Are you making mistakes in your dental office? Those mistakes can cost you money. This article will show you how to prevent the top 5 mistakes from happening in your office.
#1 Assuming Perio is Taken Care Of
Having a sharp hygiene team is a beautiful thing. But assuming everything is being taken care of is a big mistake. Be sure you know that a complete perio exam is taking place at every hygiene visit AND the data is being recorded. This is a huge area of liability for you and it's your hygienists responsibility to collect and analyze this information. One way to find out where you stand is to do an audit of your charts. Randomly pull 20 charts of adults seen in the last 6-12 months. How many have a complete perio exam recorded in the last year? Chances are very good that if the percentage is low, so is the amount of perio treatment.
#2 Starting Perio Treatment Too Late
My interpretation of the AAP's Perio Classification system is that Beginning (slight) periodontal disease is 4mm pockets with bleeding and slight bone loss and 1-2mm CAL. This is a huge distinction for many dental teams. Often, these are the "difficult prophies" or the patients that have 3 month prophy intervals. I see it time and time again- teams waiting until pockets are 5-6mm deep before beginning treatment while valuable the patient loses valuable bone that could have been saved.
#3 Too Little Time for Hygiene Visits
I've mentioned this before and I'll say it again. Every time I have ever coached a team to increase their hygiene time, their production has increased as a result. Now that wasn't they only thing they did. They put in place systems to deliver a higher level of service and enroll more treatment. Critical steps that drive production are left out of the hygiene exam when time is short. When you choose to allow 60 minutes for adult recare and perio maintenance, it's important to outline exactly what will take place during that time. If you are going from 40min hygiene visits to 60min, what are you going to add?
To Be Continued...
Wait- Here are a few action steps to help you get started NOW:
• Do a chart audit-look for current perio charts
• Communicate to your hygiene team that you'd like them to do a complete perio exam on every adult patient
• Give your hygiene team the time they need to complete a comprehensive hygiene exam
• Be proactive and get the information you need to really believe that starting perio therapy early is the right thing to do.
How to Finally Get Things Done
No one likes marking things off a 'To-Do' list better than me! That's how I see what I've accomplished and create my work plan for the coming days, weeks and months.
Productivity...It's Not About Money
Productivity, profitability, production, sometimes it seems that dentistry is all about the numbers. Let’s face it, you’re in business to deliver outstanding care to your patients AND make a living, right?
What have you done for them lately?
They come in like clock-work, rarely missing an appointment and just being great patients. And yet it's easy to take them for granted. You count on your base of solid patients to keep your practice running and busy.
