff. (As an aside, if you’re interested in a comprehensive staff training system, I’m developing this into an online training program and we’re in pilot right now.)

Where to find great candidates

The rest of my Hiring Dental Staff series will assume that you are developing the careers of your staff and that you also believe in promoting from within. So, no on to where to find great candidates. Here’s my list:

1. Craigslist
2. Local dental assistant schools
3. Dental society sub list
4. Dental vendors, such as Schein
5. Networking
6. Resumes you’ve saved

You can find a great new hire from any one of these sources. First of all, I love Craigslist for hiring – it’s free to run the ad and you will get dozens of applicants. The quality of these applicants will vary – but you’re only hiring one! Plus, you know they are already savvy with computers and that’s a skill you can use. Next, dental assistant schools – call up the local ones and let them know you’re hiring. Ask them to send you resumes for graduates and anyone who is due to graduate very soon – you need them to be available for your full time hours. Next, contact your dental society – they usually maintain a sub list and you can contact these folks to let them know you’re hiring. Next, talk with your dental vendors and let your supply rep know you’re hiring a dental assistant – this rep visits dental offices every week and may very well know someone who is looking for a new opportunity.

Another idea is networking – ask your staff to spread the word and help you recruit. When we were hiring a hygienist not long ago, one of my existing hygienists offered to post on her hygiene school’s Facebook page that we had a position open! Finally, I recommend saving resumes throughout the year – most dental practices are approached occasionally by people looking for work. Take 5 minutes to talk with the person (I’ll tell you how to do this interview in my next article) and decide if they seem like a potential candidate for the future. If so, keep their resume in a folder – every time someone comes in that you like, just add their resume to the folder. Now, when it’s time to hire, these folks are your first contacts – costs you nothing to send an email to let all these people know that you saved their resume and would like to let them know that you’re now hiring if they’re interested – and if they’re not interested, do they know someone else that might be? People really appreciate this – and it can save you mountains of time from sorting through dozens of Craigslist resumes if you find a match in this first group!

Stay tuned for part II of the “How to Hire Great Dental Staff” series for more great tips on finding your next great employee.

Where do you look for candidates

Tell us in a comment below how you find candidates for your dental staff? What has worked well and what hasn’t.

For years I have observed that doctors who thrive are different – not just operationally, logistically, clinically, or in other professional areas. They think differently. They talk differently. They are different.

What is the difference? They all possess what I call an “Abundance Mindset.” Although it may not sound like a tangible difference, I have seen this mindset proven over and over in all types of dental practices throughout the United States.

Are you open to changing your thinking? If you want to thrive as a doctor, I would highly recommend it. Moving from a scarcity mindset, to an abundant mindset will dramatically shift your life and practice. Abundance says there is more than enough money, love, forgiveness and other things for everyone. It believes in increasing the pie for all. Scarcity says there is a limited and fixed amount. Therefore, when I “get mine,” others will not “get theirs.”

How do you acquire an Abundant Mindset? Implement the seven steps below and see if abundance arrives more often in your life and practice.

1. Change your Thinking

If abundance is not overflowing in your life and practice, you need to recognize right now that you need to change your thinking. You can decide right now to move to abundant thinking. One “aha” moment followed by a simple decision can forever change your thinking.

A shift to abundant thinking is much like flying through rough air until you reach smooth air. Once you break through, it’s smooth sailing. After 26 years of watching some doctors thrive and other doctors struggle, it’s incredibly frustrating to watch doctors hang on to a scarcity mindset and refuse to change their thinking to abundance.

Choose abundant thinking right now.

2. Change Your Social Network

If you are involved in a network of friends and colleagues that does not embrace change and does not share an abundance mentality, you need to begin spending more time with people who pull you toward abundance.

When you decide to break away from an old mentality, there may be initial resistance until you break through to abundance. Sometimes your family can hold you back if you grew up poor or in debt. They expect you to remain in that situation. Sometimes friends or colleagues who are content with scarcity can restrain you.

You may also have to change some of your dental team. Your entire team must totally support and buy in to an abundance mentality. An entire team sold on and pursuing abundance leads to a thriving practice.

3. Change your Habits

Significant change in thinking or actions begins with a change of habits. A habit is something we do auto-consciously. We don’t have to think about it and we are usually unaware that we’re even doing it.

All lasting change requires a change of habit. Whether you want to lose weight, make more money, get in shape, fix your marriage, or develop an abundant mindset – it usually requires at least ninety days to anchor a new habit.

I am a big believer in setting goals, timelines and strategies; but if you do not change your habits, you will not see long-term change. Because a change of habit requires focus and energy, I always recommend you begin with one or two habits, not ten. You can make a goal list to change many habits, but start with one or two until your new habits are firmly anchored. Then move on to the next habit.

Choose the most influential habit first. For example, if you are a pessimistic thinker, change that one habit and it will immediately impact other unhelpful habits.

4. Walk In Integrity

Integrity is simply behaving in private the same as you would behave in public – being the same person in private as you are in public. Integrity is always doing the right thing.

You will only gain abundance when you walk in integrity and you’ll always begin to have integrity when you walk in abundance. If you have abundance – more than enough, you make choices based on integrity. When you’re desperate for abundance but have a scarcity mindset, you may be willing to make decisions and choices that compromise your integrity. Those who believe in scarcity tend to push the edges of integrity to “get theirs.”

Consider this example. If you had one billion dollars, would you consider crossing the line of integrity? You would probably make decisions based on your fixed moral compass because you do not feel like you “need” to push the edges to get more.

A wise friend once shared with me the following nugget; “What you compromise to keep, eventually you will lose.”

5. Be Ready for Abundance

Powerball winners are usually bankrupt within five years. Why? They were not ready for abundance. The amount of abundance is not important, but we must be ready or we will squander our opportunity.

Are you ready to “accept” abundance when it arrives? Much like a fisherman who prepares his net to receive a great catch of fish, you must be ready to receive. What would you do if next year you had an extra two million dollars? Ten million dollars?

Maybe you have bought into an abundance mindset and you are beginning to tell everyone “we’re getting ready to double our practice.” Make sure your team is ready for abundance. Your most significant challenge will be coaching your staff through it. They all must be coachable and fully onboard or you may need to change team members.

6. Always Forgive…it Releases Abundance

Unforgiveness wants justice. But if we seek justice for others, we must accept justice for ourselves. It sets up a quid-pro-quo arrangement. You take from me, I’ll take from you.

Abundance, on the other hand, is like grace in that we get more than we deserve and better than we deserve. If we offer forgiveness abundantly, we receive forgiveness abundantly. Forgiveness releases you and releases abundance. And…we begin to see the same reflected in every area of our lives. Forgiveness brings personal freedom and opens the doors and windows for abundance to enter your personal and professional life.

If you need nothing, forgiveness is easy. Consider the daughter of the richest man in the world. If a thief stole her car, she would simply forgive and ask her father for another car without any necessity to hold a grudge.

Forgiveness gives. Unforgiveness takes. Become a giving machine.

7. Always Believe the Best

Satchel Page was an incredible baseball player who fought racism with a positive smile and a powerful pitching arm. He always believed the best no matter what the situation because he realized there was nothing gained in believing anything less than the best.

He is famous for the saying, “Work like you don’t need the money, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching.” Optimism flowed from him, as he loved his work and life. At the end of his last game, when asked about retirement, he smiled and said, “I never had a job.”

One day, Satchel was called upon to pitch against a team in which all the best minor league hitters were assembled together for the sole purpose of embarrassing him. Satchel told his outfielders and infielders to sit down as he started to pitch. One by one he struck out these great hitters. He did not complain about the team stacking the deck against him, but believed the best and rose to the challenge.

Always believe the best. Doctors with an abundance mindset always believe they will thrive personally and professionally.

Abundance is Knocking at the Door

Change your mindset today. Abundance is knocking on your door, but you need to decide to open the door and welcome it in to your life and practice.

Go for it!

Your Thoughts

What are you doing in your personal and professional life to move from scarcity to plenty? Please share in a comment below.

It’s that time of year – in the last 10 days I’ve received 2 different yellow pages directories found lying on my doorstep. Yellow pages advertising used to be the primary focus of my marketing budget. About 5 years ago, our practice ran a full page ad in at least 3 different books and a smaller size ad in 2 additional books. Oh, how times have changed!

If you are trying to decide whether to keep or eliminate yellow pages from your marketing budget, here are some suggestions:

Establish a tracking system

Most yellow pages offer (for a fee) a unique phone number they place in your yellow pages ad that will track these calls and forward them to your real phone number. These serves not only identify the volume of calls, but also record them. The yellow pages company provides you an ID and password for their website where you can run reports to find how many calls came in to your office thanks to this ad – and that’s how you can identify the number of potential new patients your yellow pages ad is bringing in.

Listen to the calls

If you already have this phone tracking service from the yellow pages, then go online and listen to each call. You need to know how your secretary is handling these calls. You need to find out how many of these phone calls turn into scheduled new patients.

Determine your ROI

Once you listen to the calls, you can document patient names and find out if these patients actually came in for their appointment. You can check your computer ledger to see what production/collection you received for each patient and compare the total with what you’re spending on this ad. In general, you want to shoot for a return on investment of 5:1.

By using this system, I have eliminated all yellow pages directory advertising except for one book. In fact, I was surprised to see how well this one directory was performing for us! When we decided to renew our ad in this book, we made the assumption that most of the potential new patients using the book were most likely senior citizens – and we targeted our ad to this group directly.

We’re also using the yellow pages to gain feedback on our competitors. When I see a directory that we have dropped completely, I flip immediately to the ‘Dentists’ section to see which dentists in my area are still paying the money to advertise. I find it interesting to see which dentists are still investing in a full page ad when I tracked the book’s performance and I know it didn’t perform. This tells me which dentists are paying attention to their marketing and which are still doing the same thing they used to do in the past.

Do you think the Yellow Pages are still a viable advertising medium?

Is the Yellow Pages still a viable advertising medium, or is it dead? Let us know your thoughts in a comment below.

With the mass success of the Apple iPhone and iPad, a lot of PC users have considered installing Apple Mac computers in their homes and offices. As with most technology, there is a compromise when considering a product that has a smaller user base. Detailed below are a few of the common questions and considerations to evaluate when looking at using the Apple Mac for your practice.

What are some of the pros of the Apple Mac?

The Mac’s sleek and attractive design is the first thing that draws people in. They look great just about anywhere. The operating system is very dependable, and the chances of being infected with a virus are much lower than those with a Windows-based PC.

I thought that Mac’s do not get viruses?

That a myth. Mac’s can and do acquire viruses, but there are significantly fewer viruses out there that infect the Mac. Why? Hackers typically create viruses to attack the masses, and Mac users are not the masses. A major drawback here is that fewer resources are devoted to Mac virus protection, and thus the resolution of new viruses can take much longer than that of a Windows-based PC.

What are my options for Practice Management with a Mac?

MacPractice is widely considered strongest player in the field, but there are additional options that are available, such as MacDentPro. Curve Dental leads the web-based software field and is Mac friendly. Compared with the Windows-based PC, you have fewer options to consider.

hat are my options for Digital Imaging with a Mac?

This is where your options start to dwindle. MacPractice promotes the Suni sensor as their product line of choice. There is also support for ScanX and Planmeca devices. Unfortunately, with the very small user base, most of digital imaging companies are not investing in native support for the Mac. In English, that means if you want the latest and greatest in Digital Imaging you’re limited to the Windows-based PC environment.

Can’t I run Windows on my Mac using Parallels or VMWare?

Yes, you can, but what is the point? Running Windows on the Mac allows you to utilize mainstream Practice Management and sometimes Digital Imaging software, but it takes away all benefits of utilizing a Mac in the first place. Since Windows operates in a separate environment than Mac OSX, it will naturally run more slowly than it would on a comparable PC. In addition, using Windows on the Mac further complicates your network environment and opens the door to all of the consequences of a PC network. Lastly, you will never want to mention to your software provider that you are running Windows on a Mac because they will simply blame everything on an “unsupported configuration.”

What are the differences between PC and Mac hardware?

At one time, the Apple Mac was a completely different device from the PC. Now, they use the same processors, RAM, hard drives, and video chipsets. So when investing in a Mac, you pay more for approximately the same product that you may purchase from Dell or HP.

Are there any other cons with moving to the Mac?

Since the user base is much smaller than that of the Windows-based PC, there is a much smaller support base. You simply have fewer choices for a support partner. Additionally, Apple does not offer same business day on-site hardware replacement and does not guarantee next business day on-site hardware replacement. This can create a bigger obstacle on mission critical equipment like your server. Windows-based PC manufacturer’s like Dell offer these options. Most practices cannot afford to be down for hours, let alone for days.

Is the Mac right for your practice?

Each practice has specific needs that it must evaluate before selecting an IT solution. Both options present both unique benefits and challenges. By assessing the value of each possibility and its integration into your practice, you can better determine which choice will optimize your practice’s efficiency and productivity.

Do you Use Macs or PCs in Your Practice?

Repeat after me:
“I will be better organized.”
“I will figure out how to be more productive.”
“I will get a handle on my debt.”
“I will get the most from my technology.
“I will get training for my team.”

Any of these sound familiar? If they do, do you follow through with these resolutions? Many of you may say, “No,” and that is not uncommon.

Know the Power of Planning

Perhaps the biggest reason our New Year’s resolutions peter out after the first two weeks of January is because we do not make a PLAN to support them. An idea can only take you so far without establishing detailed steps to make it successful. These same concepts translate to the business world, and a major annual strategic planning session is crucial for the success of your practice.

The dental business can also throw us curve balls, and our survival depends on whether we have a well thought-out annual plan — or fly by the seat of our pants. It’s not unlike airline pilots, who always fly with emergency plans in place.

On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from New York’s LaGuardia airport for Charlotte, N.C. Shortly after takeoff, the plane went through a flock of geese at 3,000 feet, and both engines were knocked out. Captain Chelsey Sullenberger had not landed on water before, yet his training and the emergency plans allowed him to take appropriate actions in an extreme situation and make a safe, successful landing on the Hudson River.

Though many of us have faced crises (economic, professional, or personal), surprisingly few organizations are ready with a plan. Don’t let your dental practice be one of them.

That said, what is your annual plan, and how will you make it a reality? How can you ensure your plan is successful, makes a positive impact on your practice, and offers the highest profit on your bottom line?

The answer: By working with an expert practice management coach. Don’t wait until the New Year. Our coaches are ready to help you PLAN and discuss these questions now. Do this, and allow yourself to enjoy the benefits of a well thought-out plan — even when life just happens.

Take These Steps to Your Success

1. Decide on New Year’s resolutions for your practice.

2. Schedule an appointment with a dental practice expert who can help you make a strategic plan — and ensure it’s a reality in 2012.

3. Schedule a date to meet with this expert before 2012 arrives.
-Discuss your plans for 2012.
– Put this on the calendar before December 31, 2011.
– Count this as your “Team Annual Planning Session.”

4. Assemble a P&L (Profit and Loss) statement of the past 12 months
– Collaborate with a dental expert who is trained to turn your P&L into a management tool for increased profits in 2012

5. Determine with your dental practice expert (consultant/coach) if your overhead stacks up against the true dental industry standards.

6. Project your expenses and goals with the guidance of your practice expert.
– Base these on history, expenses, and potential.

7. Have an annual planning session. Discuss with your team how many working days will be needed to meet your budget needs.
-What services will you provide? (e.g. same-day services, new services, standard of care services, etc.)
-What products can you offer and sell to add value and benefit your patients’ oral and total health?
-With the guidance of your dental practice expert, determine your practice potential and identify your obstacles.
-Brainstorm with your consultant/coach and team to plan how to move beyond these obstacles.
-Finally, develop an action plan.
– This is the step that pulls your plan together and will make your resolutions stick!

Getting Expert Guidance Pays Off

Planning is your ticket to success, but make sure it’s done right. Even the dental practices that do have annual plans often lack a well thought-out strategic plan. Add to that poor execution, and many of these weak plans derail, leading to lost patient appointment time, loss of practice profitability, wasted money, contentious patient issues, and even legal quagmires.

The solution: Have an expert dental consultant guide your annual planning so you leave no stones unturned. Asking for help is the key to creating a profitable year in 2012! Don’t delay. Put this appointment on your calendar today! A ten-step plan will find your practice’s untapped potential and successfully manage your profitability.

The rewards you can reap from New Year’s resolutions don’t occur in a minute. It takes a series of successive milestones as you work toward the change that you seek. This is the reason you need to begin planning today. So, mark your calendar, get set, Go!

How are you preparing your practice for the new year?

Almost all dentists go through a lot of training to be where they are now. But just how successful are they in their chosen career? Every dentist must possess some important quality traits to be TRULY successful.

3 Important Quality Traits Every Dentist Must Possess

1. Integrity

Every good dentist should have a noble purpose and maintain integrity. This ‘two-rolled-into-one’ attribute is the most important character trait every good dentist should possess.

Purpose simply means to have a vision, mission and goal – a plan or mental picture of what you want to do with your career. The more noble and genuine your purpose is, the more known and successful you will be in the long run. Integrity, on the other hand, is the difference that sets one apart from the rest. Integrity denotes doing your job to the best even in the absence of praise or evaluation. Integrity always indicates quality. If you have a noble purpose, coupled with integrity in your work, success is not far off from where you are.

2. Good People Skills

A good dentist should be open to communication and care. Being a dentist requires you to have constant correspondence with your patients. To succeed in this career, the lines of communication between you and your patients should be clear. You have to develop the skill to let your patients know and understand why they need such procedures in a humble, respectful way. Similarly, you must have the same attitude when hearing out your patients’ needs. Doing so will also transmit that trait to your staff and the people you work with.

Aside from this, you should have the caring touch or the passion to serve. Without this, you may be simply treating your patients as a means to get by everyday life, not as a giver of care to them.

3. Punctual

A good dentist should be punctual. Nothing spells more disrespect to your patients than to continually have them wait for you over long periods of time. Being habitually late brings a bad reputation to your name and a negative message to your clients that you do not value their time. If something comes up, communicate. A good quote to remember comes from W. Mathews. He says, “Nothing inspires confidence in a business man sooner than punctuality, nor is there any habit which sooner saps his reputation than that of being always behind time.”

Final Thoughts

Practice all these three character traits and you will most likely never run out of clients. Remember that the best way to promote yourself is not by what you say about yourself, but by what your patients tell their friends about you.

What should we add to this list?

If you have a trait or traits that you would like to add to this list please leave a comment below.

Referral cards sent with newsletters can be an effective way to get dental marketing tools into the homes of existing patients and motivate them to take action. Since most dentists depend heavily on referrals to grow their businesses, nothing is more important to a dental office than making it easy for satisfied customers to refer their friends and family.

Up to 70% of Your Business is From Referrals

As much as 70 percent of a dental office’s business can come from referrals, according to some statistics, but receptionists and cashiers often have too many other tasks on their minds to remember to ask patients to make referrals.

When patients are asked, they often simply brush off a request to refer their friends, never giving it a second thought once they leave the office and return to their busy lives. Even those who are willing to take a card or two often forget about them.

Include Referral Cards in Newsletter

Inserting a professionally designed referral card into an equally well-designed and enticing newsletter can be an effective dental marketing tool for many providers, however.

A good newsletter brings the dental practice to the minds of patients, reminds them of the things they like about the office and the professionals with whom they have established relationships and creates a good feeling about the dental office. When they see a referral card inside the newsletter, they may be willing to pass it on.

Even more importantly, mailing cards in newsletters gets the cards into people’s homes where they can be seen by family members and left around for friends to see. Because these referral cards include complete contact information, they can be passed along without much explanation.

