The dental practice is a fast-paced and dynamic business, and training staff is essential for success. With the right resources, dental practices can ensure their employees are properly equipped to deliver excellent patient care. By taking the time to invest in employee training, dental practices can reap the rewards of having a highly-skilled and motivated workforce.

The dental practice industry is constantly evolving, and it’s important for dental practices to stay ahead of the curve by providing employees with the training they need to keep up. With the right resources and training programs in place, dental practices can ensure that their staff are well-equipped to handle any situation or challenge. Investing in employee training is an important part of running a dental practice, and dental practices that prioritize employee training will have the edge when it comes to providing top-notch patient care.

By investing in employee training and utilizing resources such as online dental practice management systems and dental training organizations, dental practices can ensure their staff are properly trained and prepared to handle any dental care situation. Training dental practice staff is essential for running a successful dental practice and investing in employee training can help dental practices stay competitive and provide excellent patient care.

In conclusion, dental practices need to prioritize employee training in order to remain competitive and provide top-notch patient care. By taking the time to invest in employee training, dental practices can ensure their staff are properly equipped to handle any dental care situation. Utilizing resources such as online dental practice management systems and dental training organizations is essential for providing dental employees with the training they need. Investing in employee training is an important part of running a dental practice, and dental practices that prioritize employee training will have the edge when it comes to providing excellent patient care.

New Patient-itis is a dentist’s affliction that can have serious effects on your practice. It occurs when dentists grow too comfortable or overconfident with the same set of patients and procedures. As a result, dentists become less motivated to acquire new patients and develop innovative treatment plans that could potentially improve patient outcomes.

This affliction can hurt dentists financially as well, since they are missing out on the revenue that comes with new patients.

Fortunately, New Patient-itis is curable. The most effective way to overcome this affliction is by setting goals and incentives for dentists to acquire new patients. For instance, dentists could offer promotions or discounts for new patients and focus on unique marketing strategies that attract potential customers.

Additionally, dentists should cultivate relationships with other dentists to increase referrals. By networking with other dentists and sharing best practices, dentists can gain insights into different treatments and procedures, as well as learn about successful patient acquisition techniques from experienced professionals in the field.

By recognizing the symptoms of New Patient-itis and taking proactive steps to treat it, dentists can ensure that their practice is running at peak efficiency. Doing so will not only benefit dentists financially, but also help them provide better care for their patients.

And most importantly, dentists should strive to stay up-to-date with the latest advancements in dentistry and proactively seek out ways to improve patient care. By continually educating themselves on the latest dentistry techniques, dentists can offer their patients more effective treatments and ensure that they are providing them with the best possible care.

With the right strategies in place, dentists can overcome New Patient-itis and ensure their practice is running at its full potential. By overcoming this dentist’s affliction, dentists will be able to provide their patients with better care while also positioning themselves for greater success.

When advertising isn’t getting any results, our first thought is typically something along the lines of, “The marketing business I hired isn’t doing their job” or “This form of marketing just doesn’t work in my location.” And trust me, I get it. In reality, though, there are a plethora of additional reasons why your advertising might not be doing as well as you’d like.

But in this essay, I’d like to narrow in on four of the most typical issues in marketing to new patients and offer solutions to each.

1. You’re putting all of your marketing eggs in one basket.

A silver bullet for advertising does not exist. There is no magic bullet for marketing problems.

Multiple complementary marketing efforts yield the best results. Web presence, user reviews, SEO, paid and organic search, social media, direct mail, billboards, etc. You don’t have to implement every single one of these steps, but you should work together.

When it comes to marketing, it’s not just unwise to put all of your eggs in one basket. Forget about succeeding in marketing if something were to happen to this single strategy.

One dentist I know gained almost all of their new patients from a nearby large corporate office since those workers were provided with excellent insurance. Things were going swimmingly at the office, and generally speaking, everyone’s lives were improving. till the company up and moved. They had suddenly lost their means of attracting new patients and were at a loss as to how to proceed.

Plus: Facebook advertisements for the dentist were producing excellent results. They pioneered the use of Facebook ads among local dentists and saw such success with the strategy that they allocated all of their marketing funds to it. Then a new dentist arrived and began competing with the established ones via social media. The majority of their new patients came through their Facebook page, causing a dramatic drop in their statistics.

Takeaway: Have a comprehensive plan for dealing with new patients.

2. You aren’t doing everything you can within the company to encourage word-of-mouth and back up your external marketing efforts.

It’s OK to invest in advertising, but I’d rather not pay for what I can obtain for nothing.

There are lots of things you can do on the inside that won’t cost you a dime but will bring in new customers. There are also a number of things that might be avoided that would be detrimental to your external marketing efforts.

