cleardent-dental-marketing

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Managing your online dental clinic reviews

85% of people consider online reviews just as trustworthy as a recommendation from someone they know. According to Zendesk, 90% of people are influenced by positive online reviews and 86% by negative reviews. Online research has become a major factor in people’s decision making, and online dental clinic reviews are no exception to this growing trend.

Positive dental clinic reviews are crucial

Patient reviews of dentists, in particular positive ones, will help grow your clinic. Good comments for dentists and clinics are what entice new patients and persuade others to switch dentists. It’s your best form of free advertising - people trust reviews because you can’t pay for them. They’re honest accounts of other people’s experiences.

Positive dental reviews also help your search engine rankings. Search engines like Google are constantly making changes to their algorithms to show the best results. Positive dental reviews tell Google that your clinic is highly recommended, and it will in turn rank you higher.

Considering how impactful they are, a strategy around online dental reviews is important as part of your overall dental marketing plan.

Getting dental clinic reviews

Before you even think about online reviews, you have to make sure you’re providing excellent dental service that would encourage patients to leave a positive review. This includes friendly service, a convenient omnichannel experience, and a well-managed dental schedule.

[Find out how ClearDent helps you provide excellent customer service - book a demo today]

Make sure your dental clinic is listed on the main review sites so that patients can leave dentist reviews if they feel like:

Yelp

Google My Business

Facebook

The first step to getting online reviews is simply to ask - 70% of people will review if asked.

But it’s important to keep in mind that most patients won’t leave dentist reviews unless it requires minimal effort. Below are some ways you can make it easy for patients to leave a review:

Add a link to one of the review sites on your website

Include a link in your email signature

Send an email campaign asking for feedback and reviews

Send a snail-mail request with the link

Send patients a follow-up text two days after the appointment

Always respond to reviews

Getting reviews is only one part of it; you have to actively monitor and respond as well. How you respond to reviews affects your clinic reputation.

If it was a positive dental review, thank your patients. When you respond to reviews it tells both current and prospective patients that by taking the time to craft a response, you care about them. If your team has the bandwidth, you should be responding to all dental clinic reviews.

Yes, even negative reviews

Unfortunately, negative dental clinic reviews are unavoidable. The good news is that if you only had 5-star reviews, it tends to come across as unrealistic and patients may think that you purchased reviews.

No one is perfect 100% of the time. The important thing is to respond to patients and try to turn the experience into a positive one. Negative dental clinic reviews provide you with invaluable feedback about your clinic; every negative review is a learning experience and an opportunity to improve clinic processes.

When responding to dental clinic reviews, especially negative ones, it’s extremely important to keep all federal and provincial privacy laws in mind. These laws are in place to ensure that you do not violate patient privacy. Dentists are not allowed to respond in a way that exposes patient information or even acknowledge the individual was at their clinic without the patient’s written consent. So while a patient can share details about their appointment and the dentist or clinic, you cannot respond with any information specific to that patient.

While you have to take extra precautions to make sure you’re adhering to privacy laws, it’s crucial to respond. Sometimes you may not be able to change the mind of the patient who wrote the review, but its public nature means that many current and potential patients are watching how you respond. Your responses can influence their decision on whether or not to do, or continue doing, business with you.

You can mitigate negative reviews with these tips:

Exercise empathy: Patients who wrote a negative review are not happy. When you express empathy by showing you understand where they’re coming from, it goes a long way to assuage their frustration.

Show a willingness to address their problem: If and where possible, let them know that you’ll be looking into the issue they brought up.

Don’t take it personally: It can be hard not to feel attacked when reading negative reviews but it’s important to take these as chances to improve your clinic. Wait at least a day before responding to the negative review so that you have a chance to cool down.

Own up to the mistake: If it is a legitimate complaint, avoid acting defensive or pointing fingers. It doesn’t resolve anything and casts your clinic in a bad light. Apologize that they didn’t have a great experience and offer to reach out to the patient personally to address the problem.

Use the right tone: When responding to reviews, avoid using a lecturing or patronizing tone and don’t use technical jargon that your patients may not understand.

Keep it short: Avoid going back and forth in an online argument with the patient. It doesn’t reflect well to have that type of discussion in such a public forum and will likely violate privacy laws. If the response requires further follow up, take it offline and offer to contact the patient directly.