Include Referral Card in E-mail Newsletters Too

While e-mail newsletters may not be quite as effective for distributing referral cards, they can also increase good feelings about a dental office and can be forwarded to others if the text encourages readers to do that. Customized e-mail referral cards can also be used by practices that don’t send print newsletters to help spread the word.

When sent directly to existing patients rather than distributed at the office, referral cards can be an important part of a complete dental advertising plan.

While nothing will cause an unwilling or dissatisfied patient to spread goodwill about a dental practice, referral cards help customers who are so inclined easily provide referral information to their friends and family members who are looking for a new dental service provider.

Has this worked for your practice?

If you’ve included referral cards in your newsletter, what were your results? Do you have any additional tips for maximizing the effectiveness of this tactic? Please share in a comment below.

Is there a foolproof way to achieve your big goals?

For more than two decades I have personally watched practices set big goals and work toward achieving those goals. Some meet and even exceed their goals while others fall short. In closely monitoring and evaluating the reasons practices succeed, seven essential steps to achieving big goals have emerged.

1. Set a BHAG

Every successful dental practice possesses a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, or BHAG. We highly encourage every practice we work with to set a yearly BHAG. It has to be Big because small goals lead only to small results. It has to be Hairy and Audacious – meaning it must be stretch your team enough to motivate, challenge and excite them. In addition to setting the goal, achieving practices make setting the goal itself a special staff occasion established during an annual gathering or short retreat.

2. Clearly Articulate Expectations

The number one failure of practices that do not meet their BHAG is expectations surrounding the goal have not been clearly articulated by the practice leader. When expectations are not clearly communicated, frustration and anger among all parties involved is the inevitable result.

Beyond sharing expectations verbally, the doctor must show staff how to meet those expectations by walking them step-by-step, detail-by-detail through every element connected to the goal. If you want a five-star experience for your patients, your staff must be fully acquainted with what that looks like, feels like, and how to achieve it in your practice.

In setting and achieving a BHAG, realize that higher goals require higher expectations.

3. Visualize

Visualizing the outcome of a BHAG provides motivation to stay focused and tenacious during the journey. A shared reward, like a vacation trip, for achieving your practice BHAG provides a great visualization opportunity for your entire team.

To visualize the reward, we encourage practices to place fun reminders throughout the office, keeping the goal and the reward continually in front of the staff. For example, if you are planning a reward trip to Hawaii, you may have Hawaiian leis, beach pictures, bathing suits, helpful snacks for developing a beach body, and other fun connections to Hawaii.

In the end, beyond the shared adventure of the vacation, the significant long-term benefit to the practice is that the team learns how to set and achieve a goal. They grow to expect success, causing them to look forward with confidence to next year’s bigger and better BHAG.

4. Change Your Words to Reflect Your BHAG

Tony Dungy, the former Super Bowl winning coach, would begin every year by telling his team that he expects to win the Super Bowl during the coming season. He would then use the goal as a standard by which every practice and game would be measured. If it did not rise to the level of Super Bowl Champions, changes would be made.

If your BHAG is to grow to a $1 million, $2 million or $10 million practice, you must begin to use words that reflect that reality. Would a $2 million practice say that? How would a $3 million practice talk about hygiene, power blocks, or patients?

I recall serving a rural practice that began referring to itself as a provider of “World Class Dentistry.” Within five years, people began flying in from all around the country to receive “World Class” treatment. Your practice will reflect the words you use to describe it.

Start talking now as if your BHAG has been achieved. One of two things will happen as you change your words to reflect your BHAG. You will either change your behavior to align with your new words or you will stop saying it and give up on your BHAG.

5. Take Appropriate Action in Line with Your BHAG

If your goal is $2 million and your reward is a trip to Hawaii, your actions should reflect your belief that you will achieve that goal. Have you cleared the week for the trip of hygiene and other appointments? Have your staff members acquired passports and made family preparations? Have you published an itinerary for the trip?

With a BHAG you are either fully-in or not in at all. If your BHAG is big enough, anything less than one-hundred percent will never bring achievement. You cannot say you will make preparations if you get closer to the goal. You must align your actions now and let those actions fuel your drive to the goal.

If you are serious about losing weight and getting fit, try burning your old clothes every time you move down a size. That is an action aligning with a goal.

6. Change Your Habits to Support Your BHAG

You must change your habits to support, not sabotage your goal. Habits become auto-conscious and routine in such a way that we do not have to think about them. Like driving a car, we no longer think about all the details involved in driving, we simply drive. Habits are like a computer operating system; they free us to think and do while our habits run in the background to manage our lives.

Evaluate whether or not your current habits support your new BHAG. Chances are good that you may have to change some personal and practice habits to achieve your BHAG. Although your habits were originally put in place to serve you well, some may currently control you and your practice in unhelpful ways.

How do you change a habit? Here are four steps:

1. Pick only one or two habits to focus on at a time.
2. Choose a supportive habit to replace your existing habit. Habits are not broken, they are replaced with habits of equal or greater strength.
3. Find a reinforcement mechanism. Sometimes the best mechanism is a person rather than a thing. Chances are that your mom taught you habits and became your reinforcement mechanism to establish those habits.
4. Commit to implement your habit 100% of the time every day for ninety days. It takes ninety days to fully own a habit to the point it becomes auto-conscious and routine.

7. Monitor Your BHAG

You will never achieve your BHAG unless it is consistently measured, monitored and analyzed. In the same way that an airline pilot guides a plane, regular measurements and monitoring along the path serve to keep you on course while helping you make necessary adjustments. Course corrections will be needed along the way and you may not know it unless you stay in touch with your progress.

Go Big or Go Home

Just as world-class athletes and professional teams set challenging goals, we encourage our clients to shoot for the moon. If you haven’t established a BHAG for this year, now is the time. If it is too small, make a huge adjustment. Do not settle for small goals and small results.

Have some goal-setting tips?

If you have some tips for goal-setting that you believe helps you to achieve them, let us know in a comment below.

Dentists Are Not Master Marketers

Dentists are not just people who take care of people’s teeth. In the business standpoint, they are also managers, leaders and motivators. But although they have a number of roles to fulfill, dentists need to realize that they are not the best advertisers and marketers. A person can try to learn the ropes but, at the end, it is the experts who will most likely dominate this field. Most of the time, dental ads consist of faces of dentists plastered on walls with write-ups that sing their praises.

Patients Care About Their Own Needs First

But the fact is that patients do not care about you. They do not care about the image that you project. On the other hand, they care about themselves. The reason they choose to have treatments done on them is because they care about themselves. They go to you because they want to feel or look better, not because they think of how wonderful you are. This is why you need to think twice before commissioning an ad with your face all over it.

Your Practice’s Name Is NOT Your Brand

The first lesson that dentists need to know about marketing is branding. You know that you have successfully branded your practice when people recognize it as soon as they hear your practice’s name. The problem with some dentists is that they believe that their name is synonymous to their practice’s brand. But this isn’t the case. Most companies which have effectively branded themselves do not use the owner’s name as the brand name. It’s time for dentists to come up with a good brand name and then use this in their external marketing campaign.

Understanding Your Customers Needs Is Critical

The second lesson that dentists must know is to identify with those individuals who they are advertising their practice to. Because the patients have self-serving reasons for going into our dental clinic, you need to know exactly what their wants and needs are in order to appeal to them better. You can talk about how your practice offers treatments which are minimally invasive and painless in order to appeal to those who may be scared of going to the dentist.

Your Thoughts

What additional “Truths” about dental marketing would you add to the list?

Over 60% of Dentists Experience Embezzlement During Career

You’ve heard the rumors – “Dr. So-and-So was embezzled.” You’ve read the statistics “Over 60% of dentists will experience embezzlement during their career.” So, what do you do to stop it from happening in your office?

My Top Recommendations

1. Use passwords

Dentrix allows you to set up an individual password for each dentist and employee, so use them! Tell your staff scary stories of tales you’ve heard about how sharing passwords can get them fired – what if another team member knows your password and the two of you have a falling out? That person can log into Dentrix using your password and do terrible things – that will be tracked right back to you. Don’t let this happen. Never share a password. Plus, set one month every year where every employee (and dentist) must change their password. Yes, I know it’s a pain in the neck – do it anyway.

2. Assign specific password rights to each employee

You can assign specific rights to each staff person. Look at the list and only assign the rights that the staff person needs. For example, deleting rights in Dentrix are reserved for only the top level secretaries – why would any clinical staff person need to delete anything? This is an easy way to reduce your exposure to problems.

3. Run your adjustments report – and do your research

In Dentrix’s Practice Analysis you can run an adjustment report for any clinical provider. Run this report for all your providers for all amounts for a month – it will show you the patient name and the $$ amount as well as the type of adjustment entered into Dentrix. Start at the top of this report and look into each adjustment – do you offer a 10% senior citizen’s discount? Then go into the ledger for your patients that show up with senior citizens discounts and check the math – is the adjustment for 10%? If it’s for 20%, you should find out why. Were there any large adjustments – over $100? You should know why for each one. Look at the insurance withhold discounts – to check these, get a copy of the patient’s insurance EOB and then make sure their withhold matches the one entered into your computer. Again, this takes a fair amount of time, but what if you did this one month out of each quarter – and you knew that no one was using adjustments as a way to cover their tracks and steal from the practice?

4. Run the audit trail

If you suspect something strange on one of your adjustments, then run the audit trail report in Dentrix. This report is a serious tree-killer because it shows you every transaction made by every staff/dentist in Dentrix at the exact time. It will show you every moved appointment time, every scheduled appointment, every note added. So, see if you can target by date this audit trail report and then you can scan it, not just looking for the strange adjustment, but also in general you can see what your staff is doing on Dentrix throughout the day.

5. Listen when your patients complain

The next time you have a patient that complains saying “I already paid you, so why am I still getting a bill?” Or the patient is upset that the insurance paid more than the original estimate so why isn’t the dentist sending more money back to the patient? Listen carefully to the concern and check the Dentrix ledger for this patient. Does the story the patient tell match the ledger? This is a great way to catch embezzlement – listen to your patients who keep track of their insurance and finances and take the time to contact you when they believe an error has occurred – they may be right.

6. Compare Staff Hours Worked vs Their Schedule in Dentrix

The last way to stop embezzlement is to compare staff hours worked vs. their schedule in Dentrix. Padding hours is an easy way to steal from a practice. You can easily sit down and scan through your Dentrix schedule for your clinical staff to compare when they saw patients and what hours they earned in payroll. Do you have a policy for having a staff person leave early if a patient no shows? Look for this on the schedule – and then check the staff’s timeclock for that day – what time did they actually leave? If they didn’t have a patient for the last hour of the day – what did they do?

Final Thoughts

Don’t let your practice become a victim of embezzling. It’s more than a crime against the dentist. It’s stealing from all the honest, hard-working staff who may have achieved a bonus if the financial goals for the practice were being met. It’s an abuse of trust for everyone in the office. By investing some time and following these recommendations you can make it incredibly difficult for someone to steal from you. Is it worth it?

Your Thoughts

Do you have any additional tips for preventing embezzlement in your practice? Any Dentrix-specific tips? Please post them in a comment below.

The search engine wars are over, the people won!

And it wasn’t an occupy movement parked in Google’s portico or a flash mob sit-in at Microsoft that led to the lay down of arms.

We did it to ourselves.

This continental shift in social local search and corresponding groundswell of opportunity favors the prepared and rewards the diverse.

How does the above average dental practice capitalize on this local search opportunity to increase online visibility?

Location, location, location.

As we covered in the intro post to local search optimization for the dental practice, the foundational elements in need of inspection with regard to properly communicating essential information about the practice are: Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local, and MapQuest.

We should throw AOL in there too, just for semantics – AOL owns MapQuest at the time of writing this article, but it was astutely pointed out last week by a keen observer that AOL should be included. So, foot in mouth disease made an appearance somewhere in San Diego last week…mea culpa.

With the interest of keeping this local search series diatribe informative and educational we’ll KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid).

Because if we get into historical hodgepodge of where your practice info was ever entered online, if it was correct, if you’ve moved in the past few years, if you’ve had any legal issues, if you were a victim of unscrupulous marketing, and much more, you’d really be sick of reading.

We couldn’t possibly cover every contingency with respect to the individual dental practice, but the following tips should hold water whether your practice high and dry or bailing buckets.

Consolidate Don’t Procreate

Trust is a huge factor with regards to how your practice listing is represented. If it’s Google Places or MapQuest, the communication of verifiable practice information is essential.

There are lots of variables given the industry; is it a group, is it multi-location, is it corporate, and so on.

As we’re talking about a singular dental practice here, for matters of example, we’re dealing with one location. Don’t let the section header fool you, we’re not going off on some ranting tangent, and we won’t show up at your door later.

The point being stressed is, confirm, consolidate, and control YOUR practice listing.

Don’t worry about falling victim to the impetuous allure of confirming and controlling multiple listings within one environment.

For example, if your practice has 3 listings in Google Places (for one location), all of varying benefits…confirm them all, and then look to consolidate the listings to one primary pimped out profile with all correct info listed and benefits represented.

Multiple listings for one location within one environment is no good, it hurts the trust factor at the very least. And don’t think you’re the first dentist to think if you confirm every listing in your area, you’ll dominate.

You could actually get penalized, and that could hurt your online practice visibility for an indeterminable period.

A Thousand Words

We’re not talking about pedantic digital dental marketing blog scribes; we’re talking about first impressions.

If you were a new patient seeking a dentist online, would you rather visit the website – because that’s what consumers are doing before they call you – of a dentist that communicates a bland message replete with zero pictures, no video, invisible new patient offers, and nothing in the way of digital word of mouth?

Wouldn’t we all choose a dentist that engagingly communicates exactly what the new patient is seeking on their search – professionalism, comfort, and familiarity?

A succinct highly ranked local search profile is professional; it comforts people and transmits the message that you know what you’re doing and you’ll take care of us.

Reading reviews from people that have sat in your chair and experienced dentistry a’ la you, allows us to achieve some level of familiarity with your practice.

Same goes for photos, videos, links to your Facebook page, Twitter, business description, accurate hours of operation, and enticing call to action offers!

The Tips

• Add photos – as many as allowed, you don’t want a clinical pic scraped from a CE forum as your welcome message to people that land on your local search listing.
• Add video if possible – again, as many as you can, doesn’t have to be Scorsese-like.
• Write Engaging Business Descriptions – and don’t be afraid to test different versions.
• Offers or Promotional Messages – calls to action are essential in new patient recruitment.
• Social Links – if applicable, it soon will be.

Here are 10 more basics to follow courtesy of local search oracle – David Mihm:

1. Your physical address matching/listing the city where you’re located.
2. Manually verifying your ownership of the company’s Google Places page.
3. Having proper category associations for your page and citations.
4. Having a large number of “traditional structured citations” for your business (on sites like Internet yellow pages and local place aggregators).
5. Having your address listed on your company website, and make sure that address is crawlable.
6. Having a well-ranked (PR) company website.
7. Having high-quality inbound links to your company website.
8. Having your phone number listed on your company website, and making sure that phone number is crawlable.
9. Having an accurate local area code listed on your Google Places page.
10. Having your city and state listed in the page title for your Google Places landing page.

The items listed above can be treated as a checklist for establishing bare minimums for local search optimization.

You can read the full body of work and 98 ranking factors here – just make sure you read and understand it in its entirety before going out and putting rubber to the road. There are seemingly stupid mistakes to be made that can really negatively impact a listing.

Watch Your Back

In case you haven’t yet had the pleasure of getting cold calls from every marketer from Boston to Bombay promising to get you to the top of Google, or possess the special first-hand experience of having gone through the rip-off mill, social media and local search represent immense marketing opportunity for dental practices.

But there’s probably a bit more opportunity and low hanging fruit dangling in front of the unscrupulous marketing realm. Lots of small business owners don’t know where to start, and some fall victim to the slick words and empty promises.

Do yourself a favor, and rely on common sense when it comes to local search optimization for your dental practice.

Nobody on this planet can guarantee you top search engine placement on the results pages. And nobody can remove negative online reviews – at least legitimately.

The tools are available to do this yourself, and with a little planning and execution it’s certainly possible for you to confirm and begin consolidating your dental practice local search engine listings.

Then you can continue to educate yourself and build the citations and optimization efforts to consistently communicate genuine crawl-friendly easily verifiable info, automatically collect online reviews, and systematically syndicate your dental practice digital word of mouth.

Your Thoughts

If you’ve already dabbled in local seo for your dental practice, what specific issues are the most troublesome?

In the interest of full disclosure, please note that sales generated through these links will produce a small commission for Dental Heroes. These commissions go a long way toward ensuring that Dental Heroes is able to continue providing you with great content.

Top 10 Best-Selling Dental Products by Category

Toothpaste

Colgate Total Whitening Toothpaste

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- The Ada Council on Scientific Affairs’ Acceptance of Listerine Antiseptic is based on its finding that the product is effective in helping to prevent and reduce gingivitis and plaque above the gumline, when used as directed.

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Flossers

Glide Floss Picks

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Powered Toothbrushes For Adults

Philips HX5351 Sonicare Toothbrush

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Powered Toothbrushes For Kids

Philips Sonicare for Kids Rechargeable Toothbrush

- KidTimer increases brushing time slowly over 90 days, building toward the dentist recommended 2 minutes.
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Manual Toothbrushes

Colgate 360 Degree Sensitive Toothbrush

- Offers features such as textured tongue cleaner, tapered inter-dental bristles, polishing cups, cleaning tip, soft bristles and a comfort grip
- Contains soft bristles which gently massage your gum-line while giving your teeth a deep cleaning

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Waterpiks

Waterpik Ultra Water Flosser

- Water jet is clinically proven to be up to 93-percent more effective than flossing
- Advanced control delivers a water pressure of 10 to 90 PSI with 1200 pulses per minute
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Toothbrush Sanitizers

Sunbeam UV Counter Top Unit Sanitizer

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One of the many advantages of email newsletters is being able to build your relationship with your customers. Email newsletters also help contribute to your practice’s branding efforts and promote awareness. At the same time, these newsletters are immensely helpful in the improvement of your practice’s customer service, and add value to purchases and registrations. And there are more benefits that one can give out. But just like any other marketing tool, there are a lot of things that can equally go wrong with your email marketing campaign.

Newsletters vs. Promotions

Some marketers do not know the difference between an email newsletter and an email promotion. An email promotion is action-oriented in that they are designed to motivate a person to do something like click a link, sign up, make a purchase or visit your physical store. This can be done with the help of discounts or coupons.

On the other hand, email newsletters may contain a few action-related elements but the real reason for sending these newsletters is to build a long-term relationship with the readers. These newsletters do not ask or motivate patients to do something. However, newsletters help to build trust and credibility so that the reader will be much more willing to take action in the future.

Basically, a promotion tells you to a buy a new desk chair but a newsletter gives out the benefits of having a desk chair.

Publisher-centric

There are a lot of things that can influence subscriber loyalty but the most important factor is content, valuable content at that. The content which you include in your newsletter should not just be useful but also timely and relevant. An effective newsletter should deliver interesting information to the right people at the right time.

There are a lot of newsletters that are filled with so much announcements, staff products, services, etc. These things may fit perfectly fine in your newsletter if your readers are interested in your business the same way that the owner and employees are. But chances are that your readers won’t be.

It is more likely that your readers are interested to know the solutions for industry-related problems and content of that sort. This is why you should integrate such kind of informative content instead if your want to keep your newsletter’s subscribership high and keep readers entertained.

Using the wrong success metrics

Most of the metrics used to judge the success of newsletters are wrong. It can be extremely difficult to calculate a newsletter ROI because newsletter costs are immediate while the benefits are long term. This is why one way to measure revenue is to measure the revenue before and after prospects subscribed to your newsletter.