Now, to illustrate my point, let me give you a couple of concrete illustrations:

Inefficiency in taking new patient calls and scheduling them. 

Failing to encourage clients to post reviews on websites like Google and Yelp. 

I rarely (if ever) schedule patients’ family members or ask for recommendations from existing patients. It’s important to do this several times a day. 

Increasing the percentage of your recall patients who become new clients (more engaged patients = more possible recommendations). 

Boosting initial patient buy-in for complex cases. New patients are affected by this, in case you were wondering. A lot. 

Maximizing performance in all of the aforementioned areas is crucial.

Imagine you are running Google advertisements and spending around $300 to bring in each new patient.

The cost of acquiring a new client has dropped to $150 from $300, thus it makes sense to train your receptionist to answer the phone like a pro in order to increase the appointment rate by 50%.

If the patient brings in only one (or more, it’s easy to do more), the cost per new patient drops to $50.

If you can convince a potential patient to undergo your full proposed course of treatment (rather than just the portion their insurer would pay for), you can effectively double your potential income from that person.

If you could reduce your patient churn rate in hygiene by half (which is quite doable), you would have effectively doubled the value of your new patients.

3.Your marketing budget is inadequate.

I understand how difficult it might be to admit, “My marketing isn’t working, so I should spend MORE on it!” Also, I wouldn’t want you to waste money on marketing that isn’t working, so make sure you’re measuring your ROI before investing more. 

I’m also concerned that you’re not taking advantage of all the low- or no-cost internal strategies you might employ to attract more customers.

However, all of this isn’t without cost, as external promotion requires financial investment. It’s an enormous cost that any company would do well to prepare for. To be successful, you need a solid marketing budget.

Marketing is typically given a low priority in dental practice budgets. It’s not something you need, thus it is labeled as a luxury. It’s unclear why this is the case; perhaps it’s the belief that “If I hang up a shingle, patients will come,” or the attitude that “We’re doctors, not entrepreneurs.” However, it’s important to remember that advertising is necessary for every business, not just medical practices.

Whether you are in an expansion phase (adding new operations, building a new office, etc.) or a maintenance phase (keeping the lights on) will determine how much you should allocate to marketing. Spending 10% or more of gross revenues on advertising is not out of the question during a period of rapid growth.

This idea of “skipping on your marketing” can also be applied to specific promotional initiatives. I know of dental practices who sent out several hundred postcards but only gained two new patients as a result. No new patients have been flooding in, of course. Numbers are everything in direct mail. To see any real results from postcard marketing, you’ll likely need to send out many thousand over several months.

4.You aren’t keeping a close eye on the success of each individual marketing effort.

The point is that you can’t use anecdotal evidence like “I don’t feel like we saw many new patients this month” or “Nobody mentioned Facebook when they walked in here” to determine whether or not your marketing efforts were successful.

In order to properly plan and budget for the future, you need to know the exact number of calls you received, the number of new patients you scheduled, and the total amount of money you made as a direct result of the campaign.

A dentist once told me they needed more new patients, but after we looked at their figures, we discovered that they were really seeing plenty of new patients already, and the real issue was that their recall program had deteriorated (easy fix). They felt they needed to alter their marketing in order to attract more patients without first conducting any statistical analysis.

Business success depends, in large part, on effective marketing. Large companies, as a rule, have an entire division devoted to marketing, which is regarded as a top priority.

If you don’t have a designated person in charge of this, you’re probably not giving it the attention it needs.

To some extent, this may fall on the owner-doctor in a solo practice. Given the time and effort involved, though, it’s usually preferable to delegate the task to someone else.

At the very least, somebody needs to be keeping an eye on things to make sure everything is running smoothly and effectively, that any outside firm you’ve contracted with is meeting its objectives, that any issues are addressed immediately, and that internal measures are being taken to supplement external marketing efforts.

It’s true what they say: “The customer is always right.”

The issue here is quite significant. However, what if the customer is incorrect? What if they are unable to make the right choice because they lack the necessary information? Do you feebly explain to them the proper course of action and then give up and say, “I tried to inform them!”?

Let me illustrate my idea using a crazy scenario: Consider the following: I work as a parachute salesman, and a 400-pound man approaches me with an offer to buy one. The man’s two-hundred-pound parachute was less expensive, and he preferred the color. I tried to convince him that the risk was too great, but in the end, I gave in since “the customer is always right.” If he knew a two-hundred-pound man couldn’t safely use a two-hundred-pound parachute, he would have chosen a four-hundred-pound parachute instead. Inevitably, this would lead to disastrous results, but at least I could say to myself, “I tried.”

In my position as a conscientious parachute vendor, I have two options: either offer him a parachute big enough to prevent his death in case of an emergency or tell him to find another vendor.

