4. Monthly Call Content
- Sam Bain (Unlicensed)
Appointment Book setup
Trigger: Beginning of the monthly calls, poorly configured appointment book, random appointment book times available most commonly during the night and weekends
Discussion: The appointment book needs to be configured correctly so that we may understand where the gaps in their appointment books are. This impacts the chair time utilisation configures, average hourly rates. It's common to see times from midnight to 7-8 am open by mistake as it's not visible. Initiate apt book training
Cover KPI tracker
Trigger: Start of the monthly calls, new team member joining the calls
Discussion: KPI tracker is data sources from MPC to help us understand what is happening month to month at the practice, we try and compare this information month to month or again the same period last year. Inside of the report we'll track high level KPI's we feel each practice should monitor to base their performance on. Comparing the practice to industry averages and being able to improve the metrics alongside the customer journey.
Chair Time Utilisation
Trigger: Beginning of monthly calls, low chair time utilisation (72% is average)
Discussion: With dentistry being a fixed cost business, an increase in utilization on top of what you're doing now is additional revenue for you. And we can do this without needing to work extra hours if we simply utilize the hours we already have available to work. Chair time utilisation looks at the time you make yourself available comparing it to the time actually spent with patients.
Request previous 12 months revenue
Trigger: Beginning of monthly calls, lack of previous years financial information
Discussion: Being able to track the practices revenue growth compared to the previous year will be able to show what an impact the change and working with a Customer Success Consultant is having on the business. We're often unable to convert financial information so we need to request this from the practice directly. Net invoices is usually the most accurate for what we're tracking.
Best practice recalls - confirm setup
Trigger: Beginning of monthly calls, low recall effectiveness, addition of hygienist (to make sure it's sending hygienist recalls),
Discussion: Ensure the practice has configured our best practice recommendation for following up with patients who are due to come in. Confirm why we contact patients in the method that is setup and the value it will bring in ensuring they minimise lapsed patients and improve recall effectiveness.
Best practice reminders - Confirm setup
Trigger: Beginning of monthly calls, high FTAs, High short notice cancelations, discussing pre-boking recalls
Discussion: Starting reminders from 3 weeks prior to an appointment being able to catch potential short notice cancelations and failed to attends early on, this also assists with getting patients to commit to pre-booking their 6 month recalls. Ensuring we're asking the patient to confirm a week out, allowing follow ups on those who have not confirmed. If the patient is unable to attend, by following up a week prior giving the team much more time to find another suitable space and to refill the short notice space. An appointment reminder 2 days before is not enough.
Check outstanding patient debt from conversion
Trigger: Beginning of monthly calls, high amount of patient debt
Discussion: Ensure the patient balances carried over are accurate and to do a manual check of the balances to ensure there isn't anything going unfollowed up. Ensuring the practice has an appropriate debt follow up procedure.
Portal / upgrades in future
Trigger: Beginning of monthly calls, running a version that is older than 6 months
Discussion: Portal includes all of our new releases and feature updates as they become available.
Discuss correct use of workflow
Trigger:
Discussion: Retain patients for further recalls and planned treatment by ensuring that they always have future appointments booked. To achieve optimum recall effectiveness we must pre-book patients for their next recall appointment and ensure we have all of their available contact methods collected. The language used by both the provider and reception team should be directed with this in mind.
Pre-booking recalls / planned treatment
Trigger:
Discussion: The most effective way to improve recalls effectiveness and to ensure patients return to the practice is to ensure they always leave with their next appointment. This is a crucial stage of the journey – sets the tone for everything that happens next, but the conversion needs to initiate in the surgery from the dentist.
Language being used on departure
Trigger: Low workflow compliance %, wanting to pre-book more recalls, arranging team meetings and huddles
Discussion: The language used on a patients departure can have a huge impact on the level of acceptance. Here are some good tips:"OK [patient name], the dentist has said that we need to see you again in 6 months' time for your routine exam and clean, would you prefer a morning or afternoon appointment?"
"To ensure we book the best time for your next appointment, we'd like to arrange that for you now."
Being confident and assumptive.
If the dentist is able to, a 'warm handover', where the dentist comes through to reception to reiterate the required treatment or recall.
