Having dental work done when you’re a dentist is a strange experience. It can be enlightening, frustrating, relaxing, or a combination of all three.

The phenomenon of dentists treating dentists is one fraught with more than a few commonalities…

4 Things That Happen When Dentists Get Dental Work

1. We Empathize More With Patients

When we’re the one in the chair, we experience dental work from the opposite perspective. We’re bound to think things like, ‘Geez, this grinding really does shake my head.’ What seems like no big deal as a dentist seems much more dramatic as a patient.

2. We Notice the Overlooked Details

Lying back gives us the chance to see the operatory from a whole new angle. We notice all the water spots on the light cover from the disinfrectant and the quality of the safety glasses. We’re sure to have these details checked in our own office as soon as we get return from the appointment.

3. We Get Super Controlling or Super Relaxed

For many dentists it is hard to just be the patient; we understand every little thing that is happening, but can’t keep track of the details when we are being worked on. With nothing else to do, our minds race as we review the procedure, how we do it, and how it is being done right now. We’ll wonder, ‘did they let the etch sit for exactly 25 seconds?’ or ‘did they scrub with the dentin adhesive for 15 seconds twice?’ We can’t help but hold our chosen clinician’s hand throughout the prep, despite vetting and trusting them beforehand.

Other dentists take the opposite approach. You don’t even want to think about what’s going on. For once, you don’t have to make the critical decisions.

4. We Experience Some Miscommunication Issues

Many of us squeeze our dental work in at lunch or other free time during the work day. We end up having to go back and talk to our patients numb. Often times, this creates the best conversations, as patient realize dentists have dentistry too!

What would you add to this list? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Making better business decisions for your dental practice comes down to four key goals: (1) doing more dentistry patients need, (2) helping patients have healthier mouths, (3) making more money and (4) stressing less.

Improving your success in any one of these areas will affect the others, which is why you should think of these various elements comprehensively rather than separately.

How to Do More Dentistry

If you feel that you’re not making enough or treating enough patients, the problem likely isn’t economic downturn. The truth is, if you have a strong system in place, external economic factors shouldn’t have a huge effect on how many patients return for basic treatments such as hygiene.

One of the most common issues practices face is the efficacy of their systems. You may be seeing plenty of patients but without a clear system for setting new appointments, you may not have a full schedule.

Retention is all about measurements. What this means is that when you track or record data, you’re more likely to pay attention to it. A great way to increase the number of hygiene appointments you have is to track how many your are scheduling and how many patients are showing up for.

Simply by measuring this information, you will be more likely to ensure appointments are made. The same goes for your staff who actually carry out scheduling and encourage patients to return. This will also help you better understand what appointment scheduling methods you should offer. Different people like to be reminded differently. Some prefer an email, some prefer a text, some prefer the date and time written on a piece of paper, and some prefer a call.

The lesson of retention illustrates a thought process that can be applied to all areas of your business. Essentially, remember that one size does not fit all and simply paying more attention can improve your success.

What do you think is the hardest part of running a dental practice? 

No matter what generation you grew up in, marketing a dental practice with social media can be a deceptively simple endeavor. What we mean is that social media, when done right, is not challenging to actually carry out. It’s not rocket science, but it does follow some rules that are easy to overlook.

Do I Really Need Social Media for My Dental Practice?

Yes, you really do. It’s not that you need a social media presence run by ten professional marketers capable of soaking up dozens of hours and tons of money. It’s that the absence of adequate social media can damage the way potential patients view you when they look you up online or are referred by a friend.

Not having a social media is odd nowadays. It’s the measure by which we as a society determine the popularity and even the viability of a business or practice.

Simple Ways to Maximize Social Media Effectiveness

Personal and professional social media should not be carried out in exactly the same way. This is the most significant issue with many dental practice’s social media accounts.

In a personal profile, it doesn’t matter if: the pictures are posted randomly, the quality is low, the info isn’t particularly useful , and the grammar is poor. That’s basically expected.

Professional social media should be the opposite. It should be curated on a regular basis with high quality imagery and equally high quality writing. Once you’ve done that, you’re on your way to social media that effectively markets your practice. It should embody the same qualities and sensibility you want patients to associate with your particular dental brand.

Your profile provides a look inside your practice that personalizes/humanizes it and encourages communication with patients. This does not mean it is a place to break down professional barriers between practice and patient.