Your Thoughts

Have you discovered additional e-mail marketing mistakes that you’ve made or seen others make? Please leave them in a comment below.

The holidays are here and when reading this, you will feel inspired to offer holiday gifts for patients to purchase and give their friends and family. What a great way to share the good word about your dental practice and give the gift of optimal oral health! This is also a great way to add another income stream before this year ends.

When I speak about dentistry now, I say things like, “It changes as fast as the speed of light,” or “If you miss that annual meeting, you miss the turn of the century!” Trends change so quickly in the field of dentistry, so let me fill you in on the latest change that can really boost your bottom line:
New ways to think about promoting your practice.”

Holiday Gifts Increase Sales & Promote the Practice

Imagine the ability to reinforce prevention with your patients and market your practice on a regular basis. This is an open opportunity to all of us in the field of dentistry…if we change our old paradigm about self-promotion and sales.

When I think about my early days as a dental professional, I remember when the ADA spoke of the “undignified” practice of advertising. The belief that no practice should stoop to advertising was a solid mass in most minds who stepped foot in a dental office. Never did I hear phrases like, “Dentistry is a business.” Times have changed, however, and in order to financially thrive, we must start thinking in a business mindset. Here are a couple pointers to get you started and get your practice pointed in a profitable direction.

Don’t Be Afraid to Try New Promotional Activities

Successful businesses seek more business, and so should you. Back in the day, it was taboo to solicit referrals. Today, however, we no longer need to feel uncomfortable asking our patients and friends for referrals. There are many ways to do this without feeling awkward or pushy. For example, your auxiliaries and of course the doctor, can simply say to patients upon their checkout, “be sure to tell your friends about us!” Another idea is to develop a referral rewards system. Perhaps you have a stack of business cards in the waiting room that say, “Refer a friend and receive 20% off your next home care products purchase from our office. Have you checked into any of the new patient referral programs? — for example: Loyal Patients, Inc.

That leads me to my next point: selling oral care products. When analyzing the success of your business you must learn where the profit centers lie — and where you can build new profit centers. This is a proactive step in any business. One main profit center today in dentistry is home care products, and lots of dental practices are missing out because of old habits.

I specifically remember a dentist I worked for saying, “I don’t have a pharmacy in my dental office!” Think about it, though: Do we want our patients to go to their local drug store to buy the least expensive toothbrush or the mouth rinse that is on sale this week, when we could have offered them a better product AND contributed to our own bottom line? In the practice I worked where the dentist refused to have a “pharmacy,” I took note that 2/3rds of my patients never did get that prescription for Gel Kam filled at their local pharmacy. (Now that is sold over-the-counter in many areas.)

You’re a Business First

Yes, times have changed, and on top of viewing ourselves more and more as business people, we must foster a preventive patient-centered dental practice, that offers patients more options for maintaining oral health. We want to be certain that patients receive the best procedures, products, and services. We also want to promote an atmosphere where team members are encouraged to grow and build a rewarding career — and that’s a lot easier when the purse strings aren’t so tight.

Recently, a team member of Dental Practice Solutions and I, analyzed the amount of money added to a dental practice’ profits when they have these prevention products available for purchase in the dental office. These can contribute easily to an added $30,000USD annually, to your dental practice. The best part: selling home care products requires a very small upfront investment, and the return is quick and very easily done by everyone on the team participating.

Sample Gift Package

You can get creative, too. For example, group together a Waterpik
™, power toothbrush, toothpaste, mouth rinse, tongue cleaner, and floss. Then, wrap in beautiful packaging, and promote as a gift pack around special holidays. This is just one more opportunity to add that personal touch.

Not only are patients going to be asking for refills on the products they use when they come in for their dental visits, but imagine these same people coming by your office to buy a beautifully wrapped gift for someone they love in the month of November, December and even the day of Love; February 14th. Be sure to put your dental practice’s business card in every packaged gift.

Gift packs are not only a wonderful way to keep your patients healthy but also for them to share the good word and have a reason to return to your office. So now, we’ve made a complete circle back to the topic of referrals. In this case, you can let your oral care gift packages do the referring for you!

We are the oral care experts, so why wouldn’t we want our patients to come to us for the expert advice about the products and care that can help them live a longer and healthier life?

Your Thoughts

Will you offer home care products to your patients during this holiday season? If so, have you done this in the past? What were your results? If not, tell us why in a comment below.

We’ll defer to Wikipedia for the background definition:

Local search is the use of specialized Internet search engines that allow users to submit geographically constrained searches against a structured database of local business listings.

Typical local search queries include not only information about “what” the site visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also “where” information, such as a street address, city name, postal code, or geographic coordinates like latitude and longitude.

A search that references a product or service that is typically consumed locally, such as “restaurant” or “nail salon”, is an implicit local search. (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_search_(Internet))

Now that’s just from the Internet info giant Wikipedia, and it not so succinctly sums up the definition of ‘local search’ for all of us who are used to typing in some keywords and getting answers to our questions. By all means do some more research, but wait ‘til you’re finished reading this article -your practice is worth it.

With regards to dental practice marketing specifically, local search equates to having a highly visible and properly administered digital practice footprint within the localized environments of the Big 3 search engines.

You need to confirm and control your office listings, or else. Maybe ‘or else’ even if you do control your local listings, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Where Can We Witness this Local Search Phenomenon?

Basically we’re talking about the local areas of the search engine results pages (SERPS), complete with map listings, website links, special offers, social links, other business info – and more. Formally (and for now) these local sections of the search engines results pages are: Yahoo Local, Bing Local, and Google Places – we can now add MapQuest to the list too. These local areas allow you to communicate practice information in a totally new and highly visible environment.

The search engines are determining where we’re searching from, geographically, and providing relevant results within these local centers prominent on the first page of most search results.

MapQuest is another area to plant your digital practice footprint and solidify your geolocation as it relates to the internet. That’s all we need to discuss for now, we can get into geo sitemaps and schema compliant files when you need something to help you sleep…or drive you batty.

And keep in mind, this localized directive is all in addition to any existing search engine marketing (SEM), optimization (SEO), e-commerce, or website advertising efforts. When people in your area search online for dental products or services, you want to make sure that you are adequately complementing existing practice marketing with an emphasis on local search optimization.

But again, I digress.

The search engines determine the lay of the land, you just need to provide them with the most trustful, resourceful, relevant, and recent content in order to successfully navigate your dental practice digital visibility course.

What’s the Point, Hooks and Lines?

It starts with your location, and your name, address, and phone number (NAP). This foundational elemental practice info needs to be properly communicated within these local search engine environments. Odds are we’d all be very surprised by the amount of unconfirmed and inaccurate local search listings out there right now.
But that’s only a peek inside Pandora’s Box of local search optimization. We’re at a place where information is at our fingertips, no longer do we let our fingers do the walking – unless it’s across the keyboard.

For younger generations, and the majority of us before the next President is up for re-election, we’re searching online from mobile phones, iPad 2s, Xooms, or PlayBooks…you get the point. We’ve even taken word of mouth online and local; patients are using Facebook petitioning family and friends for dentist referrals!
Speaking social and local, have you used Facebook Places or Foursquare yet?

Can you see how both of these ‘social local’ environments can benefit your dental practice?

It all starts with a solid foundation. Confirmed and controlled practice listings within these primary local search engine environments are the foundation of optimizing, and leveraging, local search visibility for your dental practice.

What Now

But what happens when everyone controls and confirms their practice listing, then what? Are you ready to dive in? In Part II of this post, we’ll dive into some juicy local search tips for your dental practice! You won’t want to miss it.

Your Thoughts

Is your practice leveraging the power of local search? How has this impacted your business?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of DentalHeroes.com.

Both of my parents are dentists and I joined them in practice about five years ago. Growing up in and around the dental practice, I always heard stories about Delta Dental and how they were founded by dentists for dentists in 1954. My parents and their dental friends also spoke about Delta Dental being the gold standard for dental insurance. However, I think dentists’ outlook on Delta is beginning to change. In my opinion, here’s why:

1. On June 15, 2011, Washington Dental Service (also know as Delta Dental of Washington) lowered all of the reimbursement rates for dentists in the state of Washington. The Premier fees were lowered by 15% and the PPO fees were decreased by 5%.

2. In the early part of 2011, Delta Dental of California froze all reimbursement rates at their current levels. Unfortunately, they did not officially announce the freeze until they sent a letter dated August 9, 2011, that stated the freeze was lifted. At our office, we submitted our fees a few days later. The results were bleak. Delta raised two or three of our procedures by $1. The rest of the fees stayed the same.

3. Within the past couple of weeks, news has trickled out from the CDA that Delta is now implementing a policy called contract adhesion. They are requiring all dentists who want to enroll in Delta Premier to also enroll in Delta PPO. As of right now, this is not affecting existing Premier-only contracted dentists. I have a hunch that might change in the future.

4. The latest actions by Delta are effective on November 1, 2011. According to ADA News, “Delta Dental of Idaho is cutting preferred provider organization reimbursement fees to dentist on regional basis by an average of 8 percent.”

Some Perspective

From Delta Dental’s prospective, I understand that they need to offer competitive rates on their policies so companies choose them over a different company. If they don’t, they won’t stay in business. In fact, Delta did state just that in their letter to California member dentists on August 9th. It explained that a majority, if not all of the policies they were selling were the PPO and they were trying to make the premier more competitive by implementing the freeze.

Have a Little Respect

However, it would be nice of Delta to treat their dental providers with respect. I think it alienates a lot of treating dentists when they announce that there was a freeze in their fees at the exact same time they announce that the fees are unfrozen. To follow that up with a fee raise of $1 on 2-3 fees makes their actions awfully suspicious.

I understand the economy is struggling and each dentist can choose to contract or not contract with each insurance company. Each provider needs to do what is best for their own individual practice. Likewise, Delta has that right to do what’s best for its business. Most dentists would say that they are the largest private dental insurer in the country; they are already the most competitive. However, I believe there is an additional reason why Delta is taking additional steps to be more competitive, even if it starts to alienate dentists.

Most dentists do not realize that the Healthcare Reform Act is going to have an affect on the field of dentistry. The law requires all medical insurances to cover dental services for children under the age of 21. I think this is great. It gives children access to dental services, and it is definitely needed. According to the National Institute of Dental and Cranial Research, 51% of 6-11 year olds have or had a cavity in their primary teeth.

From Delta’s point of view, they have a major reason to be concerned. First, they will be losing all of their customers under the age of 21. Delta Dental is one of the few stand-alone dental insurance companies. Most insurance companies have a medical insurance side to their businesses (ex. Aetna, Cigna, and MetLife). Someone from the CDA also mentioned this key point. If you are a medical insurance company and you are already providing dental coverage to the children in a family, wouldn’t you also offer the same dental coverage to the parents? It makes the companies with medical insurance and a dental insurance component more competitive. Delta is then standing on the sidelines losing their customer base.

There are going to be a lot of changes in the dental industry over the next few years. Some people think dentistry will become like medicine and become 100% insurance-based. Others think companies will start dropping medical coverage and dentistry will be primarily fee for service. I think only time will tell.

Your Thoughts

Do you have any thoughts regarding Jonathan’s understanding of Delta’s recent moves? Please leave your thoughts in a comment below.

When you are running a small dental practice, it can be very difficult for you to create awareness about your practice with little or no budget at all. In order for you to grow your practice and gain more patients, you need to factor in new competitors who may have a more aggressive campaign than you, lack of marketing, poor reputation and overall scarceness of resources. All of these things can hinder the growth of your practice and may even lead to the decline in the number of your patients.

As a dentist, being responsible for taking care of the dental health of your patients at the same time having to take care of your practice’s marketing campaign is a no non-sense job. In order to help you out with this daunting task, here are a few inexpensive ways for you to spread awareness regarding your practice.

1. Contribute to Local Homeowner’s Association

Tie up with local homeowners’ associations and offer to write articles or tips to them. These associations often have community bulletins or newsletters which are often running low on material. You can offer to write a couple of articles for them weekly or give talks regarding dental health. You’re not only creating awareness for your practice but you are also building trust and confidence among your prospective patients.

2. Contribute to Local Chamber of Commerce

You can also approach local chambers of commerce and offer to provide education information to the small businesses in your community. You can talk about occupational situations wherein these employees’ dental safety is at stake.

3. Run Inexpensive Local Paper Ads

Try running inexpensive advertisements in your local community paper. You can also offer to write articles or have advertorials, a mix between advertisements and editorials.

4. Befriend Local Realtors

Make friends with the realtors in your community and target new families who are moving into your community. Chances are that these newly transferred families do not have a dentist in their new area yet. You can ask realtors to refer you to these families and individuals when they are in the process of buying a new house. You can provide brochures or business cards for these realtors to give out.

5. Participate in an “Ask Dr. X” Column in Local Paper

Persuade your local newspaper to come up with a “health” section to their website. You can show your support by being available for interviews or questions should any healthcare related queries suddenly come up. You can also provide tips to readers who send in their questions or run a column.

Your Ideas

These ideas are just scratching the surface. Do you have additional low-cost methods of raising awareness for dental practices? Please share in a comment below.

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The following is Part II of yesterday’s post by Debbie Siedel-Bittke titled, “You Decide: Prophylaxis of Periodontal Maintenance.”

Periodontal Maintenance vs. Prophylaxis

The Prophylaxis Appointment (CDT Code D1110 prophylaxis) is only for patients who exhibit healthy gingiva. They have a healthy periodontium. The Prophylaxis (CDT code D1110) definition says “the removal of plaque, calculus, and stains from the tooth structures in the permanent and transitional dentition. It is intended to control local irritational factors.”

The Periodontal Maintenance (CDT Code D4910 periodontal maintenance) is a post-therapeutic procedure used to maintain the healthy results of periodontal therapy, not to prevent disease in healthy patients. The Periodontal Maintenance (CDT code 4910) definition states: “It can only be used “following periodontal therapy and continues at varying intervals … includes removal of the bacterial plaque and calculus from supragingival and subgingival regions, site-specific scaling and root planing where indicated, and polishing the teeth.”

The Periodontal Maintenance appointment is to be used following Phase I – definitive periodontal therapy and for an indefinite time, determined by the patient’s progress over time to achieve stability and the absence of the signs and symptoms of disease. Periodontal maintenance patients who have poor oral hygiene, smoke, exhibit bone loss and/or excessive bleeding, have not achieved an acceptable level of stability and in addition, have various immune deficiencies such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, Diabetes, Arteriosclerosis, etc., etc. When these patients continue to return for dental hygiene appointments and these disease challenges persist they will need to be referred for a consultation by a periodontist.

What are the specific differences between a periodontal maintenance procedure and. a regular prophylaxis? Periodontal maintenance procedures include a predominance of power scaling with thin inserts to access and debride the depths of periodontal pockets. Think scaling SMART not hard! Your patient may need localized areas of local anesthesia. The goal of this appointment is thorough debridement of pathogens that have repopulated in the sulcus. Periodontal pathogens reside in the sulcus and on the plaque and calculus. Biofilm is always present on the root in the presence of calculus or no calculus. Annually, a comprehensive periodontal exam is mandatory. (Six-point periodontal probing is necessary in order to reassess changes that have occurred in pocket depths.) A pre-procedural rinse and irrigation post-procedural with an appropriate antimicrobial, such as Povidone-iodine or Chlorhexidine, is the Gold Standard. You may need to apply desensitizing agents, such as Colgate’s Pro-Relief™, with a rubber cup if your patient has sensitivity and/or exposed root surfaces. If you have a fluoride varnish you can easily apply this for immediate relief from any root sensitivity. There are numerous choices for today’s sensitive dental hygiene patient. Always polish with low-abrasion pumice and/or pastes if your patient has exposed root surfaces. This is often the case for periodontal patients.

Communicating the difference

One way to explain to patients when they need to understand the difference between Prophy and Periodontal Maintenance is to say this: “Your gums are not healthy and this can also affect your total health. Usually, your dental hygiene appointment is only a preventive therapy but today I will need to treat areas of disease. I am recommending that we do something different today. Today I (fill in the blank with your own plan) will let the patient know if you will do a gross debridement, scale and root plan an area, etc.” Ask the patient if they have any questions and find out if they have objections and why. It is at this point in time you will need to address financial issues.
For some patients the most challenging part is the finances. It is well known that most people will buy what they want. This is when you have effective communication skills that you can overcome the financial barriers to accepting non-surgical periodontal care. Most people will find the money when they understand they will live a longer and healthier life!

When patients still don’t comprehend the importance of optimal oral health in relationship to their total overall health, try to explain that you are not providing appropriate treatment with only a prophylaxis appointment. Patients also need to understand they are not there to get their teeth “cleaned”. Dental hygienists are in the business of preventing disease.

One more way to communicate the importance of more than a prophylaxis is to show the patient radiographs of their teeth, the surrounding bone and/or intraoral photographs of the diseased areas, bleeding staining, plaque, calculus, etc. Show them actual tooth mobility if it exists. A loose tooth is not a pretty sight to see!

Some computerized patient management software programs, stand-alone devices and programs, such as the DENTRIX periodontal chart where you can color code areas with different colors, (Red for BOP, green for mobility, etc.) Dental R.A.T.® and PerioPal®, also produce impressive probing charts. Even giving the patient a hand mirror and showing him/her how his/her gums are bleeding can be a powerful, emotional tool. The main point here is that the independent authority has to be highly visual and vivid to counter the emotional belief that they’re being cheated. Some patients will believe “It’s all about the almighty dollar”, when in reality we are in the business to provide optimal health.

It is becoming more common to have Physicians gather systemic information with lab tests, and dentists are beginning to use lab tests as well. Four outside labs have periodontal tests: two are culturing services – Oral Microbiology Testing Service (OMTS) and Oral Microbiology Testing Lab (OMTL). The other two are DNA tests: OralDNA Labs® and micro-IDent®plus. All four tests can detect pathogens that are associated with periodontal disease. There is also a third-party statistical test, PreViser™ based on clinical findings that estimate the likelihood of periodontal disease. In addition to these outside tests, there are two microbiological tests that can be used chair side. BANA™ is an enzymatic test for periodontal pathogens, and the other is a video microscopy test called BioScan™.Any of these above listed tests can provide the type of important information dental practices and patients may consider prudent.

Final Thoughts

The dental hygienist has two important roles. The first role is to determine which type of periodic preventive care is needed, by each individual patient. It is the role of a healthcare provider to educate and communicate to patients exactly what type of care is appropriate for their overall health. Education is the second role.

We are not talking about the almighty dollar. We are concerned about our patients overall health. When you understand and communicate the difference between health and disease. Prevention and treatment, you are providing optimal care.

Disease means Periodontal Maintenance for life. Prophylaxis means the patient is healthy and there is little plaque, calculus and no bleeding.

Sources
1. www.perio.org September 2003 Issue
2. www.perio.org

All throughout the day, we treat them one by one. Each individual patient is treated in a different way. This is our standard of care. Will you agree with this statement? If you don’t agree, then let’s make a “Red Letter Day”- – today!

What is the difference between a Prophy and a Periodontal Maintenance?

Are you scaling more than twenty minutes during a regular continuing care appointment? If you are then it is probably more than just a Prophy.

Periodontal Maintenance

When a patient completes phase one treatment for non-surgical periodontal therapy, they are now and forever considered a “Periodontal Patient”. If you have Diabetes or high blood pressure, you will always be evaluated by your doctor to prevent progression of the disease. A patient diagnosed with cancer, high blood pressure and/ or Diabetes, doesn’t just get treated and then never see their doctor for regular preventive measures. This is the same protocol for patients diagnosed with Periodontal Disease.