Remind the patient they will receive appointment reminders nearer the time via email and SMS, and you would be happy to reschedule nearer the time.
SOE events - Webinar / BIS
Trigger:
Discussion: SOE hold events all over Australia and New Zealand called Business Insight Seminars which talk about a particular subject, last year it was "Using your data to improve your practice performance" and this years is "Putting the Patient Experience at the Heart of Your Practice". This contributes to your CPD hours. https://softwareofexcellence.com/au/events
Care Manager - Outstanding treatments
Trigger: Low/improve hourly earnings, too many recalls, treatment blend improvement, filling white space
Discussion: Care Manager will store every treatment plan that is created by the clinicians in the surgery, this means the valuable conversations happening regarding treatment options are not forgotten about. Typically speaking dentists prefer to complete restorative treatment compared to exams and cleans as it is more engaging and a side benefit of being of higher value. Care Manager should be a rolling list of patients to follow up on their treatment plans, the practice should aim to follow up within X amount of time for each patient.
Team meetings / morning huddles
Trigger: Improving workflow processes, when implementing new activities, improving the 'Whats in it for me?'
Discussion: Morning huddle; daily morning meetings that set the tone of each day, keep your team motivated and clarify objectives and strategies. A morning huddle is a quick look forward to the day ahead and review of yesterday, with the entire staff present. MPC dashboard is great as an information share. A few topics: White space for today, what went well, new patients coming in today, FTAs yesterday, weekly targets, something learnt.
Short notice list
Trigger: High FTAs, high Short Notice Cancellations, high chair time utilisation
Discussion: Dental Practices frequently lose revenue to patient cancellations, the short notice list allows the practice to move appointments from the future to ensure the chair time utilisation is as high as it can be. For patients who are booking between 1-4 weeks ahead ask them if they'd be interested in coming in for an appointment sooner should one come up, these patients can be added to this list. You may also opt to include your FTA's into this list.
Failed To Attend (FTA) follow-ups
Trigger: High FTA %
Discussion: Ensure the practice are actively dealing with their failed to attend patients. Follow up 10 minutes into the appointment if they have not heard from them, leave a message if no contact. 24 hours after contact the patient again, or write to them explaining the practice FTA policy. FTA appointments can be automatically added to the short notice list so they may be followed up with and offered another appointment. Some practices would request a deposit after a FTA appointment.
Recap recalls
Trigger: low recall effectiveness, low pre-booking rates on workflow, 3-6 months since go live
Discussion:
Acquiring new patients
Trigger: Low new patient numbers (below 18 per FTE dentist), adding extra dentist, patient growth numbers, negative nett patient numbers
Discussion: New patients are vital to a practice's health for a number of reasons; they replace natural attrition caused by death, relocation or lack of motivation and breathe new life into a practice. New patients also typically have restorative requirements; they have often neglected their oral care for a number of years and are likely to have more complex needs than patients who attend regularly. - Revamping website - Easy to find on search engines - Ask for referrals, or reward referrals - Tracking referrals - Being active on social media - Monitor conversion ratio of enquiries to new patient numbers, it's important to have a follow-up strategy. This won't result in a new patient every time, but it will allow you to assess where the barriers exist and where your acquisition strategy may be stalling.
Online Bookings / Online presence
Trigger: Unanswered telephone calls, WOM referrals discussion,
Discussion:
Review website / social media / SEO
Trigger: Poor online presence, lack of online reviews, unable to find practice on google, low new patient numbers
Discussion: For most practices WOM referrals are one of the biggest sources for new patients, the next would be the practices online presence through their website, google or several review websites and it continuously growing. Getting visibility online is a profession in itself and is often recommended to seek professionals to assist with Search Engine Optimisation.
Number of google searches
Trigger: Discussion around online booking, improving SEO and online presence
Discussion: Being able to show the practice the number of searches for dentist in their local suburb can be eye opening for someone who may not have seen that information before. Google analytics can give insights. Including the practice website hits and being able to track where their website traffic is originating, this overlaps with the practice improving their SEO with their web provider.
