Is Your Clinical Team Setting the Stage for Case Acceptance?

 


By Susan Kulakowski, Director of Dental Practice Acceptance

Encourage your clinical team to set the stage for case acceptance through “third party selling.”

 

Your Clinical Team Can Improve Dental Case AcceptanceThe sun rises and sets on great clinical assistants who are three steps ahead of the doctor, always properly set up and never leaving the treatment room for a forgotten instrument or material.  And revered is the hygienist who the patients just love and whose clinical skills are excellent.  However, are they helping you sell dental treatment?

 

Encourage and develop your team members to be both competent and confident educators and co-diagnosticians. When you do, they will be better able set the stage for greater treatment acceptance by:

 

  Pointing out unscheduled dental needs.

 

2   Taking it upon themselves to educate and prompt patients.

 

3   Advocating for optimal oral health.

 

4   Developing relationships of trust with each patient.

 

5   Learning about and discussing obstacles to treatment.

 

6   Answering questions in a way that makes patients more comfortable with treatment.

 

Encourage and develop your team members to be great communicators. Only when they are great communicators involved in direct patient education and promoting dentistry will your practice case acceptance move towards optimum.  Dental coaches provide powerful workshops for dental teams to encourage and develop best communication practices.

 

Dentists need to be leaders of their team and to constantly be noticing and encouraging improved behaviors. Use your morning huddle to:

 

  Pin point patients with diagnosed unscheduled treatment.

 

2   Make sure at least one team member taking it upon themselves to touch base with each patient regarding their unscheduled needs.

 

3   Make sure the baton is being passed between a clinical team member and a business team member to do their part in ensuring the patient’s needs are not over looked and the next appointment is scheduled.

 

4   Work together to create and monitor your system to stay in communication and follow up if the patient leaves the practice without scheduling. Don’t allow the patient’s chart to be filed away and wait for the patient to return in six months or two years. Work together as a true team to prevent patients from “falling through the cracks. ”  

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