One reason hygienists may choose to eliminate the periodontal maintenance appointment is for financial reasons. In the United States and other countries a billing code is used and more money is charged for the service. In the United States code D4910 (Periodontal Maintenance after scaling and root planing has been completed.) is a much higher fee than the fee for code D1110 (Prophylaxis. This means no disease is present.) The other reason dental professionals do not provide the periodontal maintenance appointment or bill appropriately is that many third-party payers do not cover the periodontal maintenance appointment at frequent intervals. (Example: Less than six months interval.)

When we understand the research regarding periodontal pathogens we will understand how to communicate to our patients “Why” they need to return in most likely twelve weeks. The research, the science, reports that periodontal pathogens will repopulate a healthy and recently scaled sulcus as early as nine to twelve weeks, post maintenance.1 A patient can brush and floss all day long and this may not be enough to remove the periodontal pathogens. These pathogens are what will cause tooth loss in periodontal patients.

Following a 10-year study, researchers found that patients who received regular periodontal maintenance had significantly reduced probing depths and lost fewer teeth than patients who did not have periodontal maintenance procedures. Here are the arguments to use regarding regular twelve week periodontal maintenance for your periodontal patients. This is the information to communicate to patients. It is our role as a healthcare provider to read the research, know the science, and share it with everyone who needs to know.

It still happens each day in many dental hygiene treatment rooms throughout the world. No matter how much time is spent removing plaque and calculus, the office still charges the same fee for what are actually a different procedure and a different diagnosis. The problem that is seen most likely is that the hygienist is not individually assessing patients for periodontal disease. The other problem is that the hygienist will do an assessment but there may be a lot more calculus present than is considered a regular prophylaxis procedure. If it has been awhile and if you live in the United States, look at the CDT Codes and read the description for D1110. No matter where you live, review the billing code description. Exactly what type of plaque and calculus does this billing code refer to? Does the code say this is a procedure for a preventive or a disease state? Read this description and see for yourself that (For example, in the United States) CDT Code D1110 refers to a healthy dentition, small amounts of plaque and calculus. If you are spending more than twenty minutes scaling, then you are not adequately treating this patient. Scaling calculus for more than twenty minutes is not the description of a prophylaxis. In the presence of moderate to heavy calculus you have more than a CDT Code D1110. (The Prophylaxis code for insurance billing purposes in the United States.)

No one wants to spend more money! People will pay for what they want not always what they need. It is our job as a healthcare professional to be an advocate for prevention. We need to share the research and the science behind the disease and how to prevent it, with our patients. We are the experts and we want to be an advocate of optimal oral health for our patients. We have a responsibility to spread the word that without good oral health a person will not have a healthy body.
“Working as a team of healthcare professionals, we can conquer the disease process. Together we can make a difference in our world!

Can you effectively explain to your patients why they need to return for non-surgical periodontal treatment? Do you know what to say when a patient returns with heavy calculus? What do you say when the patient had scaling and root planing last year and returned today with a 6-mm pocket? That pocket was there prior to scaling and root planing a year ago but what do you say when it occurs again at the periodontal maintenance appointment?

Tell Your Patients the Truth

You told your patient about the research and science behind the disease and you also need to tell them that periodontal disease is episodic. The disease process can and will most likely return at some point. This is why your patients need to continue coming back every twelve weeks, (or at frequent and the appropriate intervals.) even if they seem healthy for many years after the scaling and root planing is completed.

As mentioned previously, when a patient has Diabetes or high blood pressure, the doctor will ask the patient to be examined frequently because the disease is likely to return. Today, it is all about prevention. Prevention needs to be your message to the patient. When there is a new area of bleeding upon probing (BOP) or a new 5-mm pocket, now is the time to sit the patient upright in the chair and discuss early intervention. This will most likely mean prevention in the future. In dentistry today, during the twenty first century, we no longer “wait and watch”. Waiting is not the standard of care. What are your “waiting” for?

Look for part II of this post tomorrow…

What to look for in Part II tomorrow

In part II of this post, we’ll learn the difference between Prophylaxis and Periodontal Maintenance. We’ll then discover an effective way of communicating the difference to our patients. We’ll see you tomorrow!

With the recession in full swing, it has become increasingly more difficult for dentists to increase the number of patients which they are serving. But the need for dentists won’t be extinguished just because of the present economic woes. There will still be a need for dentists to fix broken or chipped tooth, do root canals and whiten our pearly whites. It’s just that patients aren’t as willing to opt for dental procedures unless if circumstances really warrant them. And when they do decide to have something done, they are more wary over which dentist they would entrust the job to.

Because of the way that patients have evolved, there is greater need for dentists to impress them. To do this, every dental practice should have a concept of what the ideal patient experience is. Remember that patients are not just after dentists who are the most skilled and the most qualified, although they do consider these factors. However, they’re also after an experience which they are sure to never forget. Here are a few things to be on a lookout for when creating that patient experience.

The Phone

Never ever underestimate the power of the first impression. If you are on a campaign to blow the socks off of your patients’ feet, then it’s always a good thing for you to make a first impression which they will never forget. Most patients reach out to the practice which they are considering by using the phone. So make sure that your front office worker knows exactly what to say when a prospective patient calls. You can hand over a script if necessary. It’s always a good thing to have someone from your staff call up your patient before the initial visit as well just as a form of reminder and a show of your eagerness to cater to them.

The First Visit

After you have managed to get a prospect to visit your clinic through the phone, it’s time for you to put your best foot forward. Try to place yourself in the position of your patient in order for you to come up with an idea of what they want to see or experience when first stepping into your office. Evaluate the physical state of your reception area and front desk. Do you think that you have an inviting enough space? How about your office and your clinic? You’ll be spending a good amount of time with your patient in that part of the office, explaining to them your diagnosis and proposing treatment plans, so make sure that your space doesn’t scare off patients.

The Case Presentation

You’ve met with your patient, found out what’s wrong with them, and now you’re ready to propose to them a treatment plan. Try to build strong rapport with your patient to facilitate an open, comfortable flow of conversation. Make sure to discover the things which your patients value and regard as important. And then present your treatment plan in a manner which would appeal to their sensibilities. Get your patients to make a verbal commitment and then congratulate them on their decision to value their dental health.

Your Tips

We’re of course just scratching the surface here. Do you have some tips you’d like to add? Please leave them in a comment below.

Nevertheless, the people find elective dental procedures like tooth whitening unaffordable, which results in the negligence towards timely treatment. The upcoming trend to visit other countries for treatment has discovered a new term called “Dental Tourism”. Let’s know about the 10 most visited places by the dental patients.

1. Hungary

Hungary is a prime European destination for dental patients. It offers high quality treatment with the world’s best dentists, and state of the art facilities.

2. Turkey

Turkey has emerged as an affordable place to get treatment of your dental problems. Also famous as dental tourism destination, here you can discover the cultural treasure of Turkey whilst getting a dental procedure done.

3. Czech Republic

Get dental care for an affordable price, right at the center of the significant Prague. You can reach here by choosing the low-cost-carrier airlines that are the best option to fly here.

4. Spain

Also famous as one of the cheapest destinations for dental curing, Spain offers best-in-class services in the dental treatment area. The economy of Spain is going through severe deflation and hence you can get your problems treated within your budget.

5. Costa Rica

Costa Rica is renowned for its warm and friendly people. Enjoy the natural beauty of this place while getting treated by the trained and experienced dentists.

6. Philippines

The Philippines with its exotic tropical landscapes, outstanding cost-effective dentistry and renowned hospitality is the right place for dental tourists.

7. Mexico

A best alternative for dental treatments and it is only a short-drive away; along with excellent care they offer the best discounted prices too.

8. Poland

Poland is the most picturesque dental tourism destination in the world. It offers world class dental care services. You can reach there by choosing either air or train route from Western Europe and Scandinavia.

9. Dubai

A city tailored to cater luxuriously to the needs of dental tourists. The luxurious yet highly expertise care of Middle East even helps you to save great amounts.

10. Thailand

Find some of the largest and most up-to-date dental hospitals here. This tropical locale lures thousands of dental tourists to be treated by expert dentists. Clinics involved in dental treatment regularly form partnerships with hotels which offer discounted rates to their patients.

About the author: Rebecca is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on fashion and luxury. Beside this she is nature lover and is reading a book on green homes. She frequently contributes articles on parenthood for her blog parenting clan.

1. Brush twice a day after meals

Teaching yourself and your kids to brush in a proper manner can go a long way to keep teeth in good health. Develop a habit of brushing each part of your teeth at least for a count of ten brush strokes. First start with the outer surfaces of your upper teeth. Then go on to the outer surfaces of your lower teeth. Do the same for the inner surfaces. Finally, brush along the chewing surfaces of your teeth. Remember to brush along the gum line, the place where the gum joins the teeth. Keep your brushes at a 45 degree angle to the gum line with your toothbrush bristles pointing towards the teeth. It takes about two to five minutes to properly brush all your teeth. One simple way of ensuring that you or the kids brush for an adequate amount of time is to make it a habit to do it for the duration of one whole song on your music player.

2. Floss regularly

Our mouths are filled at all times with bacteria that are looking for places where they can deposit themselves and form a colony. One of the places that don’t get addressed by mere brushing is between the teeth. This is also where stuff like jam or peanut butter goes and deposits itself making these nooks and crannies all the more attractive to bacteria. Make sure that you floss on a daily basis to clean out these hard to reach places between your teeth.

3. Use mouthwash

Antibacterial mouthwash can help fight bacterial build up in your mouth to a very large extent. Fluoride based mouthwashes also help in strengthening the teeth. The best time to rinse your mouth with mouthwash is just before going to bed, as it will protect your teeth and mouth all through the night. Make sure you teach the children how to rinse their mouth with mouthwash without swallowing it.

4. Schedule a visit to the dentist

Summers are fun time. You may want to put off a dentist visit till later, but it is better that you schedule a visit now. Any potential damage that can be detected early will be helpful in preserving the lifelong health of your teeth. Cavities or plaque build-up that is left unattended can develop into serious problems. It is recommended that you have a thorough dental checkup once every six months.

Learning about the basics of oral and dental hygiene can help you and the kids to cope with the
indulgences of the summer months without putting your teeth at risk. Avoid snacking, brush after meals, and rinse your mouth with water every time you eat or drink something. Floss regularly, rinse with mouthwash at bedtime, and schedule regular visits with your dentist. Maintaining the health of your teeth is easy if you develop these simple habits of dental hygiene.

About the author: Rebecca is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on topics related to parenting and natural beauty. Beside this she is working on an article on easy weight loss tips.

In Part 1 of Communication Tips You Must Know to Improve Case Acceptance, we talked about the advances in technology and our knowledge of the current evidence-based science, regarding the oral health and systemic health link.

We understand that dental hygienists have a huge impact on communication and patients’ acceptance to a treatment plan. It is crucial to guide patients to have a healthy body and in return, we are adding value to the services we provide and this will in return increase the dental practice profits.

Critical components for patient case acceptance:

1. Rapport: The patient connection.
2. Visuals: Most people are visual learners. Have these ready to use at each appointment.
3. The words we use.
4. The questions we ask . (Open-ended questions.)
5. Review, repetition and closure with the patient.

Case acceptance is critical for clinical results and the success of all dental practices.
Without patients accepting the treatment plan we cannot provide optimal care and your dental business will not survive and thrive. When we communicate with our patients, it is valuable to ask open-ended questions. Without asking open-ended questions, our patients will be answering yes or no to our questions. We can learn a lot more about our patients needs when we ask questions that cannot be answered with just a yes or no.

Time is a big concern during the hygiene appointment and asking open-ended questions will allow us to communicate the important facts quickly. In Part 2 we will give examples of critical communication for patient case acceptance.

Example of an Open-Ended Conversation:

RDH: “Mr. Jones, Can you see the brown line and discoloration around this composite filling?”
Mr. Jones: “Yes, I can see this.”

RDH: “How do you feel about these dark discolored areas on your front tooth?”
Mr. Jones: “I have never noticed this before you mentioned it today. I don’t like my teeth not being white. What does the discolored area mean for my tooth?”

RDH: “This means there are open areas around this filling. I see from your chart, this restoration was preformed about 15 years ago. There are toxins, bacteria or poisons that will creep under the filling and cause destruction of the tooth. Do you see the small amounts of food trapped in this area?”
Mr. Jones: “Yes, I do see the food trapped there.”

RDH: “The bacteria that creep into this area on the tooth can also get into your blood stream and contribute to disease. This can affect your immune system.” Does this make sense to you?”
Mr. Jones: “Yes, that does make sense. I have never thought about it in this way.”

RDH: “What are your thoughts about restoring this tooth, returning it to a healthy status?”
Mr. Jones: “Well, yes, of course I want to be healthy. How can you do this?”

RDH: “Mr. Jones, the first thing I would like to talk about is your discolored tooth in the front of your mouth. I know you have never noticed this before today and with a new restoration, we can remove the bacteria, which causes oral disease and more destruction on your tooth. The bacteria will get into your blood stream if not removed. The way we fix this tooth for you is to very easily remove the darkened, stained enamel from the tooth and replace it with a new tooth colored material. Of course, all the recommendations for treatment I am going to make will be dependent on your budget. I know that the economy has also affected how you are spending money at this time. The doctor will look closely to make sure all the recommendations make sense for you and what is happening in your life at this time.”

This is the time to take out the brochure regarding restorative treatment. (Circle, highlight or underline the areas which pertain to the patient.)

RDH: “What are your thoughts about this treatment recommendation? Does this information make sense?”
Mr. Jones: “Yes, it does make sense. Although money is tight, I still want to have the healthiest mouth and body as possible. I would like to think about ways I can pay to have this treatment completed.”

RDH: “I can have Mary, our financial coordinator, discuss payment options with you. The second area I can help you with is your dry mouth. I noticed that you circled this on your medical history. This is most likely due to the medication you are taking for high blood pressure. Today, I will show you a few products, which will relieve this situation very easily.”
“Is this something that you will use at home?”
Mr. Jones: “Yes, I definitely want to know more about these products today.” “I don’t want to leave without asking Mary about the financial options you can offer.”

RDH: “I will show these products to you after the doctor completes your exam today. The other area I want to address is the bleeding gums and the areas, which measure 5mms. I completed a periodontal screening exam and I want to review my findings with you at this time.” (At this time if you have an electronic chart, put the perio chart up on the monitor and review with the patient. Also, bring out the periodontal brochures and outline, highlight or circle important areas that relate to the patient.)
“Your oral health is related to your overall health. We need to remove the bacteria causing the periodontal disease. You may have heard about gum disease before today. Some of the factors which can contribute to periodontal disease are stress and various systemic diseases such as your high blood pressure. I am recommending that you return for four appointments to scale and root plane these areas. I will place a chemotherapeutic agent called Arestin in the areas, which measure 5mms. This is similar to what you know as Tetracycline. This is a sub-dose of Tetracycline and will work only on the enzymes, which are causing the inflammation, bleeding and disease process. After the four appointments are complete, you will return four – six weeks later to re-evaluate these areas and make certain they are healthy. Usually with this treatment and the use of chemotherapeutics at this early stage, we can halt the progression of periodontal disease. I will also recommend that you return every three months for supportive therapy to prevent further disease. Does this make sense to you?”
Mr. Jones: “I think it does. I have been hit hard from the economy these past two years and it has caused a lot of stress. My daughter is getting married which adds to the financial problems and my stress. Are you telling me that if I don’t have this gum treatment for the periodontal disease, that I can lose my teeth?”

RDH: “Yes, that is correct. Usually this is a slow disease process but without the treatment, scaling and root planing, the disease process is likely to progress. The scaling and root planing will also help establish good health around that tooth before the doctor provides you with a new restoration or filling in that front tooth. The end result with a new filling is very positive once your gums are healthy. The doctor can add a much better restoration when the gums are healthy.” “I know you have your daughters wedding in a few months so maybe you want your smile to be the very best possible for this big event. Before doctor comes in to do the final examination and make the diagnosis, I want to show you some photos of patients with a similar situation as yours. In our computer, I have some photos of patients who had the same type of slight bleeding and redness around their gumline. (Now have photos of patients before and after scaling and root planing on the monitor) They completed the scaling and root planing and as you can see in this photo here, the patient now has gums that are a light coral pink color. How much difference do you see in the patients’ gums from the beginning to the end of treatment? Can you see a difference between these photos? Do you notice something is different?”
Mr. Jones: “Okay, I see, the teeth and gums look a lot better in this photo on the right. I understand what you mean about improving my oral health. That second photo doesn’t have any blood around the gumline. The front teeth on this patient are also much whiter. I have never even noticed this discoloration or bleeding before today. I never noticed those brown areas around that old filling and I definitely didn’t think anything about a little bleeding on my gums every once in awhile.”

RDH: “Our dental assistant Marcie had an old filling completed for the first time about twenty five years ago, before we had these great materials to restore teeth. The filling was redone few times over the past twenty-five years and last year doctor completed a veneer on this tooth. Doctor also whitened her teeth so they would all be much whiter. This is something very similar to what doctor can do for your teeth. Of course, this is only if you decide to have something more permanent completed on that tooth. It is very simple to complete and not much of your tooth will be taken away, contrary to having a crown placed.”
“I wanted to show you what we did to her tooth because we work for an amazing doctor who can make everyone’s teeth look better than ever. I wanted to show you this other type of treatment because it is longer lasting and all your teeth will look much whiter. Dr. Carter takes us to a lot of excellent educational courses and we just learned about a new procedure which can really make your smile look good for your daughters wedding!”
“Mr. Jones, we have talked about many things today. I want to make sure you are comfortable with your care. What questions do you have for me?”
Mr. Jones: The photo of the tooth after she had the veneer placed looks fantastic! I really like how natural it looks. How long will the restoration last?”

RDH: “With proper home care, the veneers can last over twenty-five years.”
I believe that doctor may want to discuss these various treatments with you at another consultation appointment. If you are interested in having all the teeth look great in the front of your mouth, doctor can talk to you about what you want your teeth to look like. We can make another appointment during your lunch hour next week so you don’t have to be so rushed today. You can take your time to decide on the type of treatment you want to make your smile look the very best. We will accomodate you so you don’t lose time from work. Is this something you would like to discuss with doctor further?”
Mr. Jones: “Yes, I think I would like to find out how all my teeth can look better. Let’s make a lunch time appointment for me to discuss this more.”

RDH: “I am looking at the schedule here on the computer and I see that we have a lunch time appointment next Thursday. Does 12:00pm on March 24th work for you?”
Mr. Jones: “Yes, I think that will work for me.”

RDH: “Before you leave today I will schedule the appointments for the scaling and root planing and a six week appointment to re-evaluate the outcome from the scaling and root planing. I will also review those products for your dry mouth. Here is doctor now.” Now the doctor will come into the hygiene room and complete the exam. Doctor will confirm the initial diagnosis and review the discussion between the hygienist and patient.

Recap for Critical Communication

At this point, the hygienist has talked about stress and the affects of this on the patient’s oral health. The hygienist has talked about something pleasant to continue with rapport building and the personal relationship between patient and practitioner. The hygienist has also used various types of visuals. In this scenario, the hygienist used brochures and individualized these by highlighting, underlining and/or circling important aspects. The hygienist also showed some real patient photos on the monitor. During the verbal communication, throughout the case presentation, the hygienist used open-ended questions. When possible, the hygienist engaged the patient in conversation.

The hygienist explained the purpose for good oral health and allowed the patient to choose the level of health they want. The hygienist allowed the patient to decide if they would like to hear other treatment options. This put the patient in charge of their oral health and options for treatment. The patient took responsibility.

During the case presentation, the hygienist suggested and asked the patient if they would like more time to discuss other options with the doctor. These other options were more permanent alternatives to treatment. The hygienist talked about a more complete treatment plan and asked leading questions to discover if this is the type of treatment the patient would be interested in. (RDH: “Is this something you would like to discuss with doctor further?”)