New patient referrals
Trigger: High new patient numbers
Discussion: Word of mouth referrals are the biggest source of new patients for most practices. Ensuring that we encourage patients to speak about the practices to their friends and family will help the practice grow. New patient referral schemes and rewards to encourage patients to talk. Google, facebook, whitecoat and other review websites for online referrals.
Oral Health Surveys
Trigger: Has Clinipad, Marketing manager module can make use of this
Discussion: Always make time to review the oral health survey. Ensure your dentists are comfortable explaining the options… Education, not selling! Start with an informal chat, then review the OHS, then build the treatment plan. Follow up with more information via an email, using videos if possible.
Recap Care Manager
Trigger: 3-4 since last Care Manager discussion,
Discussion: Ensure that using Care Manager is a consistent process that is being run one the practice, not allowing the outstanding treatment to sit in there for too long without a customer interaction.
Online Reviews
Trigger:
Discussion: You ask them and make it easy. Nowadays, people are asked for feedback after nearly every interaction – staying in a hotel, buying online, using an app on their phone. The expect and welcome it. This question should start off being in person as it shows you care about their patient experience.
Appointment follow-ups
Trigger:
Discussion: After discussion treatment options with the dentist, patients will spend time searching their options on google. At this point they might come across an enticing offer for their treatment plan. Patient marketing can be used to follow up on patient treatments Care Manager is another useful tool to follow up on outstanding treatment but requires this to be done manually. Ensure different channels of communication are used, different patients respond differently.
Patient journey and expectation
Trigger:
Discussion: Good service has always lead to loyalty and referrals, but in the last decade there has been a distinct shift in customer power. Opinion can go viral in minutes – and force change. Customers expect choice, running on time, being able to access everything from their phone, engagement, all of the options, instant responses, being able to book today for today.
Upgraded in last 6 months
Trigger: Six month since install, long time since upgrade
Discussion: Keep up to date with Exact's latest releases and functionality. We invest heavily in our development of features (and bug fixes), and as part of their support with us gives them access to update the software upon every release. The practice can keep up to date with any of our recent changes on our portal blog posts
https://portal.softwareofexcellence.com/ - Will need to enter their practice ID
Lapsed patients
Trigger: Dropping of nett patients, high level of failed recalls post 24+ months
Discussion: Having a reactivation process for patients who have not attended the practice between 2-4 years is crucial to a practice as part of their patient retention. This can be done as a one off process, which will be successful but is not consistent or done as a regular process using our patient marketing suite. This will contact the patients as they fall into the lapsed patient phase of their patient life cycle and will contact them with pre-determined templates. We will also see our return rates of these patients in the form of a dashboard with each campaign that is run in Patient Marketing.
Patient marketing
Trigger: Want general communications, follow up on treatment plans, promotions or patient care follow ups
Discussion: To consistently communicate with your existing patient base using the patient marketing suite will allow the practice to run a variety of campaigns to meet the needs of the practice.
We have a list of common campaigns that practices can setup almost straight away.
- Select the campaigns you wish to run based on the practice need
- Choose any back-up points if required
- Confirm what services patients will be booked in for
- Assist you with the launch of any one-off campaigns and choose a start date
- Launch your automated campaigns
Webinar registration
Trigger:
Discussion: We hold a series of webinar on various subjects and one of those being patient marketing. You may register and see upcoming events on our website, the timings are spread throughout the day https://softwareofexcellence.com/au/events
Possible hygienist/therapist
Trigger: Increase hourly earnings, high chair time utilisation
Discussion: When a clinician would like to focus on building up their practice to a large size or is interested in doing more restorative or cosmetic word a hygienist to work alongside a dentist can be beneficial to take the weight off doing the hygiene part of a patients recall, leaving more time for the dentist to focus on other areas of dentistry they may be interested in.
Using OLB for treatment follow ups
Trigger: OLB discussion, lots of outstanding treatment but little time
Discussion: The follow up tab at the bottom of the appointment book has many patients to ensure that we don't forget. When working through Care Manager you can go to the Follow Up tab and add patients to this list to allow you to send an OLB link to them. This is great for a time save of just being able to send them a SMS or email to follow up rather than a telephone call. In the future Care Manager will have some extra functionality to make this easier
Forward Cover at the right level
Trigger: Chair Time utilisation 90+, a lot of bookings into blocks
Discussion: It's important that the utilisation is booked at the right level for each clinican. Generally speaking, you want your next three weeks to be mostly full, at 6 weeks about 50% full. If you are 90% booked at 6 weeks, there are too many recalls, you cannot schedule restorations and high value work, emergencies and other new patients. If you are only 50% full at three weeks, this create pressure to fill gaps, no short notice cancellation management, there may be unused time when the day comes around.