We, as educated and conscientious dentists, must share this perspective.

About twenty years ago, I was listening to a dentist (we’ll call him “Dr. X” for simplicity’s sake) recount his experiences during his first year in private practice. A man we’ll name “Jim” presented to the dentist with severely worn molars 6-11 and no remaining maxillary molars. His palate was also unusually flat. This man’s lower jaw was completely toothed.

Dr. X advised him to have the remaining six maxillary teeth crowned so that he could use them to anchor a partial denture. If this were Dr. X’s mouth, he would do the same thing, he reasoned. Jim’ s complete dentures were more expensive than a bridge, but his wife already had one and was satisfied with it. Dr. X argued with Jim about why his approach wasn’t optimal, but in the end, he agreed to do things Jim’s way.

Jim would tell Dr. X he regretted not listening to him every time he came in for a dental cleaning after that. The upper denture specifically bothered him. Unlike some patients, he did not place the blame on Dr. X. The truth is that Dr. X could have taken more responsibility for Jim and helped him see why he should follow the treatment he prescribed, but he chose to accept responsibility for his own decision instead. He had the option to decline performing the procedure Jim had suggested if he had felt uneasy about doing it that way. Jim should have been more adamant on Dr. X’s recommended course of treatment because he is more knowledgeable about dentistry than Jim is.

In a similar vein, how do we treat a patient who requires six crowns but is only getting two at a time because “that’s what the insurance covers”? You’re going to get burned if you keep playing that game. Starting in January, you will be responsible for preparing the top two items and #30 will be broken in July. Since you didn’t begin on the patient’s bottom right, he or she is now upset.

When this occurs, it is not because the dentist is unable or uninterested in seeing the patient through the entirety of their treatment plan, as I have observed in the past. The majority of dental patients don’t complete their treatment plans because their dentists are unable to effectively communicate their condition and options to them.

You could call this skill of expression “selling,” too. 

This issue has an overly simplistic solution.

Take the time to educate yourself on the art of selling. It makes everything much less complicated. When you give the patient exactly what they want, dentistry becomes a lot of joy for both of you. One more thing: people who finish their treatments are happier and more likely to recommend you to their friends and family. In addition to benefiting the patient, this strategy also helps your business.

Most of the time, we assume that the patient’s decision is motivated by financial considerations. When you turn around, they start gushing about their recent vacation or shiny new boat. It was never about the money in my experience. People were frightened. Unfortunately, they learned some unfavorable information concerning root canals. “In most situations, if they opted not to follow your therapy recommendations, it was because they lacked an appreciation for the gravity of the situation.

Please attempt this one thing that is so basic that it doesn’t even need to be written down. Avoid giving up so quickly. Be more steadfast in your stance and engage them in conversation to learn more about their perspective. More often than you might imagine, this will succeed since genuine concern for the customer is at the heart of effective selling. You may be shocked by the results if you steadfastly care about your position.

Customers who know exactly what they need may be more common in other industries, but dentists can usually count on them being the exception. They lack the education and experience to make a sound judgment. Find out how to convince them to buy from you. Don’t give them bad advice or the wrong kind of parachute to jump out of. Customer service isn’t always about making the customer happy.

It’s not easy to manage a team when you spend most of your time in the operator chair. If things continue to spiral out of control, you may start to feel less like a business owner and more like a babysitter.

However, the success of your practice depends on the efforts of your entire team, thus effective management of your employees is crucial. Disagreement amongst employees is a common yet unavoidable stumbling block.

If this is something you’ve encountered, how should you proceed?

First and foremost, you should immediately handle any and all personnel issues.

If the office manager isn’t qualified to deal with such situations, I normally recommend that the doctor (owner) speak with them. Don’t let it sit there and grow worse. And if you don’t deal with it promptly and properly, it will just get worse.

Employee disagreements can arise for a variety of reasons, but in my experience, having numerous individuals perform the same tasks or attempt to perform each other’s tasks is the most typical source of tension (this can include providing unsolicited advice to another on how to do their job). This problem can be readily fixed by having up-to-date, unambiguous procedure manuals and policies that define each employee’s responsibilities. There will be no room for debate or uncertainty thanks to the clarity of the instructions provided.

It’s a different story if there’s a personality clash. Not everyone you meet will have the same kind of personality as you. Various people have different personalities. One would hope, however, that people could keep up a sufficient level of professionalism to be able to settle such differences amicably between themselves. When resolving a quarrel between staff members, I often bring up the idea of professionalism as a kind of mediation. This is a work event, not a get-together with old friends or relatives. No matter what their “personalities” may be, you should treat your coworkers with kindness and respect at all times. Though this usually eliminates the problem, there are a few exceptions:

Those involved in the disagreements are discussing the matter with their coworkers.