Finally, don’t feel obligated to use every social media platform that exists. You can safely assume that the trifecta of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will cover the majority of your bases. There are pros and cons to all three. Younger generations are losing interest in Facebook, but older generations seem to love it. Instagram attracts a wide variety of ages that include millennials and younger audiences. Twitter’s shortcoming is that information circulates rapidly; one post a week isn’t enough to make much of a difference.

But like we mentioned before, you don’t necessarily have to invest heavily in social media, attempting to acquire new patients from this avenue. First and foremost, social media simply provides more easily accessible information about your practice to potential patients and should help them be more comfortable choosing you as their dentist.

What do you love or dislike about social media as a marketing tool? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Splint therapy can be one of the best services we offer our patients, but plan poorly and your headaches will greatly increase as you decrease your patient’s.

We all want to provide our best stuff for our patients, yet sometimes we can find ourselves in a quagmire of complexity and not getting reimbursed for our efforts.

Through the years I’ve seen this scenario play out in my own practice and many others because we lack structure around our fees for splint therapy. If ever there was an example of the failure of unit fees to provide appropriate care and reimbursement, the one size (fee) fits all approach in splint therapy will leave you clenching and grinding.

How to Individualize Splint Therapy Fees

To be equitable for patient and practice, fees for splint therapy must be individualized. To do this, you’ll need to have a good idea of what your production per hour goals are and utilize that as a basis for your fee.

For example, if I have an anterior deprogrammer that requires very little follow up to simply protect the dentition and calm muscle, the fee would consist of a lab fee (I charge this fee even if I make it in house), the time for insert, and the amount of time for follow up, usually one or two short appointments.

For more complex TMD therapy I like to look at it this way: take the same basic fee structure illustrated above and add time for insertion (allow yourself enough time, knowing mandibular/condylar position is likely to change as you adjust), then add for follow up appointments based on your diagnosis and complexity.

Estimating Therapeutic Time

Here are some of the factors I consider when estimating the “therapeutic time.” I’ll routinely add time and/or appointments based on whether it involves:

1) an occluso-muscle disorder

2) an intracapsular disorder

3) the amount of degenerative change in the condyle disc assembly

4) the chronic or acute nature of the problem (acute problems I feel are generally harder to manage)

5) the presence of pain, both quantitative and qualitative

6) the duration of pain and complexity of pain pattern (pain emanating from multiple sources)

7) the behavioral and psychological dynamics involved with the patient

In closing, I’d remember to under-promise and over-deliver in direct proportion to the complexity of the problem. Evaluate, diagnose, and treat wisely and you’ll achieve pain reduction and stability for both you and your patient!

How do you structure fees for splint therapy in your practice? We’d love to hear from you in the comments! 

Patient focus groups are useful for truly understanding the experience people have at your dental practice. You can go right to the source for questions you have about patient perceptions, instead of speculating based on your own point of view.  

In my last blog, I introduced the why and how of a patient focus group my wife Amy and I hosted to celebrate our practice’s 25th anniversary. The first four questions we asked invited patients to share their thoughts. Our final question was:

If you could design the perfect dental practice, what would it look like? (2 groups)

Read on to learn what the focus group taught us …

Results of the Patient Focus Group at My Dental Practice

The ensuing conversations and comments from our five main questions were uplifting and empowering for everyone on our team. We all found it quite interesting that their comments were rarely about our dentistry but rather about how we make them FEEL when they are with us. We thanked them for their participation and invited each of them to refer others who share similar values.

While the evening was considered a huge success, the impact came in subsequent waves of influence. With their permission, we proudly display the portraits and quotes throughout the office and on our website (www.huntdentistry.com). Each of these patients have become empowered to refer countless other “A” patients to us. The portraits have become a daily source of inspiration for our team and other patients – “How can I get my picture on the wall?”

The “focus group” concept really helped to reaffirm our practice mission of developing trusting relationships with as many of our patients as possible and helping them become healthier and happier through our compassionate care. We’re all looking forward to our 30-year anniversary!

How would you host a patient focus group? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Hosting a patient focus group can change the way you look at your dental practice. Most of the time, we see our practice not through the eyes of our patients, but through our own. The life of a dentist is hectic, filled with CE, family, and general work hours. At some point, we can benefit from taking the time to learn what commonalities and perceptions our best patients share.