Going paperless
Trigger: Digital forms, medical history
Discussion: Clinipad Electronic Forms & Signatures will allow you to become a truly paperless dental practice. Clinipad removes the need for paper-forms in your dental practice, freeing up valuable storage space and reducing your administration. It allows your patients to electronically complete and sign Patient Details, Medical History, Oral Health Survey and Estimate forms onsite at your practice, through an iPad.
The functionality is integrated, with signed forms easily accessible for future reference as PDF's on the patient file.
The Automated Recalls function also enables you to completely automate patient communications via text, email and post – with letters sent via a third party – and an online booking module that allows patients to book at a time that suits them.
With 47% of online bookings made out of hours, Online Booking gives your patients the option to book their next appointment with the click of a button, at any time. Keeping you in control, you have full management of your diary with the ability to select which appointments to make publically available.
Setting Team Targets
Trigger: Morning huddles, performance reviews, lack of motivation or change from the practice, wanting to implement certain processes, motivation and leadership skills
Discussion:
Boost employee engagement – Ensure every member of the team understands their role in the business strategies
Transparency – everyone has their own responsibilities, but they know the rest of the team is working alongside them to achieve the same objective.
Motivation – Keep the team in the loop of wider goals means people understand the value of the work outside of their own tasks they are undertaking.
Collaboration – wrapping everyone's goals into a team goal means one person's success is everyone's success.
You must also make sure that your team understands, accepts and commits to those goals. The more you can involve your team in setting goals for themselves and the group, the more committed to those goals they are likely to be.
Patient journey and expectation
Trigger: Not collecting mobile and email, my patients are older, know my patients best
Discussion: Millennials largest generation on the planet and will make up 75% of the workforce by 2025. They are a growing sector of your patient base, AND they are highly demanding and impatient. They don't just look at the company website before buying, they visit their Facebook, google reviews and anywhere else you may be listed. It's so easy to share bad experiences nowadays. Large companies employ entire teams to monitor SM and respond to negative messages before they escalate. 90% of millennials shop online, 46% rely on social media when buying and 55% will share a bad experience.
Patient journey and expectation
Trigger: Not collecting mobile and email, my patients are older, know my patients best
Discussion: Baby Boomers – These are people both in the early 40s to the mid 1960's. 82% of them belong to at least one social media site, normally Facebook. They spend an average of 27 hours online per weeks, which is two hours more than most under 35s (They have the time!). roughly 50% have a smartphone, 40% will have a tablet. Patient experience includes the aspects of health care delivery that patients value highly, such as getting timely appointments, easy access to information, excellent treatment, and good communication with health care providers.
No change in practice outcomes by month (Months 4-8 roughly)
Trigger: KPIs no getting better, graphs are pointing downward
Discussion: refer the client back to the why that they provided you within their Kick off Call and the start of the Customer Success Program. We need to advise the practice that your purpose is to ensure that the practice is working towards their goals, we also have our own target of wanting to help them achieve a growth in practice revenue. The KPIs we go through together are specifically designed to work towards the common areas of the practice that need to be closely monitored to help work towards this.
Try to identify if they are finding barriers within their practice, whether it be members of staff, lack of knowledge on their own short fallings. We need to identify the areas of the practice that are falling short and show the practice the pain. The easiest way to do this is to show the revenue impact of certain KPIs. Value of unbooked treatments / recalls, revenue opportunity Dashboard in MPC is also good for identifying issues in their appointment book.
Extract KPI tracker data from Exact (no MPC)
Trigger: Wants to populate KPI tracker without MPC, end of program without MPC
Discussion: We would normally recommend the practice take on MPC as they provide lots of informational dashboards to give feedback on practice performance. However if the practice cannot commit to purchasing MPC we have prepared a document to help the practice extract the KPI tracker document. We can email this directly to the practice as well as a blank copy of the tracker. The KPI tracker has been built specifically for our needs, it is probably best they identify which KPIs the practice would find benefit from tracking and building their own; we can help with putting that together.