As a result, rivalries have emerged amongst the various office subcultures. Your company’s handbooks or policies should have a section dedicated to this sort of conduct. Conflicts are inevitable given that no two people are exactly same, but if an employee has an issue with another employee, they can try to fix it by talking to the offending employee directly or they can seek professional help (or office manager depending on the size and organization of your office). You should have a policy in place outlining how to handle situations like this. The goal is to maintain a sociable and dignified setting for work. Additionally, it keeps conflicts from making people uneasy at work.

There is always that one employee whose “toxic” attitude causes friction between them and the rest of the team.

Staff Disagreement? Where Do You Go From Here?  It’s likely that at some point in your professional life, you’ve been exposed to a workplace setting like this. As a company executive and team leader, you need to evaluate this situation. It’s possible they’re slowing down the whole team, regardless of how well they know the office or the patients. If this is the case, it might be more efficient to find someone else to fill this position who is both productive and positive.

The staff as a whole must come to terms with the fact that no one is faultless and that we pool our resources and efforts in the belief that we can accomplish more by working together than we could working alone. Members of a team have an obligation to look out for one another, ensuring that they continue to contribute positively to the team dynamic and feel welcome inside the group. If you and your team can achieve this, you should have little trouble with anything large.

Business problems that end up costing a ton of money usually have humble beginnings. They then “grow,” accumulate to a critical mass, and give you a basketful of headaches. It’s not rocket science. It’s not dissimilar to how a tiny cavity can eventually lead to a toothache that leaves you in excruciating pain.

The consistent failure of so many dentists (and, to be honest, so many other small and large business owners and executives) on this most fundamental of tests of problem solving is shocking.

No “absolutes” exist, but the closest I’ve seen is how a “disaster” that a doctor experienced with their Financial Coordinator (embezzlement, unfiled insurance, weird discounts and write-offs, etc.) or another staff person could have been avoided if the doctor had dealt with it when it was minor.

These days, after most workplace “disasters,” a doctor is quick to say, “I had no idea this was happening!”

That’s a deal if you ask me. Of course, you had no idea that the Scheduling Officer was sending out fake recall cards and making up confirmed patients, or that the Financial Coordinator was providing friends and family members odd (hidden) discounts.

But in every case, I’ve looked at so far, the doctor or office manager ignored warning signs that anything was wrong with the employee. All of these were either disregarded or “explained” away.

Where did you see the warnings? It’s possible that the worker has become unfriendly or dismissive. Perhaps there was a trend of tardiness to the office. Or perhaps you caught them in a “fib” about a patient confirmation and decided to let it slide (rather than truly addressing it). In any case, ignoring problems like these might lead to further complications down the road. Specifically:

• When minor infractions of policy are overlooked, they often progress to more serious infractions.

Nearly everyone has had at least one “nightmare” scenario with a former boss, coworker, or employee. And certainly, there are some people who only care about themselves and not you, your coworkers, or the company as a whole. However, people with such traits are uncommon. The vast majority of people are honest and hard-working (or have the potential to be that way). However, no one is without flaw; we can all make mistakes or act inappropriately at times. If everyone in the company (from the CEO on down) has an aversion to dishonesty and rules violations, then any minor problems will be addressed before they become major ones. In a carefree atmosphere, these issues tend to escalate until a full-blown catastrophe occurs. Many promising workers have been thrown away in this way when, in reality, their behavior was easily correctable before it spiraled out of control.

• Benefits for one worker must be extended to all.

You have ignored your assistant’s chronic tardiness to work without taking any corrective action. The method in which he or she communicates with you is likewise unprofessional. When this occurs, you once again do nothing to fix the problem. Your financial secretary sees this and decides it’s “OK” to follow suit. That attitude will eventually permeate the rest of your workforce. You’ve caught a “Staff Infection,” they say. Work productivity will be low if employees are forced to endure this.

•  There are a lot of hidden costs associated with replacing workers.

Uncovering the true cost of hiring and training new employees is difficult because of the time and money wasted when positions remain unfilled. Since you’re not paying cash, you don’t always see it. Even if you are replacing a fantastic employee who has moved on or retired, you will still have to pay this fee. When you consider the cost of replacing a worker who was fired for cause (such as in the scenarios above) in addition to the cost of their termination, the situation becomes prohibitively expensive. That’s the point: it’s not cheap to find new workers. Put no more effort on it.

What are your next steps?

Don’t neglect issues any further than necessary. In most cases, they don’t get better on their own. Although I’ve used employee problems as examples throughout this essay, the principles discussed here are applicable to any business endeavor, including advertising, finance, and more.