Using online reviews to grow your clinic include asking for and responding to them. Responding to reviews—whether good or bad—could win you new patients and increase patient retention.

See how ClearDent can help you gather reviews through automation - Book a demo today

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Setting Up Dental Triage Protocols

No matter how well you plan your dental schedule, dental emergencies are inevitable. At some point or another, every dental clinic has to deal with last-minute requests for emergency appointments. To help keep your dental clinic running smoothly, you need to implement dental triage protocols for emergency situations.

There are two important things to consider when dealing with dental emergency triage: questions and scheduling.

1. Dental emergency triage questions

While you should try your best to accommodate patients, it’s simply not possible to fit in every patient that calls in requesting a last-minute appointment. Gathering information by asking dental emergency triage questions when patients call is an important step when handling these situations.

You have to be able to weed out an urgent dental emergency from those that are not quite as critical by asking some key questions. Focus on gathering as much information as possible to pass along to the dentist.

As part of your dental triage protocols, ask the below questions when a patient calls with a dental emergency to best plan and allocate resources for their appointment.

Ask if they are a new or existing patient. If they are a new patient, you’ll have to create a new file for them so you can record the notes. If they’re an existing patient, ask for their name so you can look up their file.

Ask these questions to get to the root of what the problem is as quickly as possible and to determine the severity of the pain:

Where is the issue? Which side? Which tooth?

Is the patient currently in pain? If so, how long have they been in pain and what’s the severity of the pain?

Is the pain getting better or worse?

Is there pain to hot or cold temperatures?

Is swelling occurring?

Is the patient currently taking any medication for the pain? If so, what type of medication and what dosage?

Has there been previous dental treatment in the area?

It’s often helpful to ask additional questions once you’ve identified the type of dental problem. Some examples of questions to ask depending on the type of problem:

Dentures: Find out what type of denture it is, how old the denture is, and whether the patient has a spare denture

Fractures: It is on a tooth that has a crown? If it’s a crown, does it feel loose? Find out how much the tooth fractured - is there tooth left? Ask them how the fracture happened

Crowns: Ask if it’s a permanent or temporary one as well as how old it is.

Setting up dental triage protocols to gather the necessary information at the onset will help you assess the situation and plan accordingly. For example, asking if the patient is in pain will help you determine whether to try to get the patient to in as soon as possible or when there is a better opening in the schedule.

While you’re not diagnosing the patient, these dental emergency triage questions will help give you an indication of how much time you need to allocate for the appointment. A chipped tooth, a new crown, and a tooth extraction all require different appointment lengths and preparation.

Document the information you gather during the phone call in the patient’s file so that your team has complete access to all the information they need when the patient comes in.

[Get your whole team organized - book a ClearDent demo today]

2. Scheduling emergency appointments

Once you’ve gathered the information, you’ll need to prioritize and find time to schedule an appointment for the patient.

Many clinics allocate time in their dental schedule for high-production appointments, such as root canals. In a similar fashion, consider also allocating time slots in your calendar for patient’s dental emergencies. Understanding the best way to maximize your schedule and react to emergency situations will not only help you give the appropriate care to your patients that need emergency help but also help ensure it’s done at minimal disruption to your regular patients.

After-hours support

In addition to responding to dental emergencies during clinic hours, make sure you have dental triage protocols in place to respond after hours too. Many dentists are a part of a group of dentists that rotate being on-call after hours.

When patients call after hours, you can craft an answering message that gives them options for after-hours care. Some dentists include their personal numbers so patients have a way to contact them or provide a number to a provincial resource such as HealthLink BC which helps both patients and dentists in BC find appropriate healthcare resources near them.

Never turn a patient away

While dentists are legally and professionally obligated to respond in the event of a dental emergency, you should never turn away a patient in pain for any reason.

It results in a bad patient experience and, these days, when patients are unhappy, they have no reservation about sharing their negative experiences on social media, hurting your dental marketing efforts.

When you try your best to treat patients with dental emergencies, it goes a long way in terms of patient retention and loyalty.

ClearDent can help you manage emergency appointments

Book a demo today!

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

The value of an omnichannel dental practice

Following the footsteps of the retail and finance industries, omnichannel healthcare is gaining traction. An omnichannel dental practice results in improved patient retention, increased revenue, and streamlined processes.