MPC reports difference from Exact
Trigger: Practice questions why there is difference in reports, MPC full
Discussion: Some of the financial reports will display different data compared to what Exact may provide. The most commonly questioned is the allocated payments report (Exact) Vs Associates Report (MPC). The Associates Report is based on the date of the allocation in Exact, any payment allocation and any adjustment is reported in the month it is made. Allocated Payments report will make the allocation on the date that the invoice was raised.
Treatment to options information
Trigger: Low treatment acceptance, large outstanding treatment amount, higher value work, increase hourly earnings
Discussion: Being able to track and communicate with patients regarding the treatment options that you have given them can be time consuming, resource intensive and requires quite a lot of detail. Care Manager does cover a lot of the business tools required to follow up on outstanding treatment and with V13 allows the practice to send emails and SMS regarding the patients treatment plan. This requires the practice to have team members actively following up on these, and some treatment options should be followed up with the patient quickly post treatment.
When options are discussed in surgery with the dentist it can be overwhelming for the patient, they leave the appointment with the information provided by the dentist, they will naturally want to do their own research too. Find out the benefits, costs etc. Naturally this will bring up adverts / information for other practices who may offer the same service, offering discounts and same day crowns.
Using patient marketing tools built into Exact we can communicate with patients within a specific timeframe regarding certain types of treatment that have been discussed to ensure we're following up with the patient in a timely manner, these should be personable and give the patient the options available to them. An example of this would be post extraction sending the patient some information on the options that are available to help fill their gap in their mouth. Hygiene clean to whitening, introducing other services based on items that the patient has come in for.
Patient portal / Patient experience
Trigger: wanting to go paperless, not much time on front desk, clinipad or online booking practices
Discussion: The patient portal offers patients a fast and easy check-in and allows them to view and provide information from anywhere, at any time. This will reduce in-practice wait times and allow for a more personal patient experience once they do arrive. This includes a patient portal where they can review treatment plans and complete tasks at any time, a self-check in service as well as form filling prior to arriving for their appointment. This works alongside clinipad for those patients who do not fill in their forms prior to arriving at the practice.
Recall lag
Trigger: Not pre-booking recalls, workflow not being used, low recall success, high historic book (not completed) rate
Discussion: Recall Lag is a measure of how much the dates of completed appointments have been made later than the original patient recall due date. This is a lost opportunity cost to the practice which means the practice much have more patients within their database to keep themselves busy. An example of this would be that if a patient came in every 7 months instead of every 6 months, over the course of 3 years you lose one visit from the patient. You would need roughly 10% more patients to fill that gap that is created. Overall we know that for any business it is much more difficult to acquire new patients than it is to retain existing. There is an overview of the recall lag within the Opportunity dashboard to show the missed opportunity to the practice.
No changes in workflow
Trigger: Workflow numbers dropping or staying the same, introduction of team meetings or huddles
Discussion: When there is no improves in the workflow we need to make sure that the practice understands the importance of the impact that the workflow will be having on many areas of their business. These are action points that capture vital information for some easy wins at the practice.Building in a culture of the patient always leaving with their next appointment, both planned treatment (for those who need it) and recalls for treatment completed patients. Someone is much more likely to keep an appointment that they pre-booked and will need to call to cancel, rather than them leaving without it and calling back to book it back in. Ensure you have a good reminder and confirmation process to ensure they arrive too. Collecting mobile numbers and email addresses, if these aren't collected how will the practice remind their patients about their appointment or send them a communication to bring them back for those who don't. Asking for an email address is one of the biggest responses on a no a practice will receive and the team need to know how to ask for it effectively.Payments are self-explanatory, but debt amounts should be monitored to ensure that payments are taken.
Can also give responsibility back to staff with them generating the workflow report on a Friday for example, highlighting the ones they missed to action calls to patients the following Monday. This can be discussed/reports back to PM/Owner on a weekly/fortnightly basis. This can teach the staff member to take responsibility and monitor their own performance.