As a side note, it’s important to remember that disciplining staff should be done in a dignified manner and should never, ever take place in front of patients. The goal of providing constructive feedback is not to make the recipient feel bad about themselves but to make them a more effective and efficient worker. You may have to wait until the end of the day to fix something you see when patients are present, and things are hectic. If it’s not an emergency or the patient’s safety is not in jeopardy, then it can wait. All these issues can be remedied by acquiring the appropriate training.

I’ve seen it happen too many times when a new hire, such as a receptionist, gets put on the job the first day with little to no training and then is left by themselves. A week later the office manager wonders why phone calls are being mismanaged and concludes that the new receptionist isn’t going to work out or it’s easier to just do it themselves. The new employee was really never set up appropriately to succeed.

I’ve also seen it the other way, where the new employee stays on board for months or years but is always making the same mistakes, and the other employees just believe that’s the way he or she is when in reality he or she was really never instructed or apprenticed properly.

You probably have at least one or more employees who really know what they are doing and who you can trust. Someone who seems to know what to do before you say it. Whether it is your office manager, assistant, or a front desk staff member, it’s someone that you wish you could clone so that they could fill all the positions in the office. As you expand, you want to recreate that type of employee, but how can you achieve this?

You should “apprentice” new hires under your best, most experienced personnel.

Obviously, any compulsory training for appropriate technical employment should be done before that, according to the rules and regulations of your state. Also, additional training is recommended for professions such as office manager, treatment/financial coordinator, and PR director. But beyond that initial instruction, the employee should apprentice under someone skilled in that job.

If the office manager has been scheduling efficiently for years and you employ a new scheduler, the scheduler should mimic the office manager while he or she schedules for a day or a few days, and outside of production time they can speak through and answer any questions the new scheduler has. Then the office manager should offer the new scheduler a few patients to schedule under his or her supervision until they are able to schedule proficiently themselves and the office manager no longer has to have his or her attention on whether or not the work will be done correctly. It may take a while to apprentice them on all elements of the job and have them confidence in handling each of the tiny problems and concerns that can emerge. It should not take an unlimited amount of months.

Now, you are not necessarily looking for someone who does things exactly the same way as the office manager. You’re looking for someone who can get done what they are expected to get done on the job. The new scheduler doesn’t have to be every bit as prolific as the office manager, but they do have to have patients booked appropriately according to the way you wish your schedule to be run. They should be able execute the functions of the job independently so that you or your office manager don’t have to continually worry about it or need to intervene.

It is crucial early on in the training process, before you put them on the job entirely, to give them a few minor things to accomplish themselves. These should be easy jobs that don’t require huge know-how or experience, with the aim of ensuring that they can get things done and complete items of work entrusted to them. This can be an early clue if the new hire will be able to perform on the job the way you need them to, independent of training or apprenticeship period.

As I indicated previously, many roles do significantly better with further training. An office manager should undoubtedly be trained as an executive, because that is what they are. You need someone who is able to handle all facets of managing a practice. Treatment coordinators and financial coordinators should be taught on the themes of communication and sales. A PR director should be skilled in the fields of PR and marketing.

There are critical considerations to make since, on the one hand, hiring too many people can cause your operating costs to spiral out of control, but on the other, failing to add new employees as your business expands might limit its expansion and lead to a loss of revenue.

As it turns out, there are a few crucial factors to consider when hiring new employees. First, it’s not clear if you’re referring to the front or back desk.

Time to Bring in New Employees

Filling Support Roles

It’s a breeze behind the scenes. Whether or not you can participate depends on your availability. An issue exists if you have to schedule patients more than a week in advance. Nobody should have to wait more than a week to be seen.

Now, more efficient scheduling might be the answer to this problem. You can probably get more done if you schedule your activities more effectively.  Using the techniques presented, your output can be increased by a factor of two with no increase in working hours or stress. Always leave yourself a little wiggle room in your schedule for case presentations. Treatment plans are often not handed off to the front desk’s billing department after being presented.

To increase output if you have reached your capacity, consider hiring an additional assistant or hygienist. Check the Dental Practice Act and other relevant laws to ensure that your assistants and hygienists are performing all the tasks assigned to them. If you’re spending time on tasks that they could be handling, you’re losing out on productivity. A second assistant or hygienist can be had for less money than a new associate.

Hygiene is where the bulk of your cases should originate; if you’re not seeing enough patients for cleanings, that’s a red flag. Patients who have finished their therapy are the “good patients” and hence easy to schedule for hygiene appointments. But you also want patients who have had excellent care to visit for cleanliness, since this provides an opportunity to diagnose and propose treatment to them, which is where your output lies. There may be a need to increase the size of the hygiene department if it is currently at capacity with “excellent patients” and cannot accommodate patients who have received exceptional care.