The Next Crucial Step For Patient Case Acceptance

The next step when doctor enters the room for the exam is for the hygienist to provide a verbal synopsis to the doctor about the discovery during the patient-hygiene appointment. The hygienist will begin with something personal about the patient. For example, Mr. Jones has a daughter who will be married in a few months. Then the hygienist will report to doctor what treatment options were discussed and what the patient felt about the treatment options and if Mr. Jones is interested in moving forward with any of the options discussed.

Another Crucial Step for Patient Case Acceptance

The next crucial step is to get closure before any financial arrangements are made. You need to know if the patient is ready to move forward with treatment. This one thing needs to occur before you will have an answer to this next step to discuss the financials. If the patient is not ready to move forward with treatment, discussing financials will become a losing option for your patient schedule.

If you do not proceed with this next step the patient can most likely make an appointment and then cancel. The patient may also follow through with financial arrangements but they will tell you they will call when they are ready to schedule their treatment. This is why it is crucial to have a commitment from the patient to move forward with treatment.

When presenting the treatment plan both doctor and the hygienist need to be on task. Neither of these two people can miss a step. If doctor misses a step, the hygienist needs to give a verbal cue for doctor to return on task and verbally communicate. Same thing occurs if the hygienist misses a step. There needs to be conversation and a buy in from the patient after explanation of the treatment.

Repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

In real estate, they say this phrase “Location. Location. Location.” When we discuss communication with our patients, we need to understand that, many times a patient needs to hear the information two or three times before, they will say “Yes” to a treatment plan.

When the hygienist and entire dental team understand the science behind communication for case acceptance, the hygienist and other members of the team can increase the chances a patient will move forward with their treatment plan.

It is the responsibility of the hygienist to continually review the periodontal, restorative and aesthetic treatments, regarding the structured process within the Science of Communication each time they see the patient. The time for communicating this will not always be as long; however it is still the responsibility of the hygienist to continue communicating as long as the patient says they are still interested in the information. The dental professionals are the experts and need to continually create a desire for patients to move forward with necessary treatment.

Conclusion

It is important to understand the science behind communication. We are all guilty of talking and not communicating.

Key components to understanding how to get a “YES” for patient case acceptance:

- Understand the patient’s personality style.
- The tone and speed or your words
- The words we use
- Stay away from “speaking in code.”
- Use visuals
- Seat patients upright in the chair and face each other eye to eye
- Focus on the patients concerns and not your own agenda

Once the dental team feels more confident explaining the treatment needs to patients, the patients’ confidence in scheduling their treatment will also increase. In order to improve our patient case acceptance we need to improve the patient experience. To improve the patient experience, we must first improve the dentist and team experience. The goal of communication is about changing what we do. Once we have mastered the Science of Communication, the patients will notice the value added to their appointment and the overall improvement of their experience. With the patient experience improving, so will the referral of the patient’s friends, family and colleagues. When we create a great patient experience, the dental practice will benefit with an increase in the bottom line.

Scheduling is a Critical Task

One of the most critical responsibilities an office manager has is to manage the schedule. The dentist wants it to be productive. The hygienists want it to be full. The assistants want it to have enough time to turn over rooms and catch up on cleaning instruments. The secretaries are busy trying to fill the schedule when it has holes and confirm and take care of patients when it’s full.

A properly managed schedule keeps the staff busy and reduces chit-chat time. It also keeps the focus on our patients instead of on ‘what did you do last weekend’ conversations. The schedule dictates our profitability and is a visual reminder of our effectiveness. So, we know it’s important – but how does an office manager successfully manage the schedule?

Determine Dentist’s Ideal Schedule

First, talk with the dentist to find out what his/her idea of the perfect schedule looks like. Every dentist is different. I’ve worked with pediatric dentists who had 4 columns of patients and a team of 4 assistants and EFDAs and he not only ran on time, he was relaxed and happy and always seemed to have plenty of time for everyone in the office. I’ve also worked with general dentists who were very pleased with just one column of patients and wouldn’t trust a well-trained EFDA to touch one of their fillings. The office manager should sit down with the dentist to sketch out on a blank paper what type of schedule he/she wants. When does the dentist feel freshest and therefore want certain types of appointments? How many hygienists is he comfortable checking? Does he need blocks at any time of day? The clearer the goal of a ‘perfect schedule’ is in the dentist’s mind, the better chance you have of achieving it!

Setting Up Calendar & Schedule

Next, set up the calendar and the schedule. These are two entirely separate items. The calendar is for the month – when will the dentist be out for CE or vacation? Are any of the staff going to be out? Who will cover? How will you handle holidays or days that schools are closed? In our practice, we set up our calendar in Excel and give copies to each team to review. We do not pre-book, so we plan 2 months in advance. I expect a minimum of 6 weeks notice for any vacation time to reduce last minute changes and craziness. Once everyone has had a say in the calendar, then my secretary team leader sets our calendar up in Dentrix. We use block scheduling for each of our providers and their teams – which is not exactly what Dentrix intended, but it is a fabulous way to see at a glance which providers are open/closed.

Managing the Schedule

Now, to manage this schedule. The secretary/office manager is responsible to keep the schedule open throughout the day and watch for any changes. Any last minute no shows or cancels mean we need to hop on the phones to try to save the time from being wasted. We set goals for the team to meet hygiene open time goals as well as dentist open time goals – and we track these daily. We set collection goals for each dentist as well. On top of daily schedule management, I look at the schedule weekly. I watch to see if any staffing changes are necessary – if I have a provider that isn’t maintaining a full schedule, then we’ll add notes to ‘fill top down’ and let staff go home early. Since we maintain an entry level cleaning/sterilization person on the assistant team, if schedules are really open, I may give this person the day off – maintaining hours for my more senior staff.

Analyze, Analyze, Analyze

The dentist and office manager should each look at the results of the scheduling each month. Did you hit the production and collection goals? What was the open time vs. goal? If you’re booking too far out (remember no more than a 2 week wait for a new patient), you may need to add some staff to increase capacity. If you’re too empty, perhaps it’s time for some marketing.

Successful Scheduling Requires a Team Effort

Successfully managing a schedule takes a total team approach. The more the staff realize their part in helping the schedule stay accurate and productive, the better your schedule becomes. You’ll have several sets of eyes on the schedule that can catch errors – hopefully with enough notice to fix them! The general sense that everyone is responsible for managing the schedule can become one of the major strengths in your practice. So, how do you feel about your schedule?

As restoring doctors, we know enough about the risk of utilizing fractured anterior teeth for post retained restorations. Examining a past issue of Inside Dentistry, I ran across an article covering “Post and Core Foundations for Esthetic Restorations”. The photos that were included in the story showed a central incisor fractured without a ferrule and the labial down to the gingival sulcus.

Somehow the word “Esthetic Restorations” is supposed to throw you into forgetting the basics. The author states that “there was very little coronal tooth structure remaining – the Flexi-Flange® Prefabricated Post System would be ideal for this clinical situation. A metal post was selected for this due to lack of remaining tooth structure the Flexi-flange helps dissipate occlusal forces to eliminate intraradicular stress fractures. The flange portion of the post countersinks completely into tooth structure to maximize fracture resistance of the root and post by safely dispersing occlusal forces over a broad area.”

How many times do we have to listen to this bologna? Anterior teeth flex under use. The key is how much tooth structure is remaining and what the occlusal status is. The post will do nothing to strengthen to the tooth. If there is only a root stump left then all the force of occlusal loading will be on the post/root interface regardless of design. IT WILL FAIL. My number one clinical reason to place a single tooth implant is because of a recently failed post and crown.

Our goal in dentistry is to serve our patients with a crystal ball that will attempt to predict the future and allow us to make clinical decisions that keep the most teeth for the longest period of time. Our patients trust us. What do we tell them when they just plunked down good money for a root canal, post and crown and it fails a year later? You have to ask yourself: why did the original tooth fracture? Do you think that what you do to a wounded tooth will restore it to a condition that is better than it was before it broke? I think not.

An implant is better than a bad tooth. If there is not enough tooth to support a crown without a post, then don’t put a post in it. The intent of a post is only to support a core if there is missing clinical crown, not to support a crown.

Your Thoughts

Do you agree with Dr. Wilhelm? Let us know in a comment below.

For a limited time, Crest is offering you an opportunity to receive a free sample of Crest 3D White Whitestrips and a free sample of Crest 3D White Vivid Toothpaste.

How to get your samples

All that’s needed to receive your free samples is about 20 seconds of your time. Simply fill out the Crest sample request form, and you’re samples will be on their way.

Below is a brief overview of ten critical numbers every dentist should know, monitor and graph every year. The goal is to see them grow over the course of your career as you measure your overall progress and profitability as a practice.

Know These Numbers

1. Current Market Value of Your Practice.
As a general rule of thumb we recommend using 65% of last year’s collections to set the value.

2. Annual Gross Revenues.

3. Annual Reinvestment in Practice.
How much did you reinvest in your practice last year? This number should always be considered part of your overall practice value.

4. Annual Debt Reduction.
All debt reduction payments should always be considered a form of profitability. For example, if you had $1 million in debt and paid off $100,000 last year and earned a net profit of $200,000, you actually earned $300,000. Debt reduction always increases your net worth.

5. Annual Net Revenues.

6. Current Debt and Liabilities.

7. Annual Charitable Contributions.
As your practice grows through the years, it is important to track what you are giving back.

8. Annual Tax Liability.
You will want to continually measure your tax liability to see if it is increasing or decreasing.

9. Current Cash on Hand.
This number is included in your practice’s value.

10. Current Total Net Worth.
You should analyze this number annually.

What numbers do you track?

What numbers do you find important to track and improve or reduce? What, if anything, would you add to the list?

When people are headed off to see their dentist the trip is often filled with anxiety, whether from anticipated pain or merely the unknown of what is actually the cause of their malady. In order to attract new patients and retain one’s current ones, dentists need to make sure that the physical office environment works in tandem with the overall branding and marketing to convey a soothing and comforting message. Of course, the message and interior also need to project competence so as to instill patients and prospects with confidence.

Strive for Consistent Branding Strategy

This is no easy task. So often dentists hire one firm to design a website for them, another to create a logo, a third to assist with print advertising, and yet another to design their office interior – none of which are ever introduced to one another or encouraged to work together as a team. Successful entrepreneurs however, realize that all of these players need to work together in concert, with a single branding message and mission in mind if they are going to achieve a positive return on investment. The goals of attracting new patients, reducing patient turnover, and increasing referrals will only be achieved if the experience patients have when visiting the website is repeated when calling to make an appointment and reinforced when stepping through the front door for the actual exam. If at any time along this path the experience changes or fails to live up to expectations, the confidence level falls, and the anxiety level rises increasing the risk for a cancelled appointment or a failure to return for future service.

Keep Brand Shapers Involved

Now, this doesn’t mean that one necessarily has to hire a redesign of the website, office, logo, and other advertising materials at the same time. While that might be the ideal scenario, as small business owners we all know that budgets rarely allow for all of these projects to happen at once. What it does mean is that once a branding message has been establishing for the practice, all future players working on aspects of the marketing for the business should be introduced to and expected to collaborate with the marketing team that developed the branding message so that the new pieces will be designed to fit seamlessly into the overall strategy and work to reinforce that which has come before.

I was a dental assistant for 12 years right out of high school and I have maintained an interest in dental workforce issues ever since. After completing my bachelors and masters degrees, I worked in non-profits where I devoted my time to dental workforce issues. I am now working at a dental school and I’m a PhD candidate in the dissertation phase with a topic focused on dental workforce shortages affecting access to care. I’m interested in finding out if experience with dentistry prior to and during dental school affects how a person feels about their dental skills and abilities, and then finding out if these experiences (such as community outreach) influence practice preference. I believe the results of my study will help with dental admissions processes and with dental clinic recruitment and hiring. I’m focusing on dentists who have graduated between 2006 and 2011 to complete a short (10 minute) survey. I’ll share the results of my research with those who are interested.

Thank you, in advance, for your participation!
Mary Fusco, MA, PhD ABD

Start the Survey

Anyone interested in learning more about the research study and taking the survey please go to:

http://bit.ly/qzg6XJ

A more pleasant waiting experience

There’s a cheap and easy way to make your waiting room much more pleasant for your patients. Furnishing your waiting space with current, popular magazines can provide patients a lot of value and make their waiting considerably more pleasant. Current magazines in good condition also reflect well on your practice.

The easiest, cheapest way to keep your waiting room filled with magazines is by using a third party waiting room magazine provider.

Using a reception room subscription service helps you keep things simple by enabling you to pay one bill, and work with one provider, to get all your magazines. One bill, from one company, makes keeping magazines available for your customers much more convenient. At the same time, publishers offer discounts on subscriptions for waiting rooms.

One Company, One Bill

If you go about maintaining each subscription on your own, keeping magazines in your reception room requires remembering when you need to renew each title. Not only that, but when doing it on your own you have to deal with fluctuating prices that make it hard to budget. Using a reception room subscription service means you get one bill that covers all of your titles. This makes budgeting easy, and renewals even easier.

Save Money on Subscriptions

Publishers are willing to charge less for subscriptions they know are going into waiting rooms because every issue in a reception room is seen by many people. These discounted prices can be considerably less than you could get on your own. You could get titles like People Magazine for as much as 71% off the cover price.

The most efficient way to take advantage of this discount is to work with a reception room subscription service that can negotiate reception room rates for all of your subscriptions.

Learn More

If you’d like to know more about working with a waiting room magazine provider, visit http://www.ebscomags.com.

Does your practice have a continuous flow of new patient referrals? Do all team members maximize every opportunity to point new patients to your practice? Are you meeting your monthly new patient referral goals?

While studying business practices for IBM, Frederick Reichheld discovered seven habits of referability that led to IBMs early success. As revealed in his book, The Loyalty Effect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits, and Lasting Value, Reichheld’s research points to repeatable behaviors which I have found to be directly transferable to every dental practice.

As you review these seven habits, evaluate how well they are represented both in your practice and through your team. Focus intently on your work as the practice leader as well as your entire team’s efforts in referring new patients. You might be surprised to learn how many potential new patients you and your team are leaving outside in the cold.

1. Courtesy

“Please” is still a magic word along with the phrases “Thank You,” “Yes Sir,” “No Maam,” and “Your Welcome.” A courteous practice is a growing practice because moments of courtesy with your patients become stories shared with their friends. “Dr. Smith is so nice…”

2. Being on Time

Ten years ago the goal was to get patients from the waiting area to their room by their scheduled appointment time. For today’s patients, personal schedules are tighter and time is more important. “On time” today means patients are driving away from your practice by their expected completion time.

Being on time is more about managing patient’s expectations than ensuring that you meet every scheduled time. One way to manage patient’s expectations is to pad every treatment by at least fifteen minutes. If a typical prophy requires an hour, share with your patients to expect one hour and fifteen minutes for their treatment. “Mrs. Williams, you should expect to be here from nine to ten-fifteen on Tuesday.”

Meeting or exceeding their time expectations will lead them to share their story with others.

3. Using Names

People love the sound of their own name. Using names creates immediate rapport with patients, shows you care, and lowers trust barriers. Make it a rule that patients are always addressed by their names.

Dental Assistants and Hygienists can greatly help doctors who tend to forget names. Simply implement a practice in which the hygienist or assistant always refers to the patient by name as the doctor enters the room.

In addition to using names, if applicable, your team should address patients using relevant honorifics such as Reverend, Dr., Judge, Professor, etc… In Paragon, we recommend using a 25 to 30 year rule as a guide for when to address patients as “Mr.” or “Mrs.” If the patient is at least 25 to 30 years older than you or other staff members, the patient should always be addressed as “Mr. Smith” or “Mrs. Jones” out of respect.

4. Happiness

Come happy – Stay Happy – Go Home Happy. Over two decades of in-office consulting has taught me that happy people schedule more treatment. In fact I usually recommend that unhappy front desk people be immediately replaced. It is critical for growing practices to establish the necessity of happiness and replace team members who do not meet those expectation.

5. Accepts Compliments

Although we may think it represents humility to deflect or demur when complimented, it is more like rejecting a gift. A compliment is a gift and should be received with a gracious and heartfelt “Thank You.” People love to feel like their gift is well received.

6. Asks for referrals after being complimented

In the same way that a compliment is a gift, it is also a perfect opportunity to ask for referrals. “Ms. Jones, thank you very much. I’d also like to offer you a compliment. We count it a great privilege to serve patients like you. If you have any friends like you, we’d love to have them as patients.”

7. Always asks for referrals

To build a well-oiled referral machine, every team member must be trained and empowered to see opportunities and maximize them. Here are a few quick tips for creating referral situations:

• THE OPENING: “What do you do?” Your team members are often asked in social gatherings what they do for a living. Teaching them a proper response creates referral opportunities.
• THE RESPONSE: “I work for one of the best dentists in Ohio – she’s phenomenal.”
• THE TRANSITION QUESTION: “Where do you go for your dentistry?”
• THE OFFER: Every team member should be empowered to pull out a business card, flip it over and hand-write an offer of $100 off a new patient exam. This hand-written offer provides a personal touch to the invitation.

According to the A.D.A., five out of ten people do not currently see a dentist regularly. In addition, two who currently see a dentist are ready to move on to another dentist. In other words, seven out of ten people are always looking for a dentist. Do not leave them outside in the cold, but open the door.

Now What?

Even if you, as the practice leader, scored sixty out of seventy on the evaluation of each habit, your team may be lagging far behind. Every team member failing to implement these seven habits may represent several potential new patients every month.

Which of these seven habits do you and your staff need to focus on today, this week, this month, this year? What is your specific plan to fully implement these habits throughout your practice?

New habits will bring new patients and new patients will create new profits.

Go for it!

Your Thoughts

How many of the 7 habits of referability do you see in your practice? Which do you need to work on?

Fact: Most Dental Practice Facebook Pages are Boring

In a recent post, you may have read that the having a Facebook page for a dental practice is a definite yes.

Sadly, several of the dental Facebook pages I’ve come across can only be described in two words.

BO-RING.

If you are trying to get your audience (which includes your patients) to be more familiar, interested and engaged with your practice, do you really think they want to see all those clinical photos with retractors and words like “mesio-distal”?

No way.

Turn them off and you may not get a second chance to turn them on.

But, you might ask, why even bother?

What’s in it for you, to either make the time and put in the effort, or pay someone to do it?

1. Social media is mainstream

To begin, social media is mainstream and it’s here to stay. It is fast becoming the primary way people are interacting online today. We all know that word-of-mouth referrals is the best advertising for our practices; so think of social media as its online version.

2. Your practice will be more dynamic

Secondly, a Facebook page adds another dimension to your business persona. To your current patients or to future ones, a website may only offer static content. But with other elements such as a blog, a YouTube page and a Facebook page, your practice becomes a more dynamic entity.

3. Your patients can engage on more personal level

Thirdly, prospective patients researching online may click on your website and view your practice as a business alone. That can be perceived as somewhat impersonal (depending on the quality of your website). Adding a Facebook page can allow you to show your practice’s more personable, and personal, side. This gives you one more area to stand out from every other dentist on your block. Click.

4. Enhances your brand

Fourth and lastly, your page (in combination with other elements) expands your personal branding and, unless it’s changed its formula again, Google likes you a little more. And everyone wants Google to like them.

Now that you have the highlights, what are you waiting for?

I do have one request though.

If you decide to set up a Facebook page, please . . . . no pictures with retractors.

Your Thoughts

Does your dental practice’s Facebook page rock? If so, leave your url in a comment below and tell us why it rocks.

If you have a website for your practice or you are going to set one up soon, check out these important search engine optimization tips below to ensure you are maximizing online traffic.