What is omnichannel?

Before we delve into what an omnichannel dental practice looks like, let’s talk about what omnichannel is. In Latin, “Omni” means “all.” Essentially, an omnichannel experience is seamless and consistent across all channels. This means whether through a brick and mortar location, by phone, online, or via social media, the quality of service is always the same.

An omnichannel dental practice helps create deeper relationships at all points of the experience, improving patient retention for your dental practice.

Patients expect an omnichannel experience

Patients may not recognize that they want an omnichannel experience, but the experience they’ve come to expect is an omnichannel one.

The dental experience is no longer as straightforward as it once was. Patient touchpoints start even before they step into your practice. Patients start researching their healthcare providers online; 90% of patients will choose another provider entirely if they don’t like what they see through online research. This is why dental marketing for your practice is critical.

Reminders to patients before their appointments are a given to reduce no-shows and late cancellations. However, these days, more and more dental practices are catering to their patients and contacting them through their preferred contact method such as text message or email.

 The dental experience doesn’t end when the patient leaves the practice - follow-up calls, social media posts, and email marketing are all ways to keep top-of-mind and create lasting relationships with your patients across multiple channels.

The rise of the omnichannel experience was in response to how people interact with businesses these days. Patients want their dental experience to travel across devices and channels with them. And that’s the heart of omnichannel - a great patient experience that occurs across channels but ultimately feels seamless.

[Create your omnichannel experience the easy way - book a ClearDent demo today]

What patients want

In an overall omnichannel healthcare experience, mobile is becoming increasingly important. Consider this information that was found in regards to hospitals:

44% of patients who found hospitals on their mobile devices booked an appointment

86% of physicians believe that mobile apps and devices will play a major role in their practices

Almost 90% of millennials say their smartphone never leaves their side

In a related field, like dentistry, we can expect that similar figures would be found. What this means is that a mobile-optimized website or a mobile app for your dental practice takes higher priority than ever before.

In the age of instant gratification, convenience and speed will be rewarded. Patients want their healthcare interactions to be fast and easy.

Some tips to offer fast, convenient service:

Optimize your dental schedule so that you don’t overbook and keep patients waiting

Answer the phone within three rings or returning a patient’s missed call immediately

Accommodate patients’ busy schedules by opening earlier or staying open later or on weekends

Value of an omnichannel dental practice

With an integrated dental software, you can significantly improve patient experiences at your practice and by extension, increase your revenue.

Consider this new patient experience at an omnichannel dental practice:

Booking: A patient books their appointment online

Pre-appointment: Patient receives a text message reminding them of their appointment

Check-in: They get to the office and fill out their patient information on a kiosk tablet at the front desk

X-rays: The dental assistant takes the patient’s x-rays with digital imaging technology, and the images are immediately transferred and appear on the dentist’s screen

Treatment plan: Using the x-rays, the dentist explains to the patient the proposed treatment plan

Payment: Up at the front, the office manager pulls up the treatment plan the dentist entered and lets the patient know how much the treatment will cost and how much their insurance will cover

Follow-up: Post-appointment, the patient receives an email, thanking them for their business

The experience occurs across multiple devices and involves the integration of imaging and dental practice management softwares - but all the patient experiences is a smooth appointment.

Integrated dental software can enable omnichannel experiences

To be able to offer your patients an omnichannel experience, you need an integrated dental system that has all of your patient information and dental technology in the same place.

ClearDent has everything you need working together in one convenient place:

Digital images: Integrated imaging software so that charts and images can be easily viewed and worked on side-by-side

Patient notes: Clinical notes are easily created and stored securely after signing on patient files

Documentation: Kiosks allow you to conveniently gather important patient documentation. Documents such as consent forms are generated in just a few clicks and stored securely

Insurance: Accurate statement of coverage is received from the patient's insurance company and updated in ClearDent in seconds

Patient communication: ClearConnect is a patient communication system built directly into ClearDent for appointment confirmation, recall reminders, new patient welcome packages, real-time conversations with patients via 2-way text messaging, and more

Payments: Recurring payments for large or ongoing procedures can be set up easily

An omnichannel dental practice provides a connected experience across the entire patient journey. An integrated dental software can help you provide exceptional, omnichannel patient care, setting you apart from the competition.

