Educating Dental Patients

Posted on October 26, 2011 by admin

Don’t you think if patients really knew the ramifications of oral cancer, periodontal disease, halitosis, etc. they would be more interested in keeping that 6 month appointment? Of course they would. As a practice, it is important to educate patients on these subjects.

A great way to distribute information is with a practice newsletter. A monthly newsletter with valuable information about oral health care is a great way to educate dental patients and stay in touch between the 6 month visit.  Most patients don’t hear from the dental office except to be reminded of an appointment. A newsletter is a cost efficient way to educate patients and stay in touch.

Another great way to educate dental patients about oral health care is twitter. Twitter makes it easy to educate patients on a daily basis without blowing up their email inbox. If you are not familiar with Twitter we suggest using it in your dental marketing plan. Sending messages over twitter is a great resource for dental patient education. Depending on the dental marketing strategy a practice could send out a daily dental health tip or promotion. Twitter lets you “tweet” articles found all over the internet. Tweeting is a way to directly link patients to oral healthcare articles.

With new technology comes vast new ways of educating dental patients. If a practice will use the resources available it will significantly imporve dental patient education.

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Sample- Dentist Letter to Patients: End of Year Insurance Benefits

Posted on October 26, 2011 by admin

Here is a Dentist letter to patients reminding them to use their insurance benefits before the end of the year. Letter: Enjoy!

(Office Address)
800 East Prophy Dr.
American Fork, UT 97555
(Date) October 30, 2011

 

(Patient’s Address)
427 West Sail Lane,
American Fork, Utah 97555

 

Dear Patient,

This year is coming to an end already! Our records show you have not used the maximum insurance benefits allowed by your provider. This means you are entitled to a checkup one more time before the end of the year. If you do not use this allowance by your provider it will be lost as of January 1, 2012.  Take advantage of your insurance benefits before the end of the year.

As a special courtesy to our patients with expiring insurance benefits we are currently giving first priority to those who are trying to use their insurance by the end of the year. Call us today and we will give you first priority for the openings in our schedule.

You can reach our office at 800-555-5555 or email us at scheduleme@drdoe.com

Sincerely,

Dr.

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Dental Office Manager: Creating Value In the Practice

Posted on October 25, 2011 by admin

Developing the necessary skills and attributes to perform at a high business level is imperative for any dental office manager. Here are three things a dental office manager needs for sustained success:

Honesty

Are you an honest person? This means being honest with others and yourself. Self-evaluation is the best way to continue learning and developing as an office manager. Pretending like everything is going well doesn’t do you or the office any good. You must be willing to accept your weaknesses and then work to improve those weaknesses. Honesty is the most important character trait of any business person. At some point as office manager you will have an opportunity to be dishonest and get away with it. Make the decision today that you will uphold the highest level of integrity and honesty and it will come back to you ten-fold throughout your business career. Those who try and take shortcuts ultimately fail even if they yield short-term success. There are hundreds of examples (Bernie Maddoff, Milli Vanilli, Jose Conseco, etc). I have met many business people throughout my career and the ones who find real success are the ones who decide early on in their careers to be honest.

Data Analysis

It is continually surprising how many dental practices are making business decisions based on information written on the proverbial “Sticky Note”. How can a business run without consistent and accurate data? It can’t. As an office manager you must understand how to pull the data that will tell you how the practice is performing. Practice Management Software can do much of the work for you, provided your staff knows how to use it.  If your staff is misusing the software it can create huge inaccuracies and cause the office manager to steer the practice in the wrong direction. Understand how to retrieve quality data from the software and organize it to make the best decisions for the practice. This will be the greatest value in your practice.

Do the Hard Things

Jack Welch, Once CEO of General Electric said, “If you can’t fire people you shouldn’t be in business. And if you enjoy firing people, you shouldn’t be in business either”. Countless dental practices waste time and money with staff that provides no value to the organization. Nobody likes firing people, and if you do you shouldn’t be in a management position. Getting rid of waste is vital to keeping a good work ethic and running a lean dental practice. Making a decision like this requires having accurate data so be sure you can rely on the information you have. Gossip from other staff or comments on a sticky note is not reliable information. You may have to rework some of the data in an excel spreadsheet for it to make sense. This brings up another “Hard Thing”. As an office manager you should expect to spend extra time outside of regular work hours to make things run smoothly. Spending that extra time will make all the difference in the practice.

 

www.platinumdentalutah.com

 

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Why is the Dental Recall System SO Important? Answer:

Posted on September 1, 2011 by admin

This question is asked quite often. In my years of experience in the dental industry I have worked with many practices that just use postcards to try and reactivate patients who repeatedly find themselves on a continuing care list. Let’s first examine the reason for a recall system.

1.) Patients do not always keep their commitment. If the office staff makes six month continuing care appointments before the patient leaves the practice, they are fulfilling the minimum of what should be expected in a recall program.

2). Many patients do not want to schedule before they leave the office. These patients almost always land on a recall list. Why? Because most practices just send a postcard after six months and leave it up to the patients to call and schedule an appointment. Some practices use recall letters to reactivate patients but the net result is the same; this relies on the patient to call and schedule. This is why a proactive approach to recall is much more effective. Making phone calls is the best way to get patients to schedule.

Now let’s examine the day-to-day activities of the office staff. Obviously this varies with the size of the practice but let’s look at this through the goggles of the average dental practice.

1). Front office staff is required to do greet patients, file insurance claims, internet marketing, pay bills, manage inventory, etc. etc. etc. At what point in the day will the staff have time to sit down and make phone calls? Some practices choose to employ a specific person whose singular responsibility is to make telephone recalls. How effective is this? The costs of hiring, training, payroll, payroll taxes, vacation, maternity leave, management, etc. etc. make this an absurd and unnecessary cost.

2). What measure of accountability does an “in-house” recall system have? Almost none. I have seen practices who require their scheduling coordinator to report on “how things are going” (an ambiguous request at best) but I have never come across a practice who has an efficient and productive recall system with monthly reporting which details and accounts for everything done by their “in-house” recall specialist.

Platinum Recall’s effective dental recall system makes it easy for a dental practice to focus on the vital aspects of their practice without getting bogged down with the time-consuming and often unproductive task of recall.

 

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