1. Go Local

Recently Google has been making major changes to the way search results are displayed. They now are including local website listings for major keyword searches where once, they did not show. This means optimizing your website for local keywords can make a huge difference in the amount of traffic you get.

Add your office location in your website’s META tags, in the footer, on the contact and about page and so on. Also include Google map directions on your contact page.

Another easy thing to do is to sign up for Google Places, which will make your website show up for even more local searches. Be sure to ask clients for reviews, because good reviews can make all the difference in whether or not someone decides to call or visit your website for more info.

2. Create Landing Pages

A typical website does not have many pages. Typical pages could include the home page, services page, contact page, about page and so on. If you want more search engine traffic, you are going to need to have more content on your site.

One great way to start is to create a landing page for every service you offer that includes local keywords. For example, if you offer teeth whitening services and your practice is in New York City. You should set up a page for Teeth Whitening in New York City that is optimized for the service keywords and the location keywords.

Be sure to also interlink your pages using descriptive keywords to help with rankings and better indexing of your site. You may also want to link to all these content pages from your main services page.

3. Get Backlinks

I see many dentist websites go up that are optimized for search engines, but not many actively try to attract more backlinks. If you want to rank for keywords such as “dentist, new york” you are going to need backlinks with that anchor text pointing back to your website. It’s as simple as that.

Submit your website to directories, guest post, write great content, create white papers, network with people and websites in your industry and do anything else you can to attract backlinks.

4. Get Social

Search engine rankings are now being affected by social votes on sites such as Twitter and Facebook. This means it will be very important for you to have accounts and pages on these sites so that you can attract more votes for your business.

Stay active on your profiles, add widgets and badges to your site and if you have a blog, install a social bookmarking plugin to make it easier for people to share your content.

5. Start a Blog

Search engines love fresh content and people love great articles. When you start a blog try to publish posts that will actually help bring in potential customers. Examples of posts could be “5 ways to pick the right dentist” or even a post using local keywords, offering a promo code or incentives to come visit your dentist office.

The more often you post and the better your posts, the more traffic and new clients you will potentially get. Keep these tips in mind, put them to use and you will be on your way to having a steady stream of new clients.

Your Tips

Do you have additional SEO tips that have succeeded in boosting your website/page rankings? Please share them in a comment below.

One of the questions asked often is: “I already have a Profile page on Facebook, do I really need a Facebook Business Page?”

That’s sort of like the question (in dentistry) “Do I really need to floss?” You know the answer ….Only the teeth you want to keep!!
Originally, Facebook was only for making connections, not for business, hence Profile pages. It was a profile of you, your personal information, likes and dislikes.

Then businesses begin to see the power Facebook held and started creating Profile pages for their businesses (which is actually against Facebook rules). So in true Facebook fashion…Facebook started making changes (imagine that!) and created the Business page portion of Facebook. Profile pages are very limited as to what can and can’t be done as far as a business is concerned. The most noticeable being viewers have to wait to be confirmed after sending a “friend request”.

Profile Page VS Business Page

To see how the two differ let’s look at PROFILE -vs- BUSINESS this way:

Your PROFILE page is really a personal page (and not to be used as a business per FB). It’s like your home. If someone comes to your door at home, they knock on your door and have to wait to be let in.

Your BUSINESS page is just that….your Business. When someone comes to your place of business, they walk right in (during business hours of course). They don’t have to wait to be “confirmed”. Remember we live in an age of ‘instant gratification’! With that said, think about people interested in doing business with you having to wait outside until you let them in (PROFILE: waiting for you to confirm their ‘friend request’). That could sometimes take days. By that time, you may confirm them, but they may have already found someone else to do business with. You’ve lost a potential client or patient.

With a BUSINESS page on Facebook, your visitors walk right in as soon as they “Like” you. The “Like” is just opening your door. No waiting for you to approve them. Come to think of it, when did you ever have to wait to be approved before you could enter a store or business to shop or receive services?

We also talk about branding and how important it is to brand our business. In fact we spend a lot of time…writing posts, uploading pictures, creating videos, posting our bios, responding to viewers…branding our business…to get viewers and potential clients and patients to come to our Facebook page….only to have them….wait while you approve/confirm their friend request!

That’s like finally getting a new prospect to call your office….only to be put on endless hold…and hope they are still on the line when you get back to them!
Why would you want to make a prospective new client or patient wait to see all you have available to them when they don’t have too?? You’ve spent and invested too much time in getting that prospect to your Facebook site to make them wait!

Then if you’ve seen the light and are thinking….”OK, If I create a Business page, will I lose all the people I’ve connected with on my Profile page?” Absolutely not! You still are connected to them, can market to them, and will point them to your business page. If you’re comfortable with creating Facebook pages, you can create your own business page (connected to your profile page) or outsource it to a social media specialist.

Bottom Line

So in answer to the original question: “…..Do I really need a Facebook Business page?” Answer: “Only if you’re in business!”
The point is, when you’re in business, you always want to put your best business foot forward. So unlock your doors and be “Open to the public”. Create your Facebook Business page and let your new prospects… walk right in!

Your Thoughts

Do you have a Facebook Business Page for your practice? If so, how has it impacted your practice?

When was the last time you reviewed the cleaning and sterilization procedures for your office? How confident are you that your staff are following the correct steps to keep you and your patients safe as well as meet the required regulations? A great way to get on track is by working with the OSHA Onsite Consultation Program.

The OSHA Onsite program is free

The OSHA Onsite program is free – and completely separate from the enforcement arm of OSHA, so you are not in danger of receiving penalties or punishments. The way it works is that you contact the office and request that an OSHA Consultant visit your practice. Next, talk with the consultant that is assigned to your case and let him know a little about your practice, what you would like him to evaluate and what questions you have. In my experience, these consultants are friendly and helpful, so you can feel safe to ask questions and get the coaching you need. If you use nitrous in your practice, you can ask the consultant to bring the equipment needed to test your evacuation system. You also can ask the consultant to test your x-rays. These are not normally part of the consultation process and the consultant will need to request the equipment (the nitrous testing equipment costs over 6 figures and is shared between several consultants) in advance so they can provide these additional (free) services to you.

To prepare for your OSHA Onsite visit, you will want to have a copy of your bloodborne pathogen and hazardous communications plans, you will want to update your staff (and dentist) hepatitis series documentation, update your MSDS forms and make sure your cleaning bottles are clearly labeled. A visit to the OSHA web page for dentistry to review the regulations is a good idea.

Tips For Meeting With OSHA Consultant

Plan to spend 15-30 minutes with the consultant when he arrives to welcome and thank him for making the trip, to show him around the practice and get him focused on what you would like accomplished during the visit. The consultant will need a table where he can review the documentation discussed above and space to work on his report. Assign your best dental assistant or EFDA to show the OSHA consultant around the office, reviewing the cleaning and sterilization routine and introducing the consultant to the staff. The consultant will probably spend up to a few hours to evaluate your processes, check your documentation and make notes for his final report. It’s best to again plan 30 minutes at the end of this visit so the dentist and the consultant can discuss any concerns or recommendations. This is also a great time for the dentist to ask questions and get solid answers from a reputable professional.

In less than 2 weeks, you should receive the final report from your OSHA consultant. It will let you know if any serious or ‘other than serious’ hazards were identified and include recommendations to bring them up to standard. It also includes forms to submit to the consultant to let them know you have rectified these problems.

Focus on Improvement

This OSHA Onsite Consultation Program is a great way to set the standards for your staff. From beginning to end, your staff is involved with preparing for the visit, meeting the consultant and participating in the evaluation and then with reviewing the report and working to correct any concerns. Your staff should create a checklist based on this experience so they could perform their own evaluation – and be ready for the next time you decide to invite OSHA for a visit.

A Marketing Opportunity

This program is also a great opportunity for marketing your practice. Patients today want to know that they are safe when in your hands – why not tell them you invited OSHA to come in? In fact, this might make a very nice newspaper article – to let the entire town know that you are looking out for everyone’s safety (patients & staff). If you’re kind to your consultant, he may allow you take a photo – and this is a great post on your Facebook page about the visit & how you believe in making sure your practice is as safe as possible.

How to Learn More

If you would like some help to improve your cleaning and sterilization procedures or to learn more about my experiences with the OSHA Onsite Consultation Program, just call me!

Root Form Dental Implants

Root form dental implants are the most common, also known as ‘Endosteal’ or ‘Endosseous’ implants. This type of implant is ideal for patients with a wide, deep and healthy jawbone. Their shape resembles the natural tooth root. However, if there is not enough bone to place these implants a bone graft is a possible solution.

These dental implants can be placed using conventional dental implant surgery where the gum is raised to expose the bone for implant placement, or using a guided surgery technique.

Plate form dental implants

Plate form implants are long and flat, they are used when the jaw is very narrow and bone grafting is not appropriate. These implants are placed using conventional surgery – usually in two stages with a gap between procedures for healing.

Subperiosteal Dental Implants

A subperiosteal implant is custom made and placed beneath the gums on top of the bone, used if there is not enough bone for a root form or plate form implant. It is designed to suit the individual jaw of the patient.

Subperiosteal implants are not usually recommended as they have a higher failure rate than other types and cost more.

As this implant is made to suit the patient’s individual anatomy, it is designed and produced using three-dimensional models of the jaws – either made from a CT scan or a dental impression of the patient’s jaws.

Mini dental implants

Mini dental implants are as their name suggests – ‘mini’ versions of root form implants. Originally created to as temporary implants, they are now often used as a permanent implant solution, especially for smaller teeth. Mini implants can be used if there is not enough bone for normal implants and a bone graft is not appropriate.

The mini implant is a very cost-effective solution. Although it does not easily fuse with the bone, they are a durable, long lasting solution for many patients. Mini implants can also be used to support dentures.

Zygomatic Dental Implants

When there is not enough bone for ordinary implants, zygomatic implants can be used in the upper jaw. This is a very specialist procedure and is not available in all dental practices.

Zygomatic implants significantly longer than ordinary dental implants and ‘anchor’ to the cheekbone, or zygomatic arch. They can be used as an alternative to complex bone grafting and make it possible to carry out surgery a single stage.

A CT scan is required to assess the amount of bone in the upper jaw to allow your dentist to plan implant placement without carrying out invasive surgery.

Usually, two zygomatic implants are placed as well as 2-4 root form dental implants. When there is even less bone, four zygomatic implants are used. Guided surgery can sometimes be used to assist accurate placement.

Guided surgery

Guided surgery can also be used to place dental implants. This involves computer-aided surgical planning based on CT scans of your jaw. The surgery is performed using a surgical drill guide to position the implants in the jaw. It is possible for this to be a single stage procedure and some patients undergo the surgery and tooth restoration in a single day i.e. they leave with a finished set of teeth.

There are few things in life that give us more confidence than a dazzling smile. Having a great grin boosts our morale, making us feel positive, and drawing others to us as we show off our smile. However, many people have stayed away from traditional dentistry techniques, concerned about the length of time it may take to heal after cosmetic dental work, or the pain involved with getting treatment.

Now, all this is a thing of the past, as medical advancements and dentistry have fused techniques to come up with a revolutionary new way of encouraging prompt recovery from dental work. PGRF is transforming more than just smiles – it’s the application of a cutting-edge methodology for using the body’s own capacity to heal, accelerating the recovery process dramatically.

What is PGRF?

PGRF (or Pancreatic Growth Hormone Releasing Factor) is a new technique for use in surgery. It is designed to promote the body’s own natural healing hormones, transforming the recovery of patients undergoing procedures by encouraging the body to enhance its own potential for healing. Known as ‘autologous engineering’, it is being taken up by leading dental practitioners as the benefits of the technology are becoming widespread. The technology uses growth factors to improve the regenerative capabilities of the patient, applying the technique at the site of surgery to greatly enhance the recovery time and alleviate discomfort normally associated with dental work.

PGRF was developed by the Biotechnology Institute and launched as a radical new facial rejuvenation technique. It works by plasma-rich growth factors being taken from the patient prior to surgery being performed, and then modified and reapplied to encourage the natural healing process to take place. Non-invasive, comfortable and safe, PGRF has transformed traditional dentistry.

Who benefits from this new technology?

PGRF is suitable for anyone who undergoes oral surgery. It supports the body to use your own natural healing processes, enhancing the recovery by reducing the time taken to heal completely – giving you a head start to getting the beautiful smile you’ve always wanted. The technique has already been used by celebrities and professional sportspeople including Rafael Nadal and Tiger Woods, enabling them to reduce their recovery time and get back out there at the peak of their performance. The National Football League, Major League Baseball, and the World Anti-Doping Agency have all hailed PGRF as a revolutionary new treatment for recovery from surgery. The technique is ideal for maxilla-facial surgery, dental implants, and other oral procedures.

By enhancing the smoothness, thickness, health and hydration of the patient’s skin through a natural process, PGRF is an outstanding new technique to benefit people undergoing cosmetic dentistry and oral surgery, by promoting the skill of the body to heal and alleviate discomfort.

More Information

If you’d like more information, check out this PRGF article from the Dental & Implant Clinic.

Your Thoughts

Are you utilizing PRGF in your practice? Do you have tips for other dentists looking to incorporate this technique into their practice? Please share in a comment below.

You know exactly how to fashion a retainer to hold teeth in place, but retaining your customers is a whole different story.

They come, they go, they switch practices, and what can you do about it other than just doing the best job you can when they’re in the chair?

A whole lot, actually. When it comes to coaxing reluctant patients back into your office, email marketing can ease the pain.

How Email Is Designed to Bring Customers Back

Email’s recurrent nature makes it perfect for increasing retention. Sending emails on a consistent basis builds a good rapport with your patients, and eventually, a relationship of trust.

And let’s face it. Your patients make themselves pretty vulnerable to you and your sharp, shiny dental pick. Trust and a good rapport are vitally crucial to getting them comfortable with coming back again and again.

Let’s talk about how to use email to build that trust and rapport.

Four Ways to Leverage That Potential

1. Follow up with first-timers

New patients are doubly apprehensive – they have the usual worry about discomfort, plus the anxiety of a first-time experience. Get them comfortable from the moment they book their first appointment by sending them a follow up series.

Introduce yourself and your staff, include personal anecdotes, explain any quirks in how you work. (Use sunglasses to keep the overhead light out of their eyes? Tell them – they can look forward to it!)

Is there anything they’ll need to know when they show up? How early should they arrive? Where should they park? The more helpful details you can provide, the more they’ll appreciate you reaching out.

2. Pop up periodically

Once you’ve got your patients’ anxiety under control, you have to deal with their, ah…selective memories. After all, who can remember that March is the month they get their teeth cleaned?

There are two ways to address this little issue:

1. If you’ve got your CRM integrated with an email service, send a triggered email to each patient when it’s time to schedule their next cleaning, based on the date of their last appointment.

2. If not, schedule a broadcast to show up every few months. Decide on a frequency that’s often enough to keep you in patients’ minds, but not so often that they get overwhelmed and unsubscribe.

3. And fill them with valuable content

You don’t just want to remind your patients to go to any dentist; you want them to come to you, specifically. You can earn their loyalty by filling your emails with content they’ll find truly helpful, whether it’s entertaining or educational.

Your patients will appreciate the effort you’ve put in, which will come in handy when that toothache kicks up.

Ideas of fun or educational content you can send:
• Fun facts about teeth
• A History of Toothcare timeline
• A look at toothcare across the globe
• Effective flossing techniques
• Insights into the flouride debate

4. Later on, get more personal

Over time, your patients are going to expect you to know them better. If they can tell they’re still getting a generic email along with the rest of your patients, they may actually feel alienated by your messages. Fortunately, email services usually offer the option to split your subscribers into segments. That way, you can send each patient information based on their own oral health interests, increasing their appreciation.

By reaching out with email in these ways, you can be not only a dental hero, but a patient retention superstar.

Free E-mail Marketing Guide from AWeber

Email marketing is cheap compared to other marketing methods and as easy as you need it to be (just use an email template and send as many emails as you want). If you want the basics of how to get started and set up and the ball rolling, download this free guide. Then put these ideas in place and watch your practice grow!

It’s safe to say that all qualified dentists are experts. There’s no arguing that. However, the difference between a successful dental practice and one which is barely thriving is how these dental professionals are recognized as authority by their patients and the rest of the community. One important aspect about dental marketing is how to turn an expert into an authority.

Know Your Strengths

What are you good at? This is one question which you need to answer and don’t be modest with your response. Consult your CV or ask your closest friends. Try to think of two or three of your strengths and your areas of expertise. In order for your transformation to begin, you need to know exactly what you can bring to the table should individuals choose your services.

Actively & Consistently Build Your Brand

Brand your practice with the help of your specialization. The best way for you to attract patients is to set your practice apart from the others. This is where specialization will come in. Start building your practice’s brand by telling potential clients that you specialize in and are a recognized authority on an area of expertise you’re particularly good at.

Now that you’ve accomplished those two requisites, it’s time to start your transformation.

Share Your Expertise with Patients & Community

Talk. The only way for you to become an authority is to share your expertise. This means you need to give speeches. Participate in community events and share your specialized knowledge. In order for your speech to be more understandable to people who aren’t familiar with dental jargons, you can present your speech in a problem/solution format.

Teach or Donate Time to Local Dental Schools

Teach. You do not have to handle a class but make you can participate in a once-in-a-while community college class where you can share your knowledge to students. Those who prove to be good resource persons usually receive more invitations which can lead to more public exposure.

The Author: Tracy Bikhaus

So, what’s the book about? Here’s what Tracy had to say:

Super Blake Books are a series of children’s picture books that follow Super Blake through a variety of adventures and show kids how they can be a hero in everyday life. Our Mission at Super Blake Books is to engage young readers and provide them with fun and educational stories. The first book in the series is titled “Super Blake and the Cavity Monster”. Blake becomes a superhero by making good choices and helping others. He defeats the Cavity Monster and his evil sidekicks: Ginger Vitis and Sir Plaque by brushing and flossing.

How to Learn More

To learn more about the book, please visit the Super Blake Books website. While you’re there, don’t forget to print out the free coloring pages and stickers for your little ones.

How to Enter

Entering to win a copy of “Super Blake and the Cavity Monster” is easy. Simply like both the Dental Heroes‘ and Super Blake Books‘ Facebook pages to enter. Entries must be submitted by 11:59PM on Friday, August 26th to be eligible.

Good luck!

Today’s society is extremely litigious. Lawsuits are filed every day over seemingly unimportant things, and many of them are indeed spurious. A defendant must still pay to defend a groundless lawsuit, however, and the cost can be enough to bankrupt even the most prosperous. Dentists belong to a handful of professions that are extremely prone to lawsuits. If an unhappy patient decides a cavity was not filled correctly or that he or she experienced too much pain, a lawsuit may be the result.

A dentist malpractice insurance policy will protect a dentist from all lawsuits that allege professional negligence. A dentist who is covered by a policy will not have to pay to defend a lawsuit; nor will he or she have to pay any damages that may be awarded if the plaintiff should happen to be victorious. The only out-of-pocket expenses the dentist will have to pay are the cost of the policy and the deductible.

Many different companies offer dental malpractice insurance, and the policies vary widely in coverage and price. Both claims-made and occurrence policies are available. A claims-made policy will cover any claim made during the time the dentist was covered by the policy. An occurrence policy will cover claims whenever they are reported as long as the incident leading to the claim happened during the policy period. Claims-made policies are more common and tend to be less expensive. Dentists can also purchase prior acts coverage, which will provide coverage for acts which occurred before the policy went into effect.

The cost of a policy varies widely depending on geographic location, how many years of experience the policyholder has, the selected deductible, the coverage limits the policyholder chooses and prior claims history. Students and new graduates usually pay lower rates, as many companies will give large discounts for the first few years in order to get their business. A lower deductible and a higher coverage limit will increase premiums. Dentists who have had to file claims in the past will also have to pay more for coverage.