ClearDent can help you offer an omnichannel patient experience

Sign up for a demo today

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Dental marketing for your clinic

Traditional marketing is no longer cutting it and more and more clinics are turning to online dental marketing to attract new patients.

By 2020, there will be just shy of 220,000 dentists in the U.S. alone. This means patients have plenty of options when it comes to dentists so it will be that much more important for you to stand out among the crowd.

The way people conduct research these days has changed dramatically. Gone are newspaper ads and billboards. Now, patients research online before even stepping foot in a dental clinic. With 3.5 billion searches on Google a day, you can no longer afford to slack on your dental online marketing.

There are many different tactics when it comes to digital dental marketing. You can pay for online ads. You can boost your search engine rankings. You can share valuable content on social media. You can set up targeted email campaigns.

There are three main benefits when it comes to dental online marketing over traditional marketing:

Target prospective patients: With traditional marketing, you’re marketing to the masses, but with online marketing, you can customize relevant messages and deliver them at the right time to the right people.

Measure success accurately: Whether it’s click-through rates or impressions, you can track tangible and actionable results.

Gain invaluable analytics: You get important information such as audience demographics and cost per conversion that you can use to refine your marketing efforts.

The dental industry is projected to be worth around $36.8 billion by 2021 so in order for your clinic to stay competitive, you need to establish a dental marketing strategy that involves a mix of paid advertising, search engine optimization, social media, and email marketing.

Dental marketing ads

There are three different types of paid advertising: search, social, and display.

Search ads are also known as paid search, search engine marketing (SEM), or pay-per-click (PPC). They allow you to use advertising platforms, such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads, to get your content in front of people who are searching for relevant keywords. Search ads operate on a pay-per-click basis, which means that you only pay when your ad is clicked on.

Although PPC ads come at a cost, this type of online advertising is beneficial because you can control the messaging of your ads, track your campaign results, and set a maximum daily limit so you don’t go over budget.

Social advertising, also known as paid social ads, are ads on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. With social ads, you pay the social media platform to boost your posts, offers, or promotions to a targeted list, ensuring your content is seen by potential patients. By 2019, Facebook ad revenue is expected to exceed print ads.

Display ads appear in sections specifically reserved for paid advertising such as at the top or on the side of the web page.

Through Google Display Networks, display ads have a far reach across millions of websites and as a result, your ads can be seen by many potential patients.

Dental SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization and is crucial to attracting new patients.

Dental SEO helps those looking for a dentist find your website. Good dental SEO ensures your website ranks higher in search results, ensuring people discover it. This is important because while 51% of people search Google to find a dentist, few will click past the first page of results.

To help ensure your website appears on the first page, there are a few technical SEO foundations to have in place, such as a mobile-optimized website and fast page speeds.

After you set up a foundation, you’ll have to put effort into creating keyword-rich content to increase traffic and keep visitors on your website.

Below are some tips on optimizing your content to improve your dental SEO:

Research relevant keywords that a potential patient would search

Write relevant, high-quality, and keyword-focused content on a consistent cadence

Place keywords in the right places:

Page title

Meta description

URLs

Headlines

Body copy

Image alt tags

Another tactic to improve your search rankings is to enhance your local SEO. This is particularly valuable for dental clinics as patients will typically look for a dentist near them. 85% of searchers use the internet to find local businesses.

You can improve your local SEO by claiming your Google My Business profile and ensuring you have good reviews. There is nothing more powerful and persuasive than social proof to convince a prospect to become a patient.

Social media marketing

Social media opens a dialogue for you to talk directly to both current and potential patients. The healthcare industry is realizing that social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are a goldmine for discovering new patients, interacting with current patients, and gaining brand loyalty.

Social media is also an effective platform to share the content that you create, such as blog posts and videos. When you share relevant and useful content, you build trust and stay top of mind.

Instead of trying to use every social media platform under the sun and spreading yourself too thin, choose one or two to focus on. Facebook and Twitter are the most commonly used for dental clinics.

Email marketing

Email marketing involves sending targeted emails to a house list. Emails can include newsletters, promotions, birthday wishes, holiday greetings, and special announcements. Email marketing also includes sending appointment reminders to avoid late cancellations or no-shows. Reminders are very effective tactics to get patients who are due for a checkup to book appointments, keeping your dental schedule populated.

