Don't overlook your blindspots
by Stephanie Sisk
Great dentists might have great technical skills, but if the dental team — from the top on down — doesn’t have good communication skills, the whole practice will suffer.
Often a busy staff won’t realize how patients perceive their visit. But patients internalize many aspects of their visit: whether or not they were greeted, the tone of voice of the staffer who explains insurance rules, and even whether the interplay among staff members is positive or strained.
These and many more factors make up “blind spots” in a practice, said Sandy Pardue, director of the Louisiana-based consulting firm Classic Practice Resources. She explored challenges to today’s practices in a two-part course during the 2012 Midwinter Meeting called, “Accelerate Your Practice.”
Two categories for practice “blind spots” are telephone miscues and recall issues, Ms. Pardue said. Too often, telephone calls go unanswered or callers end up in a message bank rather than reaching a live person. A staffer’s poor verbal skills or a poor phone script spelling out rules and restrictions (rather than laying out the welcome mat) sabotage the practice, she said.
Dentists also tend to inactivate patients too soon, Ms. Pardue said. Without a solid recall system in place, practices have patients just “falling through the cracks,” even though hundreds of patients are due for visits.
Practices with top-notch communication abilities will see increased loyalty, trust and treatment plan acceptance, Ms. Pardue said.
“When practices communicate on a patient’s level of understanding and they learn the true patient objectives, they have higher case acceptance,” she said. “Patients don’t know what we know about dentistry. We have to tell them what will happen if they don’t get the needed dentistry.”
A key component in dentistry is developing patient relationships, Ms. Pardue said, because patients have so many choices when it comes to choosing a dentist. “If everyone on the team works toward making each patient experience positive, the practice will benefit greatly,” she said.
A few tips she offers include building a staff with a happy and positive attitude, sending personal notes and seasonal cards to patients, having a dental team that knows the “Top 50 VIP” patients by name, and having a “predictable protocol” in the office to ensure visits and treatments proceed smoothly.
Ms. Sisk is a freelance writer.