Why I Hosted a Patient Focus Group at My Dental Practice

My wife Amy and I wanted to celebrate our 25th year in practice, so we decided to host a “focus group” of very special patients who represented a wide range of ages and experiences.

With our team’s input, we carefully selected 10 of our “A” patients (engaged, proactive, health oriented, appreciative) and invited them to an after hours reception at our office. The invitation list included some who had been patients for 20+ years, while others were relatively new. Some had completed complex restorative plans, while others had more simple needs. Their ages ranged from 26 to 85.

Questions Asked in the Focus Group Session

We greeted patients with champagne and light hors d’oeuvres. The group mingled while taking turns to have several images created by a professional portrait photographer. These portraits were gifts for the participants.

After a while, we settled in for a session facilitated by one of our “special” patients who prompted the group to think and then share their thoughts about the following questions:

·      What brought you here?

·      What keeps you coming back?

·      What does a nice smile mean to you?

·      What gives you confidence in the Hunts and their staff?

·      Are there any buts?

We rounded out the session with a final question that took a closer look at their ideal dental practice. You can read Part 2 in this series next week, where I’ll reveal the final fascinating question and the results of the focus group.

How do you think a patient focus group would benefit your dental practice? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Struggling to move your desired amount of dental work off the charts and increase your case acceptance? Usually, the issue isn’t that not enough of your patients need treatment, it’s that they have been ineffectively diagnosed or haven’t accepted procedures for a multitude of reasons.

I’m here to show you three painless methods that will get more patients to say ‘yes’ so you can provide the best care possible.

3 Case Acceptance Methods to Increase the Odds

1. Emphasize a Patient’s Wants Over Needs

Focus on helping patients want better dentistry and a more complete solution. Humans inherently spend money on their wants over their needs. Americans spend much more on alcohol, tobacco, and gambling than on dentistry. Help transform their perspective of dentistry from a necessary evil to a desirable solution. Be patient. Allow them the space to understand the consequences of inaction. At some point, they will “want” to know a solution.

2. Develop Curiosity Over Passivity

Ask about the problem and stay in the question. Many patients will begin to come to their own conclusions if we develop their curiosity. Let them co-discover and view things using the intraoral camera or hand mirror. This gives them the chance to really learn about their mouth. Telling them what you see is passive education. Helping them figure it out is more active and creates ownership. Avoid discussing solutions or talking about problems excessively unless they ask.

3. Help Patients Take Ownership

Here’s the honest truth: Patients are not aware, concerned, or interested in the long term consequences of not seeking treatment. They mistakenly believe that having no pain or dysfunction equates to health. If all we do is give them an exam, develop a treatment plan, and tell them what they need, we will fail to convey the value of a procedure to their life. We have to continue to probe by asking questions about the problem and its progression. When they recognize the ultimate untoward outcome, finally taking ownership, we know case acceptance is on the table. A telling sign is when they ask, “what can I do about that?”

How do you increase case acceptance? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!  

Our team – the people that form the basis of our dental practices – often have a few key expectations about our behavior post dental CE course. While we’re away, they flit through daydreams of the turmoil soon to inhabit their lives, wondering what fresh torment will arrive in the form of a drastic change to the way things are run.

Disrupting the status quo is fine and dandy if you understand the passion behind it, but this is not the case for most dental staff. We dentists get impassioned by our new learning and rush to implement it, forgetting our team is many steps behind us in the motivation department.

3 Things Your Team Has to Deal With After You Complete Dental CE

1. Tons of New Materials to Buy

You arrive home from a weekend of intense clinical discussions where you were surrounded by advancements in materials and technology. These ‘shiny new things’ may very well improve how you practice, but in your excitement to order them you forget to explain the ‘why’ to your staff.

Your staff now has to learn a whole new set of instructions and all new inventory control. They also have to deal with the possibility that you’ll try the materials and realize you’re not really going to use them. To you, this was useful experimentation. To them, it was a hectic couple of work weeks.

2. Changing Everything but the Kitchen Sink

Beyond the materials and tech, you also imbibed a heavy dose of alternate thought processes and clinical techniques. Your staff expects a variety of potential changes: how to answer the phone, new patient scheduling, chairside assistance, and on and on. This creates a lot of stress.

