Oh sure, I know I risk offending people using that title. Nonetheless, isn’t it time something good comes out of all of this? Of course, you had time with your family, you got to reflect, take perhaps a much needed sabbatical, and hopefully you caught up on many things that you never get around to doing.
That was then. This is now.
I’m talking about making something good come from the shutdown, lockdown, or whatever you want to call it and from this ridiculous idea that dentistry could be classified as non-essential.
Think about this (without any bias or political persuasion, just the facts), one doctor could be deemed more vital, more worthy, or more necessary by the government than another.
Here’s the point… you are now coming back into practice with all of these restrictions and the implications from the coronavirus (both in reality and in mentality). You have to find some way to turn it into an advantage for the better, a lesson for the future, a way to make it all worth something meaningful, and a positive from all of the suffering.
So, how do we do that? Well, it is actually easier than you might think.
It begins first by remembering your core principles, what made you great in the first place, what you founded your practice on: Relationship Dentistry.
One of the original philosophies that I have been talking about for nearly two decades (long before the coronavirus) is…
If you believe every patient matters then you must make every visit count.
Over the next couples weeks, I’m going to return your focus to your deepest beliefs and most sacred principles of dentistry. You are going to see that they have fully and completely prepared you for everything you are either already or about to experience on your Practice Comeback journey.
Then we are going to expand beyond this as we move into the future. I will soon share with you – like a fortune teller – a look into the crystal ball of how Dentistry will be as we move through the rest of this year and on into the years ahead of us.
Today, we begin with the four most immediate opportunities to create the perfect transition from Virus Shutdown to Practice Comeback. These will become your ticket to not only rebounding and recovering but actually growing and achieving greater profitability and doing more meaningful dentistry than ever before.
Each of these also result in turning what could be a negative into a positive (more time for visits, more protective and safety precautions, more timid patients, whatever variables you want to insert whether you are doing them by choice or by force).
Here they are:
First and foremost, we always begin right back where we started with your commitment to treating every patient like a new patient every single time.
This time, however, it really is as though it is their first visit. Everyone has lived through the “reset” and ready to go forward into the future. It’s time to reset patients’ well being, re-establish a vision for their oral health, and develop a long term plan for their overall health.
You can even pick patients out of hygiene or out of all the patients from the past two months. You don’t have room to bring them all back all at once, so you have to be selective by whatever standards you can. Why not circle them back through as a New Patient literally on the Doctor’s side.
This applies to every type of patient and every model of practice. Embrace this with longer appointment times or fewer patients at one time and double down on this principle in order to bring it to life with every patient. You will be amazed at what will happen no matter how “optimal” you or they might feel their health already is or how long they have been in your practice. This is your most sacred responsibility.
Next up is what we talk about here all the time: comprehensive dentistry, but now not just talked about, not just diagnosed, not just treatment planned, not just presented – actually in your schedule.
More treatment at one time, less visits per patient, accelerate treatment plans, and completing your patients’ pathways to health because it’s the right thing to do by the safety standards that exist. It just so happens to also be the greatest way to create leverage for your time.
Of course, before it was always too easy to let insurance be the scapegoat for not getting the job done or letting the patients talk themselves out of it, but no more!
One of my favorite practices has taken my entire new patient experience protocols to a whole new level (which has resulted in the greatest leverage in dentistry), by adapting for a virtual presence.
Now we can use social distancing and safety precaution to our advantage by providing your patients an even better experience which results in more “A Patients” as well as significant increase in patient value and commitment.
You can add a front end virtual screening of patients by having an interview before they ever walk through the door. Instead of having them sit in their car in your parking lot for 30 minutes while you sanitize the consult room, why not just begin the patient experience virtually by asking questions, getting to know them, and building their interest in advance.
It will deliver a much more qualified patient that is more ready to accept before they’ve even opened their mouth.
And the Doctor, you, don’t even have to be involved in this part. It is my A B C’s taken to a much more powerful and sophisticated level. Of course, it doesn’t have to be for every new patient just used in a customized and situational way.
You’ve been doing virtual consults all this time, why not keep doing it in a more targeted way?
Finally, you can bring back or keep doing with less exceptions: pre-payment in advance of treatment so that you have patients ready to walk in, sit down, and go to work. You can close treatment in the operatory, take payment, get it scheduled, and away we go.
Toss insurance out of the conversation and focus on health. Patients get it now, more than ever – trust me.
Just get out of your own way by avoiding the things that sabotage your patients progress towards optimal health.
As I have been saying, now that most practices have reopened or are rapidly headed that way, it is real simple… turn every negative into a positive and turn the circumstances into an advantage. As a result, you will get to help more people get healthy than ever before.
All because you are being the victor not the victim, as the saying goes, and staying true to your principles while having fun doing it!
It doesn’t all have to be for nothing. For your patients’ sake, I sure hope you will choose to find the virus advantage.