If your current staff of assistants and hygienists are already at maximum capacity and you still find yourself overbooked on your own output (even using the most effective scheduling practices), you may want to consider hiring an associate, at least initially on a part-time basis.

Positions Open in the Lobby

When it comes to the reception area, I’ve noticed that administrative employees (those who aren’t dentists, hygienists, or assistants) aren’t given the respect they need. I’ve seen that many places have overflowing back rooms yet nearly empty front desks. Many doctors may not realize that the efficiency of the office’s back end depends on the work of the administrative personnel.

It’s not good if the front desk can only handle walk-in customers (like answering phones, getting patients scheduled, working with insurance, collecting co-pays, getting paperwork signed, etc.) and don’t have time to call patients to remind them to renew their membership, book hygiene appointments, fill the doctor’s schedule, cultivate referral programs, etc. These are the actions that result in clients receiving treatment; they provide output for the back office.

It’s time to hire extra people if the front desk is too busy responding to customers’ needs to actively seek out new ones. However, before looking to hire more people, you should make sure that each member of your staff is contributing to the fullest extent of their potential. It’s possible that inefficiency or employees diverting time from more important tasks are the real reasons reactivation isn’t happening at your office.

Avoid bringing on a new worker merely to “assist” an existing worker. If you have someone whose job it is to “answer the phone and schedule patients,” and you recruit someone another whose job it is to “answer the phone and schedule patients,” then you are likely paying two people for the work that could be done by one. It’s rare for this to lead to more output; more often than not, it only makes one of the schedulers bored.

Assign each person specific responsibilities. You could, for instance, have one person handle the doctor’s personal production while another person answers phones, reactivates patients, and performs other hygiene-related tasks. Then they can stop trying to do one other’s work and start doing their own. There needs to be one unique responsibility for each member of the workforce.

In Conclusion, know when to bring on new employees.

A new employee is not “expensive” to hire in a well-run business because their efforts will generate more revenue than their salary. Staff compensation, however, can represent a significant drain on resources if administrative costs spiral out of control. An orderly approach is the solution.

If you have everything in order, are making the most of your employees’ skillsets, and keeping a close eye on the numbers, you should be able to pinpoint exactly which part of your operation is causing your expenses to spiral out of control. You might not even need to hire a new employee; perhaps the person in charge of that unproductive department only needs to be replaced.

The objective is that you should educate yourself further on the subject of management and organization.

 New approaches that put the patient first have worked out well, but I’ve also seen them fail miserably. There are a variety of ways to offer services at extremely low prices without going bankrupt, such as participating in health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and other drastically discounted insurance plans, holding Groupon deals, etc. In some workplaces, people feel like hamsters on a wheel. They work extremely hard and become quite busy, but as a result, they have many missed appointments, “shoppers,” and customers who came in solely for the “special” deal.

Yes, you should seek out more new clients, but it’s also important to consider the long-term viability of your firm as you do so.

An Overview of What a New Patient Typically Costs and Is Worth

First, some numerical values. Here are some “national” averages, though it’s important to note that they can vary widely based on a variety of factors:

About $1,200 in annual revenue is generated with a new patient at a dental office.

By the tenth year, they will have spent roughly $400 total. Therefore, the sum total for years two through ten is $3,600.

A lifetime’s worth on average is $4,800.

On average, a dentist will spend between $250 and $350.00 on advertising in order to bring in one new patient.

The typical price of a new patient is between $250 and $351.

The data supports this conclusion. However, you do not put your knowledge to use in a hypothetical normative setting. You use this in your daily work life, and as I mentioned before, there are a number of variables that will affect the actual numbers you see in your workplace.

So, what can you do to improve your odds?

This article covers all three: 1) How to attract more high-quality new patients; 2) How to reduce your cost for attracting these new patients through efficient marketing and referral programs; and 3) How to boost the value of new patients to your practice through patient retention and increased treatment acceptance.

The first step in attracting the ideal clientele to your practice is, of course, effective marketing. There are marketing firms that may assist you with this, though it can be difficult to sift through the sea of frauds and con artists who pretend as dental marketers. Naturally, we start with efficient methods for doing this and monitoring your own marketing initiatives rather than relying solely on a marketing agency.

There is a good reason why this event isn’t titled “DENTAL MARKETING Workshop,” but rather “NEW PATIENT Workshop.” The reason is that some of the most important aspects of expanding your practice and boosting your profits have nothing to do with advertising. The steps involved are those taken once a patient phones your office to make an appointment.

Maximizing the Return on Investment Per New Patient.

Using the preceding figures as a starting point. Here are the three areas that might increase (or decrease, if handled incorrectly) your “value per new patient.”

Retention and Recall of Patients

By neglecting recall patients in favor of acquiring new ones, dentists can see their business steadily wither. Trying to grow a business based on one-and-done visitors is a fool’s errand. Those who see only new patients each month are, in effect, launching a new medical practice.