In today’s day and age, dental marketing strategies are far more effective than traditional marketing tactics and can lead to substantial growth and increased revenue for your dental clinic.

--

If you’ve made it this far, you are actively seeking to improve your practice. Schedule a meeting with one of our Account Executives to get up to speed on all the ways ClearDent can help you accomplish your goals.

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Improving patient retention for your dental clinic

When it comes to growing dental clinics, new patient acquisition is often what comes to mind but improving patient retention rates is just as important and crucial to the success of any dental clinic. Returning patients provide a greater return on investment. It costs 5 times more to obtain a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Happy patients also improve your bottom line as they are your best advocates, bringing you more business by referring family and friends.

On average, dental clinics have an attrition rate of 10-20%. While some factors like people relocating may be out of your control, there are certain patient retention strategies to help ensure they’re happy and continue to come back to your clinic - because at its core, improving patient retention is about keeping them happy.

Make it easy

Patients these days lead fast-paced lives and are used to ease and speed in everything they do. This means you have to ensure their dental experience is as convenient as possible for them. You can do this by:

1) Extending your office hours

It can be difficult for patients to make appointments during normal working hours. Consider opening your clinic earlier in the mornings or keeping it open later in the evenings to better accommodate their busy schedules.

2) Sending appointment reminders

Appointment reminders are often expected and appreciated by patients. It also helps you reduce late cancellations and no-shows. Many dental software systems allow you to send appointment reminders automatically.

[Set your clinic up with ClearDent to take advantage of ClearConnect, our patient messaging system. Book a ClearDent demo today]

3) Scheduling enough time

Research shows that longer wait times are negatively correlated with patient satisfaction, perception of the provider, and confidence in the quality of care. Be sure to properly optimize your dental schedule to allow sufficient time for each patient.

Build trust and create value

Part of improving patient retention is ensuring that they understand the value of your dental services and to do that, you need to build trust. Trust and value are gained when you take the time to explain everything very thoroughly and clearly, whether it’s the next steps in their treatment, why they need the treatment, or even explaining the procedure itself.

Some patients may think that they don’t need dental services because their teeth feel fine, it’s too expensive, or they’re scared. You can combat this by talking them through the x-rays and explaining why they need certain procedures, the proposed treatment plan, and the dangers if they don’t take action.

Or, if the patient is known to be uneasy about dental procedures, take extra care to reassure them, let them know what to expect, and guide them through the process to help settle their concerns.

Whether patients are feeling weary about the cost, process, or need, they’ll appreciate you addressing their concerns directly.

Ensure patients feel at ease

How patients feel while they’re at your clinic contributes a great deal to improving patient retention. When they feel at ease and comfortable, they’re less likely to go to another dental clinic.

1) Create a welcoming waiting room

While you should try to reduce the time patients spend waiting, you can at least ensure they’re comfortable. Some things to consider having in your waiting room include:

A TV

Comfy seating

Magazines

Water

Kids play area

2) Be friendly

Patients often don’t jump at the chance to go to the dentist; procedures like root canals or wisdom teeth extractions are not appointments that they look forward to. To cancel out potential negative connotations, make sure every patient feels welcome and that they’re more than just a number to you. Below are some tips to create a friendly environment:

Greet patients

Smile

Build rapport and make light conversation

Use the patient’s name in emails, by phone, or in person

Ask if they need to use the washroom before getting started

Introduce new team members they haven’t met yet

Ensure there is privacy if patients need to discuss sensitive or financial items

Say thanks and tell patients you look forward to seeing them next time

3) Empower them

Help empower patients to take responsibility for their dental health:

Give patients useful information such as proposed treatment plans and post-procedure instructions

Discuss the importance of getting regular checkups

Give patients a goodie bag of a toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and other tools so they can continue their oral care at home

Stay in touch

Of course, you always want to ensure that patients leave feeling happy and tended to but the patient experience doesn’t just end when they leave. Staying in touch and engaging with patients is another patient retention strategy.

1) Follow up

A quick phone call to check how a patient is feeling after a procedure can go a long way in improving patients’ perception of your clinic. This also gives you the chance to turn any bad experiences around, reducing the chance your patients will take their business elsewhere.

2) Monitor reviews

These days, if patients are not happy, there’s a high possibility they’ll write a review online. When you monitor reviews on your clinic, you have the opportunity to address negative comments and make it right. And since the communication is public, it also shows potential patients that you care about providing great service.

