The real power in these patient commitments come from the fact that they are all interconnected and the better you do at one the easier it is for that next.
Here’s the circle that you make…
As you create stronger relationships by building more rapport with your patients you then increase trust with them and that leads to more personal connections.
Now that you have rapport, it’s much easier to have authentic conversations about their health, their goals, and their treatment as you go through your steps to engage them within your patient experience.
When you have rapport it’s easier to ask about their goals and to have them elaborate into what they really want, what really motivates them. Additionally, it’s easier for you to layout strongly and clearly what your standards of care are and the pillars of health you believe in.
It does get even better because the more you create that connection on the front end, the more you can engage them during the clinical case building and tie it back to their personal lives and their objectives.
So many people get stuck on the primary area of concern or whatever “brought the patient in today.” Which that’s fine because it got them in the door but with very basic listening skills and the most fundamental question asking, you can easily show them how this issue is actually linked to so many other factors of complete health.
One of the most overlooked parts of the patient experience is taking the patient to the end, as I said last week the “crystal ball” approach I use for the vision of the future and literally beginning with the end in mind for the patients’ health.
All we have to do is ask and to extrapolate about the health of their teeth or their bite or their grinding and worn dentition and all the other things no different than we can do with ortho and then cosmetics on their rehabilitated occlusion and everything else.
This “here’s where you are, let’s talk about where you want to end up…” or “now that we’ve established your current baseline for where your health is at, let’s talk about where you’re headed…”
You pick your approach based on the situation, the patient, and your practice’s clinical philosophy but just don’t over think it – by pre-judging your patients. Just be honest, ask, engage, and have a complete conversation every single time.
In fact, every single visit should be complete with past, present, future as well as a beginning, middle, and end. I often talk about the before, during, and after stages of the patient experience but it gets even more detailed than that – every single part of the patient experience has a before, during, after.
Before, during, after the clinical experience which is the front to back to front again.
Before, during, after the doctor in the room which is the triangle in and the tag team during and the triangle out.
Finally, to bring it literally full circle again, the third part I talked about last week was the ‘reality’ of the patient’s responsibility and their ‘one mouth’ they have to take care of. As well as your willingness to provide tough love whenever necessary and not let excuses get in the way of a smart decision.
If you have rapport, you are more prepared and apt to engage completely in case building, if you execute proper case building and engagement, you are in position to have authority and be able to bring the patient to complete case acceptance.
You see, they all link together. Your challenge and the part that requires discipline is found in three things that I ask you to commit to; not just in concept but most importantly in practical execution and daily practice…
Complete Conversations
Comprehensive Diagnosis
Consistent Experience
There, it’s that easy.
So, your work today and everyday is to remember to keep the main thing the main thing in order to accomplish the most important objective. That means preventing distractions, lower priorities, poor time management, rushing, being “busy,” miscommunications, or ineffective scheduling getting in the way – because you’ll be doing the very opposite of working smarter not harder.
However, when you link these three principles together and you commit to execution, patients will follow your lead, accept, invest, and go all in on treatment acceptance.
There’s a lot to talk about here with each other. Resist the temptation to read and move on or think you do it all perfectly already. It’s how do we do it all more frequently at a high level by raising our expectations in order to raise our patients. It might be common sense, the secret is to make it common practice.