Patients like this need to be kept in a recall pool. Patients will leave if you haven’t been increasing the number of hygiene days offered or, even worse, if you don’t have a recall mechanism in place. Not only does this reduce their lifetime value, but it also runs counter to your professional mission as a dentist, which is to promote dental health in your patients and prevent disease.

Dentists face a far larger challenge than they think with patient retention.

As an individual, I find it difficult to trust the idea that the “average” patient remains with a practice for a decade. The basic notion of an “active” patient supplied to us by the industry is problematic.

According to the staff, a “current patient” is one who has visited the clinic within the last two years. This may be a reasonable estimate from the point of view of valuing your practice, but it won’t help you much in day-to-day business.

However, how frequently should one visit the dentist? In cycles of 3, 4, or 6 months. The answer you will get from the average individual on the street is “twice a year.”

How many patients have seen you within the past six months? Get a report out of your medical record system. Very informative!

We often find this number to be 10-20% or lower of their patients who are actively on a recall program. This means that between 80 and 90 percent of their patients are leaving for one reason or another.

My recommendation is to stress the importance of cleanliness to both your patients and your personnel.

Referrals

Everybody knows it. “Word of mouth is the best source for new patients.” Word-of-mouth is the cheapest and most successful marketing approach. However, it is rarely the subject of discussion. 

It’s best to think about it like this:

Total costs for a new patient average $4,800.

The average person has an intimate connection with three persons via their household or close family: 3 instant referrals

Including referrals, the value of a new patient is $19,200.

By promoting the referrals and ensuring you serve the complete family, you’ve now tripled the value of each new patient — without increasing your marketing expense!

If you’re extremely successful at what you do, each of those three people will also have at least one other close friend or family member they may refer, for a grand total of six possible referrals and $33,600!

And don’t forget that other number—somewhere between $250 and $300—representing the average cost to GET a new patient. If you spend $300 on advertising to attract a new patient, and that patient refers two more, your acquisition cost drops to $150. They’ll get $75 off their next purchase if they bring you three new customers.

In light of this, it stands to reason that you should devote considerable energy to generating referral business. But I know how it is — asking for referrals comes out as “cheesy,” so even if you encourage your team to do it, they don’t. You may have even tried a referral program of some kind in your office that didn’t exactly produce the “buzz” you were hoping.

Never give up! Ask your patients who their family members see. Tell them that you’re trying to improve the health of the entire neighborhood and ask if they know anyone else who might be interested in making an appointment. You’d be thrilled to see them.

It has also been repeatedly demonstrated that patients who agree to and complete their entire treatment programs (rather than just the least that insurance covers) are more likely to recommend your services to their friends and family.

It’s just a fact. People who are getting healthier are more likely to refer. And this leads me into my next point:

The Case Acceptance

The most crucial information is presented last. Why do I think it’s the most crucial?

Patients who complete their treatment plan and feel better about their experience in the clinic are more likely to refer their friends and family to the practice and keep coming back for follow-up care, making this the most straightforward strategy for increasing revenue per patient. Case acceptance enhancement can increase new patient revenue by as much as $7,000 to $8,000.

Earnings improve as a result of taking such action. It’s basically an indicator that you’re actually helping your patients.

It can be difficult to offer a large treatment plan to a new patient. That’s because they haven’t had enough time to get to know you. What will they think if you inform them on the first appointment that they need treatment costing thousands of dollars? Surely, they will flee at this point? They’ll probably assume that you’re a shady used-car dealer.

In reality, no. If you and your staff have done a fantastic job of connecting with the patient and explaining why they need the procedure, they won’t try to avoid it.

BONUS TIP: Training your front desk to answer the phones:

Those clever folks at Viva Concepts ran a study that piques our attention. They looked at data from 10,000 offices and discovered that only 23% of callers are converted into new patient appointments on average.

This means that 77% of marketing funds in the typical office are being wasted. Training the front desk to properly answer the phone and schedule new patients has helped several businesses quadruple their patient intake (at a fraction of the acquisition expense) in my experience.

So, training for the front desk should be a priority. Hear a few phone conversations. Help them gain confidence by having them practice answering a variety of call kinds.

Many businesses compete for a piece of the enormous dentistry marketing pie. And the sheer volume of messages we receive on a regular basis from all these organizations has virtually “trained” us to feel that we need to “break the bank” to attract sufficient numbers of high-quality new patients. But that simply cannot be true! It’s true that you need to advertise your business wisely to get the most out of your money. However, you should additionally make use of other, low- or no-cost methods to increase your patient base.