Behavioural changes for the practice – Assumptive closing
Trigger: Struggling to pre-book recalls/treatment or collecting contact details, high cancellation rates, calling patients to book recalls or treatment options
Discussion: The conversation style that the reception team have with patients hugely influences the response that a patient will provide. The simplest technique to use is something called an assumptive close. This is where you still give the patient a choice and a sense of empowerment by allowing them to choose, but both of the answers are towards your desired outcome."As Dr Xxx discussed, we need to book you a further appointment for a xxx. Which day tends to suit you best? Morning or afternoon? Early or late?" here we are using three questions, along with assumptive questions."We need to see you again in 6 months' time, would you prefer a morning or afternoon appointment?" etc.Be sure to use language that the practice is confirmable using and use colleagues in the practice to conduct some role plays to get the language feeling natural. It may take a little while to get used to.
Behavioural changes for the practice – remove the word cancelled
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Discussion:
Team member incentives Trigger:
Discussion:
Automatic FTA follow ups
Trigger: Dealing with fail to attend, high level of FTA
Discussion: A practice needs to define their FTA policy with their patients, if the practice is finding that they are struggling to keep their FTA rate down this may need to be reviewed. This process has the option to be completely automated in Exact to ensure that these are communicated with appropriately to ensure that the opportunity is not missed. This communication should be fairly formal1 day after the patient FTA;s their appointment an automatic letter is sent to the patient informing that they have FTA and to contact to the practice to find another suitable appointment.If there is 2 FTA appointments within a year window a letter is sent to advise the patient of the practice policy around FTA and that they may be asked to pre-pay for their next appointment or will be declined to book.
Automatic debt follow ups
Trigger: Dealing with high levels of debt, payments not collected on departure
Discussion: Patient debt can be a big problem to keep on top of for a lot of practices, being able to ensure patients are communicated with appropriately regarding their outstanding amounts is important step in keeping cash flow where it should be based on the work that is completed. Especially as most dentists are paid on collection, not work completed. Exact can automate this practice based on patients with an outstanding amount and no future appointment booked.
1st communication sent to the patient when they have had an outstanding amount for 14 days with no future appointment.
2nd communication is sent to them when they reach 60 days advising that their details will be passed onto a 3rd party if they do not receive a communication from the patient within 7 days of the letter being received.
3rd communication will be to advise that they have now passed the details on a debt collection agency.These communications should be completed as letters to keep the process formal. Emails have a too low of an open rate to be effective and an SMS is too short to convey the appropriate message and may feel informal.
iCalendar for booked appointments
Trigger: High cancellation rate, encouraging up take of pre-booking of recalls
Discussion: With the number of patients starting to pre-book an appointment increasing this can have a negative impact on the cancellations that the practice may experience as people have schedules that change and not able to commit to an appointment that they booked 6 months ago.
iCalendar and appointment confirmations are a function that mean that the patient will also have the appointment in their own personal calendar, tie this in with the appointment reminders that you send to patients will give the patient more opportunity a head of time to move their appointment to another time.These are stop the cancellations, but rather move them to happen earlier than that at last minute, the first appointment reminder should be sent 3 weeks prior to the patients appointment, giving the practice 3 weeks to reschedule the appointment if needed.
Including letters in Best Practice Appointment reminders
Trigger: A lot of patients without mobile or email addresses, high FTA rate, older patient demographic
Discussion: For practices that have a low number of patients with a mobile number or an email address on the patients file should include an automatic letter to be sent to the patient 2-3 weeks prior to their appointment to confirm and remind the patient of their upcoming appointment, this should also ask the patient to confirm whether they will be attending by asking the patient to call the practice and confirm and to advise the patient if they provide their mobile number and email address next time this can be done through that method instead.
Setting targets within MPC
Trigger: Tracking KPIs, setting goals for the practice, working towards a revenue growth based on previous years of revenue (20%)
Discussion: MPC has the function to be able to setup their own targets so that the practice may have a goal they are working towards. Start by click on the MPC button in the top left once logged in, scroll down to the practice setup button, click on financial target management, you may need to set the financial year start, then you may set monthly targets for the practice revenue (Just use the private revenue field). This will now display when show the client the revenue tracker dashboard by adding a blue line along with the others. Having this visual allows the practice to easily see how they are performing instead of just looking at numbers in the KPI tracker.
