Dear
Vikki
Do you feel aggravated by parents who expect the earth from ‘the NHS’ services you provide but who don’t appear to do anything to help their children keep good dental health?
Do you get frustrated because the little darlings are obviously sucking sweeties and quaffing coke all day and yet you are expected to sort them out?
Well maybe you could do a little more to let parents know the rules. I keep hearing parents telling me, ‘I didn’t know fruit shoots/fruit smoothies were bad for the teeth – I thought they were healthy options,’ or ‘I didn’t know that kids couldn’t brush their teeth properly until well after they went to school’.
Obviously, the ideal solution would be for all children and parents to have a full hygiene or oral health education session every year that results in a change of behavior. If you can’t organise that, at least provide information to adults with children in their lives. Let them know that you care about the future dental health of children at your practice. It’s a great position to be in for building patient trust and marketing other services to boot.
An inexpensive leaflet with some golden rules for parents and youngsters can be given out at all appointments – with instructions to read it and to pass it on to anyone with an interest in reducing the risk of fillings in children. You can add your brand/practice details on the leaflet too. Or send a press release about your leaflet/campaign to the local newspapers. You may not even be able to take on any more new patients, but the news that you’re distributing self-help information to all adults for the benefit of youngsters will surely add to the public’s nice warm feelings about the practice.
And remember to pay attention to your language when talking to patients and parents:
‘cutting down on sugar’ isn’t the same as ‘even if it’s a fruit juice, it will probably have sugar in it'.
At least one of my practices is planning some parents’ evening classes - with presentations on the ‘10 Golden Rules’ and a campaign to encourage interest in a monthly plan for youngsters’ dental health. Those mothers who’ve been subjected to the ‘test for possible interest’ have shot their hands in the air immediately. An opportunity countrywide perhaps?
Sheila
Next time you buy anything – a car, new glasses, a pair of shoes, a main course in a new or infrequently visited restaurant or a new brand of anything you normally buy in a supermarket - can you stop for a moment and notice how you feel about making your buying decision? And think about when
you notice an interest for knowing the price.
Most of us look for the price very early, and very quickly. And then, with the confidence that we can afford it, we go on to examine the product carefully, to decide if it is the right quality. Only a few of us make a buying decision immediately and then check the price afterwards – usually when we are very confident that the produce is infinitely affordable. I often talk about how most women buy shoes. We pick shoes off the shelf, check the price, then decide. If there’s no price under the shoe, we lose confidence, believing the shoes are more expensive than they are, and we very quickly talk ourselves out of ‘needing’ the shoes as we wander out of the shop. But we’ve all also gone ‘£136! Bloody hell!’, put them back down only to return to them a few minutes later thinking, ‘hmmmm’ and going on to buy them. (That was me in a shoe shop in Brodie, North of Scotland, last weekend.)
The experience for patients considering treatment is very similar – except treatment is far less exciting than shoes, and far harder to evaluate. Patients don’t have confidence in your fees being affordable, so readily believe in their hearts that treatment is ‘too expensive’ – possibly up to three times more expensive than it really is (according to some unreported research undertaken in Bristol some years ago*) And patients can very quickly talk themselves out of ‘needing’ the treatment, even whilst you are bleating on about how wonderful your crown/filling/denture/implant/endo treatment will be.
For years, I’ve found that all dentists experience a higher up take of treatment plans and conversions when they communicate:
1 the need for treatment
2 the cost
3 the benefits of treatment IN THIS ORDER.
So…
- Please get into the habit of using this framework. Be proud of your fees. Be certain they’re right
- If you can’t say £200 without your eyes dilating and your stutter starting, please PRACTISE until you are comfortable, and it feels natural
- If you don’t know the prices of your fillings/crowns/dentures/implants/endo treatment please LEARN them, and PRACTISE until you are comfortable and it feels natural
- If you can’t give the whole cost of a complex treatment plan, give some of the costs for some of the aspects, and follow up with the written quote later
- Do NOT discount because you feel guilty or are unprepared (oral fiscal drag). I believe unexpected discounts devalue patient trust (they don’t know the ‘real cost’ of the treatment, therefore feel they can’t give enough information to refer friends properly. The original cost ‘must’ have been too high, etc)
- If you really can’t do this, please involve your nurse. Engineer a dialogue before you discuss treatment, where your nurse checks and tells you the cost of the item
- And finally…always, always, always, back up your verbal explanation with a written quote
*If anyone would like to repeat this very interesting out-of-practice survey, please let me know.
I’ve had a few conversations with practices who are still experiencing a slowing of recall responses – particularly from private patients. This is worrying for the practice that wants to keep busy, and very bad news for patients who inevitably turn up after a long gap, requiring intensive hygiene and avoidable treatments. So…
- Do patients know why regular visits are good for them? (The need to maintain and monitor dental health.) Please don’t let them believe they only need to visit you when they have a problem. (How to do that is a day’s lecture/training course/consultancy, and keeping up the pressure is an ongoing communication requirement.)
- Get as many patients as possible onto a plan. Good maintenance or (well managed!) capitation plans are the best tool in your kit to keep each patient as healthy as possible. We all know that plan patients visit regularly as recommended, take advice more seriously, and stay healthier requiring less treatment – please AUDIT this if you can and feedback the differences. The biggest benefit of a plan to a patient, is NOT the budgeting one!
- Is your recall message encouraging enough? There’s a world of difference between ‘It’s time for your dental health check’ and ‘Regular dental health checks mean less fillings and healthy gums longer term’ – even better if you can make the message really meaningful (without scaring anyone!).
- Follow up your failed recalls. A personal letter sent along the lines of ‘we haven’t seen you since May 2008. Yet we know if we can check your dental health regularly, we can keep you healthy and prevent all sorts of dental problems later. Please don’t leave it too long to come back to us (or even.. ‘ a recent survey in the practice revealed that patients who have dental health checks every x months as recommended need x% less treatment than those who leave their checks for longer. Please help us keep you strong and healthy).
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