A dentist in the middle of his or her career can expect to pay a few thousand dollars a year for a dental malpractice policy with more than a million dollars of coverage. The price is a bargain compared to the cost of defending a lawsuit and paying for claims. All dentists should purchase a policy to protect themselves and their loved ones.

Sponsored Post:
This is a sponsored post. Dental Heroes was compensated for publishing this post. Please note that we do not accept sponsored posts without properly vetting advertisers and only consider those that are highly relevant to the dental professional.

One of the biggest challenges facing our industry is a lack of education when it comes to selling. By nature, dentists are analytical, and we typically haven’t been in a position where we needed to sell our services. But you may want to consider a strategy to sell bigger cases. The biggest point to remember is that most patients require a fair amount of education.

Unless you have killer marketing, your new patients have probably been referred to you by recommendation but really don’t know what you can do for them. The more people know or understand about their condition, the better positioned they are to buy. The only limiting factor will be their budget, and you usually will not know what it is. When people make major purchases they generally have a good idea of what they are buying and how much it will cost. This means they are qualified to make their purchase. To qualify your patient you need to pre-screen them.

The Qualification Process

Qualification begins with your marketing. This starts with printed material provided in your website, newsletters, reception and treatment rooms. Next there is the dialog that always occurs in the form of discussions or stories you and your staff tell your patients. Lastly there is the discussion on the phone with the patient as they schedule the consultation. Your staffer in charge of this duty needs to spend time creating rapport, educating and throwing hints of possible fees. As you can see, this staffer has an important role and needs to have a vast understanding of the problems, procedures and fees. Don’t leave this to the first person to answer the phone. Train someone for this role. Have your receptionist refer the call to this key person.

Managing Expectations

Qualification even continues when the patient presents for their consultation. Take the patient into your consultation room and begin with some active listening. Engage them with questions that help you get a grip on the history of their concern and what they might already know about potential treatment options. If you know approximately what the fee might be, then throw out some hints that help frame the patient’s expectation. Use comparisons such as ‘it can cost as much as a new car or room full of furniture’ or anything else you think the patient may relate to. The key is that when you are ready to give the patient the actual fee they should not be shocked or surprised.

Practice Makes Perfect

This is a delicate process that needs to be nurtured and practiced. The patient may tell you early on that they know it will be expensive even before they know what the treatment will be. You can respond by agreeing and framing by giving an example. Always leave the patient with some options to suit their budget. Allow them to bow out gracefully. Don’t avoid discussion of cost. The more often you bring it into the discussion the less sensitive the patient will be when they hear the actual fee. Any major concerns that you hear from the patient will clue you into the level of qualification that the patient has. For instance, when they frequently mention dental insurance you know that they will be dependent upon it. This may actually disqualify the patient. Any disqualification is permission for you to throw out some estimated fees to check their reaction. Ask them if this will pose a problem. If it does, then you can quickly shift gears to a different plan and re-qualify them.

The Bottom Line

Qualification is the key to ensuring your marketing efforts continue to be cost-effective by generating long-term, happy customers.

Your Thoughts

How do you qualify your patients. Give some specific examples if you can in a comment below.

Social media is here and whether you are utilizing social media in your practice/business or not, your employees are! It would be great if you could depend on posts being all positive and upbeat, but we know that’s not reality.

You know Social Media and implications it can presents to the practice/business . You know the importance of having some type of Social Media Policy in place for your practice/business, but… what areas need to be addressed?

The top 9 areas to address in your Social Media Policy:

1. Policy Statement: This is a generalized statement about participating in social media. Tie it in with your Office Manual and Personal Conduct. Also address/acknowledge what’s done on their time is their business, however certain activities at work or outside work that could affect job performance, theirs or another employee, or the practice/business interests are a proper focus for a practice/business policy.

2. Definitions: Reference the Social Media Channels and Social Media Networks you are referring to in your policy. Ex. Blogs, micro-blogs, social networks, social bookmarking, sharing platforms, etc. Also reference how these might be address. Ex. Internet, mobile, text, email, etc. Also reference the Social Media Account Ex. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Blogs, and any other Social Media Channel.

3. Objectives: Establish and include guidelines that employees adhere to and why you are initiating the Social Media Policy.

4. Guiding Principals: Address how you expect employees to use social media at work and outside work. Who can “speak” on behalf of the practice/business. What can and cannot be discussed while at work or on their own time. Assure online activities don’t interfere with job requirements or commitment to patients/clients.

5. Respectfulness: Interaction online at work or on their time, always careful of what’s posted. Ex. Don’t say/post anything you wouldn’t want seen on the front page of the local newspaper or your Grandmother to read!

6. Disclosure and Transparency: Social media is all about trust and building relationships. Be aware of what you are posting, be honest, and disclose your true identity. Transparency and Authenticity (open and genuine ) are the two key elements in Social Media.

7. Privacy: Address you, the Employers, right to privacy and Employees right to privacy. As such employers and employees have the right to keep personal opinions, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions private and employees are prohibited from violating another employee or their employers right to privacy.

8. Confidentiality: Effectively managing and protecting confidential information is critical. Failure to manage and protect confidential information correctly and what that could result in. ALSO Employees can disagree but external blogs or other online social media channels are not to be used to air employee disagreements. **Note: Again, be careful of what’s posted. It’s going to be on the social networks for a long time. If in doubt, don’t post it!

9. Penalties: Failure to Comply with these Social Media Policies may result in: List what could happen if an employee does not comply. They could include: Warnings, No longer have access to certain information, Disciplinary action, up to and including termination, even Civil or criminal penalties as provided by law (depending on the situation).

Once printed, make copies for each employee. Then have a staff meeting introducing and going over the social media policies of the office. Then have each employee sign that they understand and have received a copy.

This is not an all inclusive list nor do all of these have to be addressed. Your practice/business will determine how involved you need to be with your social media policy.
However, whether your practice/business is actually using social media should not be the determining factor for whether or not you need a social media policy. The fact that your employees ARE using social media makes having your social media policies in place…critical!

If you have your social media policies in place, what area’s did you address not listed here?

***NOTE: This is not meant to be legal advice and I am not an attorney.

Your Thoughts

What, if anything, would you add to Livvie’s list? Have you experienced any negative effects as a result of failing to address any of these areas?

Inspire Sense of Want or Need

Although businesses are trying to veer away from the idea of appealing to the emotions of their target market, the fact still remains that an ad campaign which strikes the heartstrings of prospective customers really do work. Creativity may be important but it is only secondary. Effective ads are those which inspire a sense of want or need within those in the target audience. Being able to do just this will make any ad campaign extremely convincing securing businesses of ROI. But moreover, being able to launch such kind of campaign will not just help with the sales but also with establishing your brand.

Be Consistent

The trickiest part of advertising is that the job is never done. After you launch a successful campaign that does not mean that you and the rest of the company or organization can call it day. When customers and potential customers are exposed to the same marketing strategy and ad for an extended period of time, they will begin to lose interest in the entire campaign and the ad’s effectiveness will slowly wane. That is exactly the reason why corporations feel the need to reinvent themselves again and again. This is to continue to exact and retain brand loyalty.

Choose Campaign Strategy Wisely

So how can businesses create a good ad campaign? There are three methods of doing so – single benefit, characterization and narrative. All of these strategies have the potential of working as long as they are used appropriately. The single benefit methodology links a product or service with one advantage that consumers cannot find from its rivals. For instance, a dental clinic which offers spa services along with the standard dental procedures can include this fact in their ad campaign. Characterization centers on a person who talks about how he or she found the product or service extremely helpful. Finally, narrative method involves the evolution of a story starting from the problem to its resolution. Regardless of what strategy a business decides to utilize, it is important for target customers to relate to the campaign. For instance, the dental clinic in the example above might play off their busy patients’ desires to relax while have important dental procedures done on them at the same time.

Final Thoughts

Advertising campaigns might help but sometimes they are not enough to seal the deal. Complement ads with marketing and sales promotions to really entice your existing and potential customers to make a purchase.

Communication may not seem that important to a dentist whose work day is filled with countless appointments, but it is a big deal for patients. The difference between having a loyal patient and losing said patient may rest on good communication.

Although the first factors that a patient may consider when choosing a dentist is their competence and cost of services, the secondary aspect that they consider is the overall experience of working with that dentist. Naturally, all dentists who have established a stable practice are considered competent enough. At the same time, competition among dentists has been quite rigid so their price ranges may not differ substantially. So what tips the scale is often the dentist’s ability to establish rapport with his or her patients which comes with good communication skills.

There are so many opportunities for a dentist to start communicating with a patient and one must take advantage of all these chances.

Before the Visit

If you think about it, the first time that a dentist will be able to talk to a patient is way before the patient even steps into the dental clinic or even meets the dentist face-to-face. Dentists communicate to potential patients with the help of their marketing efforts. For this reason, marketing efforts should be designed so that patients feel that the dentist isn’t just reaching out to them because they are seen as customers but because the dentist really intends to take good care of their teeth.

Taking Records

The next time that the dentist communicates with the patient is when he or she actually steps into the dental clinic and the front office personnel goes on to take his records. As an extension of the dentist, front office personnel should know the rationale for why they must collect specific information from their patients. Not only will patients feel a lot better about answering questions when they know why the information is relevant to their treatment but they’ll also develop confidence in the clinic.

Examination

The dentist will finally see the patient face-to-face while doing exams. Most of the time, dentists talk in code because then it’s easier for the assistant to chart the results down. But you also have the patient inside the room and it’s crucial that he or she knows the current state of his or her teeth. So make sure to use language that the patient will understand. At the same time, if you find something distressing after the patient’s exam, make sure to inject a bit of emotion in your conversation using phrases like “I’m concerned” or “I’m afraid”. This will make your patient understand the severity of the problem and feel more comfortable at the same time. Lastly, take pictures and show them to the patient so that he or she knows exactly what you’re referring to with the help of images.

Your Thoughts

Please share your patient communications tips in a comment below.

In my last post, A Well-Trained Dental Manager is Priceless I discussed the importance of providing a training program for your dental office manager. In this post, I’ll discuss my specific approach for doing just that.

My Approach to Training

Dr. Charles Smith, founder of HealthPark Dentistry, and I have used this training program over the past 15 years to take a bright, positive, new hire secretary and develop them into a knowledgeable, confident dental office manager. This training program is structured into levels of achievement: level 1 – Basics of the dental secretary position, level 2 – Working confidently as a dental secretary, level 3 – Move to Treatment Coordinator, level 4/5 – Team Leader role, level 6/7 – Marketing & Business Management. There are 2 sides to each level – the professional track and the general track. The professional track contains tasks specifically related to dental secretary work, for example, how to deal with dental insurance or handle a financial arrangement. The general track includes tasks regarding coaching on handling conflict, overall computer skills that everyone must know or books to read and apply the concepts. Each level contains about 25 tasks – some tasks must be completed in the office and others should be done on the office manager’s personal time.

Once a new secretary is hired, the dentist can offer this career development opportunity. In exchange for her investing 2-3 hours/week of her personal time (far less than attending a community college class) the dentist will invest time to meet with her as she completes the required tasks. In these meetings, the dentist and secretary will review the tasks she has completed, clarify any questions and confirm they are meeting the dentist’s standards. When a level is completed – and the secretary has now proven responsible for a significant amount of new tasks and is already accomplishing them – then she receives a raise. She then starts to work on her next level.

Benefits to this approach

- The dentist knows exactly what the office manager is doing and has been trained to do.
- The dentist spends time working with staff who are developing their career and contributing to the practice, rather than to the people who are causing trouble in the practice.
- The office manager knows exactly what is required to achieve a pay increase.
- The practice improves because the OM is focused on accomplishing the goals that benefit the office.
- The dentist feels confident that he is giving raises that have truly been earned.
- The OM gets used to learning from and meeting with the dentist in order to improve the practice – this sets a precedent for a long term professional relationship.

Let’s Look at an Example Application

To give an example of how the training works for a specific task, let’s take a look at Level 1 Task #18 – Understands & Uses the Telephone Professionally. This task starts with the concept that the telephone is a tool that can be used in a professional manner that will increase the new patient lifeblood in a practice and therefore although many people take telephone skills for granted, it is key to slow down and think about how we use a telephone as a dental secretary. It also describes phone etiquette including phrases to use and not to use. It also includes a section on the practice philosophy – how we handle emergencies, what the scheduling options are for new patients, how we want vendors handled, etc. It even includes a couple sample conversations to read how to handle a ‘dental shopper’ who asks for the price of a cap and what to say to a patient calling to cancel their appointment at the last minute. This task ends with 52 telephone questions that the secretary must write what they would say (not what they would do).

To complete this task, the secretary reads through all the task material (20 pages) on her personal time. She spends about ½ hour in the office with a more senior staff person to discuss the practice philosophy. (I recommend that the dentist review this section first to customize the material to his practice style and approach.) Then, back at home, she write down her answers to the telephone questions. If there is a senior secretary in the practice, this person can review her answers and meet to discuss which ones she got wrong and how the dentist prefers these calls handled. Otherwise, this would involve a meeting with the dentist. Again, at home, she would re-write any wrong answers and then have a final meeting with either the senior secretary or dentist to finalize that this task is completed.

Jay Gaier of The Scheduling Institute has created an entire consulting organization around the concept of using the telephone as a professional tool. His courses and coaching cost in the $10k range depending on the personalization of coaching you prefer. His brilliant marketing approach for dentists is to simply call your office pretending to be a potential new patient – and then he records your secretary handling this call. He then mails you a CD so you can hear your secretary and the pretend patient – and you can hear for yourself the telephone skills your secretary possesses. By requiring that all new hire secretaries must complete the task on Understands and Uses the Telephone Professionally, before they start answering the phone – you are raising your chances that new and existing patients will be handled correctly right from the start.

Using this one example, you can see how this training program would work. The secretary will be reading and working on her tasks and when she has 6-8 tasks she feels are ready to be ‘signed off’ by the dentist, she requests a meeting. Generally this training meeting would last ½ hour and can take place during a cancellation or hole in the schedule. By the end of this meeting, the secretary will have completed some tasks to the satisfaction of the dentist and perhaps be re-working a few tasks as well. The dentist should document this training meeting in the secretary’s employee file – keeping track of the tasks completed and still to accomplish. This becomes a record of the career development for this employee. Eventually as the secretary completes level 1 and a raise is given, this also is documented in the employee file.

Your Thoughts

What do you think about the training program Jill and Dr. Smith have developed?

What if your office manager had the ability to help you manage your practice? Imagine that she could confidently and correctly handle the variety of business decisions that occur throughout your practice – from handling upset patients to making financial arrangements, to running the practice’s marketing budget and even helping negotiate new technology purchases? On top of saving you time so you can be focusing on your clinical care, what if you had an intelligent, well-trained office manager who could implement your ideas and help you to accomplish your goals – moving forward to create the practice you want to have, but never seem to have enough time to make the necessary changes?

Invest in Training

All this and more is what you can gain for your practice when you invest in training your dental office manager. Most of the office managers I know feel that they want to do their very best for their dentist. They see the many demands on the dentist and appreciate their job – but they don’t know what to do. They don’t know how to get the training they need so they can be a real asset to their dentist. We have a perfect opportunity – a dentist that could really use some business management help and an office manager that is enthusiastic to step up.

Now, all we need is the training!

Benefits of Investing in a Training Program

There are many benefits to investing in a training plan for your office manager:

- The dentist knows exactly what the office manager is doing and has been trained to do.

-The dentist spends time working with staff who are developing their career and contributing to the practice, rather than to the people who are causing trouble in the practice.

-The office manager knows exactly what is required in her job.

- The practice improves because the OM is focused on accomplishing the goals that benefit the office.
The dentist feels confident that he is managing his staff well.

-The OM gets used to learning from and meeting with the dentist in order to improve the practice – this sets a precedent for a long term professional relationship.

Thanks to the dentist investing his time in training – the secretary is now receiving positive reinforcement to develop her skills. She is motivated and enthusiastic about the opportunity to really help the practice. She sees firsthand that the dentist is responsible for setting the philosophy and standards for the practice in enough detail so that she can carry out the tasks. The dentist appreciates the personal time invested in learning to improve the practice – and he receives positive feedback for taking his time to clarify his expectations and guidelines in the practice. Now, we have accomplished the opposite of a ‘vicious circle’ – perhaps we could call it a “happy spiral”?

Start With the Basics

The training program should start with the basics and advance to tasks on hiring other staff, managing marketing programs, tracking statistics, etc. As the secretary and dentist continue to work together – the office manager is transforming into a real business manager. She eventually will bring ideas and programs to the meetings that the dentist never considered. She will begin to read dental journals and participate in online forums and learn about dentistry outside the walls of the practice. That will lead to even more new ideas and opportunities – and if the dentist likes the new idea the office manager presents, he already has the person in place to implement! This also takes the stress off the dentist as he feels he has another intelligent, caring person who he can bounce ideas off of and together they can start to become partners that share the burden of running the practice.

As dentistry changes, we need business professionals in practices that can successfully manage the office. These office managers play a major role in reducing overhead, evaluating dental insurance plans and managing the fast-changing world of marketing. The office manager position becomes full of variety and challenge – and makes a difference in the lives of not just the dentist and staff, but also the patients and the community. A successful dental practice serves a vital role in the community – and the well-trained dental office manager is at the heart of this practice.

What’s Next?

In part II, Jill will discuss her approach to dental office manager training and provide helpful tips for implementing a dental office manager training program within your practice.

Your Thoughts

Do you have an office manager? Does your company offer office manger training? What benefits of having a dental office manger are you seeing in your practice?

The Dismissal w/Dignity Agreement

This is an agreement between an employer and employee that spells out a “healthy” arrangement to assist both parties in parting ways. It is truly a humane and respectful way to treat an outgoing employee and also resolves many issues that will often cause employer angst when it comes to having to dismiss a team member. It is truly a win/win for both parties and sends a poignant message to existing team members and patients alike.

Create Open & Honest environment for Meeting

It’s about meeting with the employee in question and sharing your feelings regarding the termination of their employment and honestly verbalizing your feelings openly and honestly and you can both be victorious is the separation process. You will find that every fear that is referenced in the article entitled Uncovering the Myths of “Fallout” from Dental Employee Dismissal can be put to rest with this approach. As with everything else, be totally prepared to sit down with the employee in question and have all of your ducks in a row including a prepared document to spell out the agreement.

Tell Employee What’s In It For Them

Let them know that you appreciate the fact that they have been trying to meet their mark and that you respect the effort they have tried to put forth, but that it is probably best for both of you to move on. Always start with “what’s in it for them” since you will find you get all of their attention when you focus on the pluses for them right from the get-go this is the best place to start. I can promise you that they will not argue the point and be most compliant. Let them know that you will NOT send them out in the cold, but rather give them time off (within reason) to pursue other job opportunities. You will also respect their position and make sure to let the existing team and patients know that this was a mutual decision to separate and move on to better both of you.

Propose a Tradeoff

What you will offer them is the opportunity to go out and take face to face interviews and possible Skill Assessment Days (working interviews) that will be designated based on tenure within your practice, this time frame is for you to determine. They will be paid for this time away from the practice to pursue other opportunities in exchange to help you to integrate their replacement. They will agree to help to coach them in, share their job descriptions and make the transition a smooth one. It will be the employer to decide if the changeover takes 2, 3 or 4 weeks to complete based on length of employment from the current employee. This process sends a wonderful message to your team since you are giving the outgoing employee every opportunity to find new employment and also gives them the comfort to say good-bye to patients they know. They will also be much more cooperative when it comes to helping with the crossover from the old employee to the new.