Creating lists of patients with no recall dates set. How to run the recall advance tool
Trigger: Recall parameters set incorrectly, poor conversion from previous software, previous software did not collect recalls well, finding patients being missed from recall communications
Discussion: We have a tool that can generate the recall dates that may be missing from patients files. We can also run a list to see how many peoples do not currently have a recall date set and give the opportunity to set one for the practice using the recall advance tool. To create the list:Admin > Contact list > Create list > Select patients > +1 to create a new query with: !worddavd985b203e9771ebb4eab633bd1155021.png|height=103,width=489!When you run this, it will give you an idea of patients that have visited within 3 years but without a recall set, you may need to change this to include hygienist recalls if appropriate. We can then arrange for the support desk to run the recall advance tool to give those missed patients a recall date. There may be some patients who have do not recall set included in this list, their recall will not be updated unless requested.
Payment plans information on the website – may even be paid for by Zip or Partpay
Trigger:
Discussion: https://resources.zip.co/1/integration/plugins
MPC Dashboard with the practice
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Discussion:
Ethical Dentistry
Trigger:
Discussion: There are five fundamental principles that form the foundation of the ADA Code: patient autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, justice and veracity. Although ethics and the law are closely related, they are not the same. Ethical obligations may and often do exceed legal duties. Prescribe for yourself as a dentist Prescribe as if the treatment was free. What would you truly recommend to the patient if cost was no option to them?
Reception can influence patient decisions
Trigger: Team meetings, huddles,
Discussion: The conversation style that the reception team have with patients hugely influences the response that a patient will provide. There is a handful of impactful ways to help with the decisions that are given form the patient. Starting with the title that the patient sees the reception team as and refer to them as patient advisors or front office coordinators. The reception team should be trained and have ongoing reinforcement for customer service skills (Recommend Canity for self-learning) which should be an ongoing development for the team.When booking appointments, don't ask for permission (they will say no) but firmly steer the patient with options. "Patient X, do you have any days that do not work for you?" "Do you prefer morning or afternoons?" "Which of option A and B suit you best?"
Overcoming objections
Trigger: Customer service, development of the reception team
Discussion: Use feel, felt , found - "I understand how you feel patient X. Some of our clients have felt exactly the same way, and what we have found is..." (e.g.: that "they have been delighted that they made the decision to come and see Dr. X) Further Information - "Is there any information I can give you that will help you make your decision to come and see us at X Dental? The No Diary Scenario - "I understand you don't have your diary to hand, why don't we go ahead and book a time now to ensure I can book you in as soon as possible. Of course, once you have your diary and the time is suitable, just give us a call. Which day tends to suit you best? Morning or afternoon? Early or late?" Follow up - "I understand you are not ready to book yet, when would be a good time to ring you (and on which number) to answer any questions you may have?" Call back at agreed time No Response? Leave message "Hello patient X, This is X from X Dental calling as promised, regarding coming in to meet Dr. X. I will of course call you again, and please don't hesitate to call me on X. Thank you." Call again, different day and time.
Cost objection to buying online booking – pay per booking trial
Trigger:
Discussion: We have the opportunity to give the practice the option to not have to buy the online booking module but rather pay per booking that happens. This is worked out at$30 per new, existing or treatment plan booked$5 per recall bookedThis is overall capped at $200 per month. They can use this as a trial to ensure they're finding value in the usage of it and that their patients use the service, they can purchase the model to have a lower monthly cost in the future if they like.
Setting daily objectives and targets for Clinicians
Trigger:
Discussion: Typically speaking a full time dentist should have roughly 1500-2000 active patients and a yearly gross for the dentist is going to be based on the number of active patients each dentist is seeing. Discussing what your associates are producing is a very delicate topic and should be approached carefully. You can use a function in Exact called 'Production goals' – this allows you to set an hourly or daily production expectation and to give your team an idea where they are at for each day. This can be a great part of your morning huddle, discussing what happened yesterday, what is happening today and tomorrow.
Along with this we need to remember that we're not selling dentistry, but we're educating patients in the work to ensure their mouths (and bodies!) are as health as they can be.