Does your team have an effective system for patients who don’t have their next Hygiene Appointment booked?

I know I am always encouraging teams to ensure every patient has a next Hygiene Appointment but things do happen and some patients do not rebook.

Patients sometimes postpone their Hygiene care and treatment for a number of reasons but do intend to come back and complete their treatment.

There can also be things getting in their way and stopping them from going ahead with dental care and treatment.

Our job on the front desk is to ensure we have a clear next step to how we follow up these patients to book them back in.

Keep in mind that every patient that comes back for their Hygiene Appointment, also has a Dental Examination and any dental treatment needed is then booked in.

The purpose of their Hygiene Appointment is to prevent unneccessary treatment but from time to time there is treatment that is needed.

So you can see that if you are keeping on top of patients who don’t book their Hygiene Appointment, when they book back in, there will be some of these patients who will need restorative work.

I know the thought of having to call patients to book them back in is no fun and often something that is put off.

If your team, know what to say and get great results from these calls it won’t be long and they will be very comfortable making these calls.

Of course, you do want to ensure that every effort is being made to ensure patients always have a next appointment made for Hygiene, but there will always be some patients we need to follow up.

Being prepared and having a great follow up system in place is what you need and must have.

Like a lot of Dental Offices, you could have a substantial list of Hygiene patients to follow up so my advice is to make the task of calling these patients realistic and achievable. Set a number of patients to call each day and stick to it no matter what.

Always start with patients who you haven’t seen for the least amount of time as these patients are much more likely to say yes and book their appointment.

When you make the appointment ask your patient if they are concerned about anything. This is an opportunity to know before their Hygiene Appointment if they have any restorative treatment that may need to be done.

So have a good look at your patients who do need a Hygiene Appointment and don’t have one booked.

Look at the important reason in their clinical notes to see why they should make the appointment and then call them and ask them……..

“Would you prefer morning or afternoon?”

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This blog  features simple practical ideas that are easy to implement tomorrow in your Dental Office, impacting immediately on your Patients’ Dental  Phone Experiences, and ultimately, improving your practice profitability.

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Dental Phone Excellence is a simple to implement complete Phone Answering system I developed that helped me to build an extraordinary dental practice in the heart of working class western Sydney.

If you’d like to know more,  download my sixteen page FREE special report “How I Quickly and Easily Went From 35% to 77% New Patient Telephone Conversions, and Doubled The Size of my Dental Practice Along the Way” and discover some of the many costly mistakes being made on your phone…..

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At present I have availability for only TWO new private clients. For more information on how I can improve your Dental Office’s Phone Numbers contact me, Jayne Bandy at  jayne@theDPE.com