Now that we have set the stage, let’s examine several low- or no-cost strategies for attracting new patients:

1. Maintain a record of all calls regarding a new patient.
It may seem obvious, but you’d be astonished at how few people actually follow this advice. All calls from possible new patients should be recorded by the front desk, either electronically or manually.

Different tracking measures (such as dedicated phone numbers and call logging software) should still be used. However, it is important to keep track of ALL new patient queries. You need to have all this data readily available.

Dentists frequently say, “geez – that didn’t work!” after investing a significant amount of money into dental marketing that fails to attract new customers. But who are we to say what is failing and what isn’t? Someone calling who isn’t being counted as a potential new patient could be calling. And then you blame the ineffectiveness on your marketing when the issue actually lies with the front desk!

One of my favorite things to do is to do this from the very start. Maintain a record of each new patient enquiry that comes in, including:

-Name of Person
-You can reach them at the number they provided.
-What brought them to you
-Why they are phoning and the topic at hand (i.e. cleaning, second opinion, etc.)
-If they have or have not set an appointment (so you can get in touch with those who haven’t)
-Your new reach-into-office conversion rate can be calculated using this call log. You want your conversion rate to be as high as possible (between 80% and 100%). My previous workplace had a 98% conversion rate, so it can be done!

Having a log of the origin of each call is also helpful for determining which advertising strategies are yielding results and which are not.

2. Make sure your staff has received adequate training and plenty of practice in handling phone calls.

Practice, I might add!
The front desk may receive a call about a new patient while they are already helping another person. You don’t want them rushing through the phone call to get back to the patient in front of them since they don’t know how to handle these two activities simultaneously.

Data shows that the longer a potential patient spends on the phone with a receptionist, the more likely they are to make an appointment. That’s why it’s disastrous for new patient conversion if your receptionist is always in a rush to end calls.

In light of this, it is crucial that your staff have clear policies and procedures for dealing with any and all scenarios that may arise, as well as answers to the concerns that new patients frequently ask. And then you’d have your workers rehearse these various scenarios until they felt comfortable responding to them instinctively rather than having to stop and think about it.

Now that you know you and your team need to keep exercising these skills, you can’t afford to let the conversion rate fall without doing something about it. Every time the conversion rate dropped below 95% at the dental office I oversaw, I knew that someone at the front desk was not answering the phones in accordance with office rules. So, we dug up the rules and had them rehearse them again, this time maybe by role-playing a challenging phone call from a new patient they weren’t prepared for. They were better prepared for similar calls in the future, and conversion rates quickly recovered.

3. Take initiative to increase patient referrals.
This is one of the simplest and least expensive ways to attract new clients. We’d want to have a look at the current patients who are scheduled to see you today or tomorrow, as well as any relatives who haven’t been seen by patient care in the dental office.

Take the case of a patient we’ll call Susy. She has been a patient of yours for quite some time, but her husband and two teenagers have never been seen by you. Someone at the front desk would then be tasked with talking to Susy about her husband and teenagers in an effort to organize dental appointments for them before Susy leaves. Find out more about their family members who might also live in the area, such as siblings, parents, etc. Naturally, you’ll want to make sure they’re not already seeing a dentist, but the good news is that roughly one-quarter of Americans don’t receive regular dental care. It’s likely that you’ll be able to schedule an appointment for at least one and probably two of those people who don’t already have a dentist.

Don’t be too persistent; we don’t want to create any unpleasant situations; but, many patients are willing to book an appointment for their family member right there and then, or to call them on the spot to verify their availability by cell phone.

Then, you can offer them a Care-to-Share card and tell them to use it to help out anyone they know who needs dental work done, whether they’re related or not.

You may easily increase your practice’s weekly patient intake by three to five new people simply by encouraging internal referrals among your current patient base. Don’t forget to track down those satisfied clients and consistently solicit recommendations!

4. Create a warm and welcoming atmosphere.
Developing a client-focused, compassionate approach is the final step. When patients arrive through the door, they should be greeted with kindness and made to feel important. It’s important that your employees share your perspective when it comes to caring for patients. You, like the vast majority of dentists, probably believe that optimal patient health is the ultimate goal. You should make this clear to your patients, and you should make sure your employees share this mentality.

Dentists want their practices to be distinguished from their competitors, therefore they invest in cutting-edge equipment and facilities. After all, I don’t think I’ve ever heard somebody say, “I need to go to a dental clinic because it’s just like all the others,” in reference to their own experience.

To stand out from the crowd, it’s important to demonstrate concern for your patients, keep them from having to wait, and explain the necessity of their therapy. The patients of our practice frequently report back to us that “Oh my god, no other dentist has ever explained things to me like this!” The significance of my teeth has always eluded me. To whomever you may be, I appreciate your time and consideration. Those are the patients who tell their friends and family about their experience.