3. All Bets Are Off

Sometimes, the expectation of change is taken to the extreme. A common ‘myth’ in dentistry is that of the dentist who called and fired their entire staff from a CE course. This may or may not have actually happened and is unlikely in most cases. Still, it exemplifies the upset caused by your return. From your staff’s perspective, it’s more work and adjustments for them. If they don’t understand that these change will be better for them, patients, and the office, they see it all as another load on their shoulders.

There is a way to avoid this problem. When you complete a CE course, you should set aside time to share what you learned with your team. Share your excitement so they feel it too. Many times dentists start enforcing the implementations without an explanation. This hinders their staff’s ability to successfully apply what was learned.

As always in dentistry, come up with a system that makes your communication more effective.

How do you motivate your staff to enjoy and appreciate change? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!

Dr. Amy Hunt recalls the similarities between her biological family and her Pankey family that make her proud to return to Key Biscayne every year.

Dr. Hunt’s Take on the Pankey Family

Every summer, our extended family gathers in the coastal town of Morehead City, NC for a reunion. Our “special home base” is a relatively small cabin built by relatives in the early 1950’s. It’s perched on a large oyster bed on Calico Creek where the tides rise and fall under the house. Over the years, babies have grown up, cousins have married, some relatives have died, but we all carry our favorite memories of special times shared together on the shoals of Calico Creek.

The weekend culminates with a traditional NC barbecue feast and promises to return again next year. As is true with many meaningful events, the work is shouldered by a few of the most committed organizers in the family. We have cousins Helen, Kevin, and Richard to thank for making this tradition a reality.

As I think of these reunions I am reminded of another “family reunion” that I look forward to each year … the annual meeting of the Pankey Institute. Like my biological family, we have grown up and are now growing older together. This special group includes many of the friends and mentors who have helped shape me into the mother, wife, and dentist I am today. I love to “return home” every September. I have an opportunity to reconnect and renew friendships as well as create new ones with like-minded people.

We learn, laugh, and even dance together. The veterans pass on their wisdom to the next generation while they in turn share their unique perspective and insights. Like the reunions on Calico Creek, the safety of being with family allows us to be our most genuine selves. Please mark your calendars to “come home” to Pankey this September.

What do you love about being a part of the Pankey family? Please leave your thoughts in the comments!

One pattern I’ve noticed lately in calls with my clients is that many dentists and their teams are frustrated about training new hires. Adding a unique personality to an already cohesive group can seem like mixing oil and water at first. When a new team member is brought into your dental practice, there needs to a consistent plan in place to avoid or manage problems as they arise.

 Starting the Conversation on Training New Hires

The frustration I’ve come across is consistently based on new hires not catching on, not doing things the ‘right way,’ and not doing things as fast as dentists would like. The seasoned team members are irritated and everyone is annoyed by the amount of work it takes to train.

One of the conversations I have with my doctors is about understanding the difference between exposing a new team member to a task or philosophy and having them actually learn it in the way they are most suited to. I ask:

1. At what point would you say they’ve started to have a certain level of competency where they can do the task?
2. At what point would you say this team member has mastered what it is you want them to do?

The hope is that you bring a team member on board, they watch what’s going on, you show them a few times, and they will automatically and miraculously have a high level of mastery. But this is not the case for most people.

Pay Attention to Individual Learning Styles

There are many different learning styles that can affect how a person takes in and processes information. Some people want to read about it, some need to watch it five times, and others have more hesitation about how fast they get it.

Acknowledging different learning styles is a huge component to successful individualized training. You have to understand how different people will become effective and learn what you want them to.

3 Steps of Dental Practice New Hiring Training

I like to look at the training process as a continuum:

1. What was the first exposure and have they been exposed to how you actually want to have the task done?
2. What will it take for them to have a measurable level of competency? Is there a training checklist in place? Who is responsible for helping this team member learn?
3. What would it look like if and when they ever attain a level of mastery to the point where they could be responsible for teaching another person?

Bonus Tip: Most people really struggle with only oral types of instruction. Having things in writing and experiential learning are both helpful.

Most importantly, it’s crucial to enact the basic training continuum: exposure, competency, and mastery.

You have to have an actionable plan and you need to know who is accountable for it. If you’ve been unsuccessfully training a new team member, this process has a high level of predictable success, assuming you’ve hired well to start with.

What tasks do you find new hires struggle with the most in your dental practice? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!