This has proven to be a very humane way to make the shift and it sends a wonderful message to incoming, outgoing, current employees and patients alike. Of course there are support materials to assist in the process to safeguard proper communication with the protocol.

Your Thoughts

Do you employ similar tactics when dismissing an employee in your practice? Would this approach work with your employees?

First off, I must state at the onset of this article that any employee that has participated in any illegal activities such as embezzlement or theft, or has contributed to wrong-doings that will clearly be detrimental to you or your practice must be immediately dismissed.

Fear of Fallout is Normal

The following protocol is one that would apply to situations where you (and most probably your team as well) were aware that a particular team member is just not appropriate for your practice and yet you hold onto them for fear of “fallout”. You continue to observe behavior affirming that she/he is not a fit for your practice, yet reluctantly accommodate it and stress over it, even lose sleep over it, but turn the other cheek and just plod on day after day.

After a while many of you will actually show your frustrations to the team member in question, other team members, your spouse and family, and sometimes even your patients. How healthy is this for you and even for the employee in question as well? Do you think they are not aware of this? Many employees will hang on, dealing with their own fears and concerns and interestingly have their own unhealthy reasons to stay.

Often Fear is the Result of Misconceptions

Fallout myths are common fears and misconceptions that many dentists ruminate about so often that they steer away from dismissal to avoid their perceived challenges. The fear of moving the process forward is the result of many preconceived outcomes that many employers try to avoid:

• “If I let Suzie go, the other team members will be so upset that they will “leave in sympathy”.
• “I can’t do that to Suzie knowing she will be sent out in the cold with no job”.
• Patients will leave my practice if Suzie isn’t here.
• “Maybe Suzie is the best out there and once I search for her replacement I will find no one any better”.
• “No one really knows what Suzie does except for Suzie, so how can I let her go”?

You will know it’s time when you have followed proper procedures to assist the employee with additional coaching and training as necessary and they just don’t seem to be able or willing to come around. You have spoken with them and documented these warnings and conversations along with their signature recording the fact that these areas have been properly addressed, and yet they never did meet the requirements necessary to keep them.

Dismissal With Dignity

When you know you have clearly attempted to do all you could, it is time for everyone to move on and time to engage in an Employer/Employee Dismissal Co-agreement or what I call “Dismissal with Dignity”.

Stay Tuned for Part II

Stay tuned for part II tomorrow to learn more about exactly how you can dismiss an employee with dignity.

Mark Wilhelm, DMD MSD

There are many cosmetic dentists who believe that diagnosing a patient must begin with a close examination of test results and x-rays.

It Starts with “Hello”

With over 20 years of experience to call upon, I beg to differ. While many situations will require clinical research, you might be surprised at how much it’s possible to tell from your first “Hello” with a patient.

Simple Case Study

I recently had a patient visit me to get a second opinion. She was 63 years old and had a lot of dentistry already completed. She had an issue with her front teeth. At a previous provider she was told that she needed a full-mouth reconstruction and went into the details as to what was proposed. After listening I asked her these five basic questions regarding function:

1. Are you able to chew bagels or other tough foods?
2. Are you able to chew gum?
3. Do you sleep restfully?
4. Do you feel as though you have one bite when you close (or more than one place to bite)?
5. Have you noticed any wear, flattening or changes in your teeth in the last five years?

These weren’t trick questions but rather basic ones that could give me any evidence of functional concerns or breakdown. From the five questions I asked her and from what I could see from my position in the consult room, my opinion was that she did not need a lot of dentistry.

Now note that I had not even moved from my seat and already had a good idea of what, if any, problems she had. She brought copies of x-rays and I did eventually get a clinical look at her teeth, but the bottom line is that I did not need an articulator or the study casts that she brought with her. How could I do this? It’s simple. She was 63 years old and told me that she was able to chew and eat just fine, did not have any pain and did not exhibit any appreciable clinical wear on her teeth. This all meant that her chewing system was working fine. It didn’t need fixing! Next I was able to address her needs with her front teeth. Simple treatment for a trusting patient.

This diagnosis began at hello and concluded with an investigation. After she agreed to proceed, I could use the study casts to do the diagnostic wax-up and coordinate it with facial measurements to plan the treatment and the provisional restorations. But my determination that her occlusion was functioning acceptably meant that I did not need to change her bite.

Take a different patient referred by his family dentist because he had a problem with his front teeth. He was also in his sixties and he thought that he just needed to have some crowns on his front teeth and he would be on his way. Well, at our first “hello” I determined that his occlusion was not functioning acceptably and after asking some questions and looking at his mouth I confirmed this. His problem with his front teeth developed because he had a problem in his occlusion with his back teeth. He did need a full-mouth reconstruction, or close to it.

Please note that these are significant conclusions confidently made without an articulator or study casts or anything other than experience and careful observation. Treatment, on the other hand, requires instrumentation and the knowledge that goes with using it. Knowing when to use what will mean the difference between success and failure, and will potentially save you from doing a lot of unnecessary dentistry and still possibly succumbing to failure.

Your Thoughts

What do you think? Can you reliably make an initial diagnosis pre-examination as Dr. Wilhelm suggests?

The attitude and overall feeling of a client can be greatly influenced by the attitude and enthusiasm shown by a dentist or member of the dental team. These qualities are contagious and can lead to much more enjoyable dental experience. After all, there aren’t too many people who really look forward to or feel passionate about a visit to their dentist!

Enthusiasm is Contagious

However, if when they do visit they are met by an enthusiastic team, lead by a dentist who shows passion and pride in what they do, it is more than likely they will be swept along and adopt the very same levels of enthusiasm.

In our practice we feel that the solution is to not bombard all of our clients by telling them constantly how passionate we are, but to demonstrate it each and every day so that it is obvious and almost a pre-requisite for those that visit our website or call into our practice. This is achieved by building a team that cares about the services they offer, a team that is genuine in how they feel about their work and a team that takes pride in helping each and every client. Many clients tell us that this is something that they feel from the moment they first walk in.

Don’t Try to Fake It

Above all, we know that our clients are not stupid and are capable of seeing through any false actions or any of our team pretending to be something that they are not. We speak to all clients using natural language and let our passion for what we do come through naturally – we know that this is something that is impossible to fake.
If passion and enthusiasm is there, it will be impossible for others to not notice it and pick up on it. It will come through in how clients are treated, how the whole team cares for the needs of each and every client and most of all, when they talk about your business. If it isn’t there, it won’t matter how many times you or your team say otherwise, it can’t be faked.

Evaluate Your Passion Level

Now is the time to evaluate your passion and enthusiasm, as well as your teams for the services you provide and for what you do. Go through the pain of asking what your clients think, this will provide actionable feedback you can use to ensure that they next time they visit, they will be leaving feeling as enthusiastic about your business as you and your team are!

If you already have a good practice, going to the next level is challenging. Delightful, but challenging. Why? Because you wouldn’t have a good practice if you weren’t doing a lot of things right. So, give yourself permission to pat yourself on the back for work well done. “That which is rewarded is repeated,” according to Dr. Michael LeBoeuf. And then, take a hard look at what you can do better.

Take the time to Analyze

Take a look—a hard, honest look at each and every one of your systems and ask yourself, “What are we doing well?” Do more of that! Then ask yourself the really difficult question, “How can we do this better?” That’s the most important question for dental practices today! Certainly, the time to sit back on your laurels is not now!

Take your good practices and make them great. One of the most dangerous things you can do is become complacent. As we come out from under tumultuous economic times, now, more than ever, we need to focus on constant improvement.

Take into consideration both the pros and the cons of issues that are impacting the industry today. Take a good hard look at your practice and make supreme effort to go back to the basics—the things that put you where you are now—and be diligent about making each aspect of your practice even better.

For example: No matter how well you think you customer service may be in your practice, I would suggest that it could be even better. As a team, review the internal promotion/customer service protocols you are performing that add to the health and well-being of your practice and which enhance your patient’s experience with you. Then, together, decide on three new things that you can add to your customer service protocols. Set your goals for these protocols and then design a plan of action for each of the three new protocols/services. Next, put the plans into action. Continually review the results to assure their effectiveness and success. Then, add to the services—on a regular and continual basis. Do this with each of your systems.

The 25 Management Systems

There are 25 management systems in your practice. Those systems are:

1. Attitude and Expectations / Mission Statement / Goal Setting
2. Communication Skills
3. Scheduling / Broken Appointments / Filling Voids
4. Morning Huddles / Team Meetings
5. Patient Financing
6. Insurance System
7. Full Use of Computers
8. Overhead Control / Fee Analysis
9. Payables
10. Monitors
11. Accounts Receivable Control / Statements / Collection
12. New Patient Experience
13. Treatment Planning
14. Consultations / Case Presentations
15. Patient Education
16. Clinical Efficiency
17. Charting System
18. Hygiene Retention
19. Periodontal Program
20. Marketing / Practice Building
21. Telephone Skills
22. Sterilization / Infection Control
23. Inventory Control
24. Follow Up on Treatment Diagnosed and Left Untreated
25. Intra Oral Camera System

We have never been in a practice where these systems are as good as they can be! Without question, we’ve been in some excellent practices where many things are working very well, but we’ve not seen perfection to date! If you improve each of the 25 systems by 1%, that will make a 25% difference for you – a positive difference. Taking a highly productive practice and making a positive 25% difference is very significant!

On the other hand, if you do not feel that any of your systems are as clean, or smooth flowing, as they should be, then you have a lot of work to do, but you also have a tremendous opportunity. Growth for you will be boundless!

Step back. Humble yourself. Look at your practice with wide-open eyes. Commit to making every aspect of it better. Not only will you be more productive, but you will also be more profitable, and you will obtain control of the stress that is caused by systems that are not working succinctly.

Try This Exercise

Refine each of your management systems. Find ways to make each system a bit better. This may be a good time to have your practice evaluated by a management professional. A third-party set of eyes is effective when determining where your practice can be improved. Coaches are appropriate for everyone who is interested in continuous improvement.

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Running a successful dental practice can be sophisticated at best and frustrating at worst. The constant dilemma of a dentist is how to have new patients and keep old ones. Naturally, patients would flock to a good dental clinic. By good, the clinic should have a warm and friendly atmosphere, not make patients unreasonably wait and value patient relationships. Although it might seem difficult to work on these three points, there are six simple things that a dentist can do to address these key issues.

Warm Greetings

Patients love to feel welcomed. Having someone artistically write a greeting on an office whiteboard with the patient’s first name is an easy way to make a patient feel special.

Introducing the Staff

It is important that the patients get to know the staff a bit. If they are to see and talk to them whenever they are visiting the dentist, then it is only proper for the staff and the patients to bond a bit. This can easily be accomplished by putting up personal pictures of the staff, and even of the dentist, on an office corkboard. This works as a great conversation piece.

Warm Environment

The dentist and the staff should always send positive vibes to the patient and work towards achieving a warm environment during every visit. Friendly body language will help in this department. Smiling and being interested when patients talk will always do the trick. To highlight the necessity of following this tip, patients who feel uncomfortable with a hygienist or the dentist himself will most likely not schedule a second appointment.

Listen

Patients go to the dentist because they are hurting or uncomfortable. It is necessary for dentists and the staff to listen to them intently when they talk about what’s wrong or else they will get the feeling that the dentist does not care about their pain. An easy way to look interested when listening is to establish eye contact.

Be On Time

Everybody is busy. For that reason, most patients will be ticked if their dentist makes them wait up to an hour. The only way to avoid this situation is to be on time. Go to the dental clinic early and avoid long lunches.

Keep in Touch

There are times when a patient won’t book appointments for months, or even years, at a time. Either they do not have serious dental concerns or maybe they are contemplating the idea of switching dentists. To prevent the latter from happening, always keep in touch with your patients. You can do this by sending newsletters whether in print or by email or if by sending out small gifts.

Your Thoughts

What would you add to this list?

Deb Roberge

I have frequently been asked by dentists to provide them with an ad I’ve used for a clinical dental assistant position or for a hygienist or business administrator. When I’m asked I always respond with “I have many I have constructed over the years, but they were not for your practice, with your specific dynamics, practice culture, or practice style.” It is a known fact that no two practices are alike, so how can we possibly expect that generic verbiage will work for different practice requirements?

6 Great Tips

Here are some suggestions to “personalize” your advertising to narrow your field and attract the best qualified candidates for your practice:

Communicate Practice Standard of Care/Specific Style of Practice

1. Give as much information up front regarding your particular practice standard of care and your specific style of practice.

Examples:
- “Our hygienists treat our patients for a minimum of one hour.”
- “Our clinical team is encouraged to handle all hands-on treatment that is permitted by the board in our state.”

Never List Perks

2. Never list “perks” or any extras. You will find that the majority of the responses to your ad are more interested in what they are going to “get” rather than what your practice is all about or what they are willing to contribute.

Never Mention Salary

3. Never mention salary offerings. You should have a salary “range” in mind, but never determine what the individual will be eligible for until you see them in action.

Communicate Welcoming Attitude

4. Whenever possible, make mention of the fact that the team will be “welcoming” a new incoming team member. Often job candidates are reluctant to respond to an ad thinking that the team will NOT accept the new incoming employee. Making mention of the fact that they will be welcomed makes a huge difference.

Create the Ad with Your Team

5. Try to create the ad with the entire team whenever possible, having them participate in the process really helps them to feel a part of things and be more likely to help with the integration of the new team member.

Always Utilize Skill Assessments

6. Never hire without a Skill Assessment Day(s). What is a Skill Assessment? It is a structured well disciplined way of evaluating a perspective hire. Guidelines on this process to be discussed in future articles.

Please get into the habit of hiring slowly and dismissing rapidly! The longer you take to evaluate the new incoming team members and slowly integrate them (properly) into your practice, the better off you will be.

So please take the time to craft an ad that is specifically designed for your practice, culture and goals and follow it up with a well structured hiring protocol. Taking your time and paying attention on the front end will assure you of hiring the right person, slowly guiding them into the group with a purpose and making sure you continue to appreciate having them on board will give you great long-term paybacks!

Your Tips

Do you have additional tips for advertising an open position within your practice? What has worked especially well for you in the past?

9 Reasons You Need Digital Case Presentation

1. Increase in patient trust. Seeing the photographs and detailed information in language the patient can understand gives the patient reason to trust you.

2. 83% of human learning takes place visually. In order to effectively educate your patients, get your message across and help them see the benefits of treatment, digital case presentation answers this strong need for visual learning and understanding.

3. Build a greater rapport with the patient. The patient will feel more connected to you because it will be evident you listened to his or her needs.

4. Eliminate buyer remorse. Patients will show the presentation to other influencers who will support the decision made.

5. Increase in new patient flow. Because patients are sharing the presentation with friends and families, more people will become aware of you and ask for your name.

6. Show the patient what he/she could look like with cosmetic dentistry. This helps the patient to visualize how their overall appearance will improve.

7. Increase in case acceptance. Patients become enthusiastic when shown ph9 Reaotos and information that they can grasp. The result from the increased trust and rapport results in increased case acceptance.

8. Motivate the team. Teams like to be challenged and add to their skill set. This is an opportunity to spread their wings beyond their everyday duties. The result is an energized team which results in energized case presentation.

9. Help the patient to “sell” the dentistry to the spouse when the spouse cannot be present at the consultation. It is always ideal to have the spouse, or any other decision maker, present at the presentation of findings. However, this is not always possible. The digital case presentation recreates the consultation as best as possible, making it easier for them to understand the treatment plan.

Your Thoughts

How do you incorporate digital products into case presentation in your practice? What has converted the best?

Mydent International Supports Autism Speaks

HAUPPAUGE, NY: April 12, 2011 — Mydent International is pleased to announce its ongoing support of Autism Speaks, the nation’s largest and most effective autism science and advocacy organization. Autism Speaks is dedicated to funding global biomedical research into the causes, prevention, treatments and cure for autism.

With autism rates estimated as high as 1 in 91 children, Mydent feels compelled to take action. As a result, a portion of the profits from every DEFEND product sold will
go to Autism Speaks, with a $10,000 minimum annual commitment. Gary Mahr, Mydent’s Director of Operations, said: “As the parent of an autistic child, it is particularly gratifying to me that Mydent has chosen to support an outstanding organization such as Autism Speaks. It’s nice to know that a percentage of what we do every day is going to help improve the lives of people like my daughter.”

Mydent is proud to play a small part in helping Autism Speaks to change the future for all who struggle with autism spectrum disorders. We urge you to learn more at www.autismspeaks.org.

Mydent International is dedicated to fully maintaining its brand promise: “To provide the healthcare professional with the highest quality infection control products,
disposables, preventatives and impression material systems at affordable prices, supported by superior service and 100% Customer Satisfaction.” DEFEND. Works Better. Lasts Longer. Costs Less. For more information on Mydent International and the DEFEND brand of products, call 800-275-0020, or visit www.defend.com.

Enter the Dental Heroes/Mydent Giveaway

defend

To enter to win these great products, simply follow @dentalheroes on Twitter and “like” Mydent on Facebook. When you’ve done both, let me know in a comment under this post. A winner will be picked at random on Friday, May 20, 2011. The announcement will be posted right here on DentalHeroes.com. Stay tuned, and good luck!

To win a free year’s supply along with a $200 gift card, you simply need to “Like” Aquafresh on Facebook. Additionally, for each friend who registers, you’ll be granted an additional chance to win.

Aquafresh will also be giving away six weekly prizes of all three varieties of Aquafresh iso-active toothpaste as well.

Like Aquafresh Now

Once upon a time, dental care consisted of little more than a bottle of whiskey and a strong man holding a pair of pliers. Modern people enjoy much more effective (and less painful) dental services. In the near future, new technology will likely change the types of services that you receive, perhaps even before you get your next filling.

Regional Dental Labs Take Prominence

Newer technology makes it easier for dental labs to afford the equipment that they need to create bridges, crowns and implants. Even as recent as the early 2000s, most dentists had to make impressions of their patients’ teeth, send them to a lab, and wait for the lab to make the products needed. Bridges, crowns, and implants were usually made by hand and it could take weeks. Meanwhile, the patient suffered with missing and broken teeth.

Half a decade later, many dentists found that they no longer had to wait for weeks to get their dental implants back from national laboratories. Instead, they could use smaller labs located closer to them. Regional laboratories can work more quickly than large facilities. They can also provide better services to dentists. As regional dental labs take prominence over national and international facilities, patients can get their crowns and replacement teeth faster.

Less Expensive, More Accurate Equipment

Regional labs will become increasingly popular because dental equipment continues to become less expensive and more accurate. Engineers have already made machines that can make perfect recreations of teeth. Instead of making these items by hand, technicians just need to operate the machine. This makes it faster and easier for labs to create dental prostheses.

In fact, dental equipment could become so inexpensive that dentist offices choose to purchase their own laboratories. This will make the process even faster. Since dentists will no longer have to outsource the work to other labs, in the long run, this advancement could also mean lower dental care costs for patients that need prostheses.

Smaller Labs with 3D Technology

Computer-assisted equipment made to create dental prostheses were first introduced in 1980. At the time, though, they had serious limitations that made them difficult to use. Thankfully, during the early 2000s, technological advances made it easier for dental technicians to use computers with 3D rendering software to make prostheses in small labs. Instead of relying on an entire lab full of experts, the dentist can hire a single lab technician or dental assistant to make the dental prostheses for her patients. That’s great news for patients dreading weeks of toothless living.

No one knows exactly what the future holds for dentistry. Perhaps someone will develop a way to prevent pain without causing side effects such as loss of consciousness and hours of numbness. One thing is certain, though, the upcoming advancements in dental technology will make it easier for dentists to treat their patients within shorter periods of time.

They could even help patients avoid pain and high dental care costs in the future; a luxury hoped for by most anyone who has suffered through a root canal.