3) Send a newsletter

The healthcare industry has an average email open rate of 33%. This means it’s a prime opportunity to send patients useful content such as promos, clinic updates, or educational information about oral health.

4) Send seasonal greetings

Birthdays and holidays provide a chance to stay top of your patients’ mind. Send patients a birthday email or remind them to use their remaining insurance before the end of the year.

5) Patient surveys

Sending patient satisfaction surveys is a great way to gain valuable feedback that can improve your clinic. The results will uncover what’s working and what’s not, which you can then use to take action.

There isn’t one thing that you can do to improve patient retention overnight; it’s a combination of several patient retention strategies that everyone in your clinic can contribute towards

ClearDent can help you keep patients happy

Sign up for a demo today

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

How to Reduce No-Show Appointments and Short-Notice Cancellations at Your Dental Clinic

Many dental clinics are looking for ways to reduce no-show appointments and short-notice cancellations. Both are points of great concern for clinics as they leave gaps in a perfectly laid out dental schedule.

There are many ways that no-shows and late cancellations can hurt your clinic:

Wasted preparation time

Lost revenue

Lower productivity

Reduced morale

While it’s sometimes an inevitable part of running a dental clinic, there are ways to reduce these disruptions to your dental schedule, financial stability, and clinic flow.

Make it easy

Make it extremely easy for patients to visit you. These days, with all the technological advancements and our fast-paced culture, patients are looking for experiences that provide the most convenience and take the least amount of time and effort.

One reason that patients may cancel with short notice or not show up at all is that they struggle to fit a dental appointment in their busy day.

To combat this and cater to your patients, consider staying open later or on weekends, or even opening earlier. This flexibility makes it easier for patients to find a time that fits their schedule, meaning they’re more likely to show up.

Have a cancellation and no-show policy

A cancellation and no-show appointment policy outlines how much notice the patient needs to give in order to cancel (common notice period is 24-48 hours), and any ramifications that they may incur if they cancel after that time frame or simply don’t show up.

A dentist’s cancellation policy is crucial in helping customers understand the impact no-shows and last-minute cancellations have on your clinic.

It’s up to your team to decide whether there will be financial penalties. Some clinics don’t like to charge missed dentist appointment fees as they feel it’s not a good customer experience, and the fee doesn’t offset the lost cost - that’s why it’s so crucial to direct efforts into reducing no-show appointments and late cancellations.

Send reminders

This is a common tactic to reduce no-shows and cancellations. In fact, many patients have come to expect and rely on these appointment reminders. At the very least, your efforts to reduce no-show appointments and late cancellations should include sending reminders to patients.

Best practices for sending reminders:

Remind patients through their preferred method of communication: text, email, or phone

Send a reminder the week before and then another one the day before

Use an automated system to streamline the process

Have patients confirm the appointment or reschedule if need be

In addition to reminders, immediately call a patient who hasn’t shown up and reiterate your cancellation policy. If feasible, ask them if they can come for a shortened appointment, such as an exam without cleaning, and if not, reschedule the appointment.

[Learn how easy this can be with ClearDent - book a demo today]

Change mindsets

It’s important to always convey the value of dental service at every opportunity. For example, remind patients that regular cleanings improve overall oral health and prevent gum and heart disease. If they understand that their treatment is pertinent, they’ll be less likely to show up late or not at all.

Additionally, aim to ensure patients understand that when they make an appointment, that time has been specially reserved for them. When they understand that the clinic has set aside time, resources, and people to dedicate to them, they’ll make more of an effort to show up on time - this is especially important when it comes to larger treatments.

A good tactic is to get patients to confirm out loud when you’re scheduling the appointment. A verbal confirmation can significantly increase a patient’s likelihood of keeping their promise.

Words also have a big impact on changing mindsets too. When reminding patients of an upcoming appointment, make sure to include all the details while reminding them of the commitment they have made and are expected to uphold: “This is a reminder that your 1-hour appointment is scheduled for 2 pm this coming Friday. If you’re unable to make the appointment, please let us know at least 24 hours in advance.”

Build loyalty

While technology has made things more convenient, patients still crave that personal touch. When they feel connected to a business, they’re more likely to stay loyal. Here are some ways to show patients they’re appreciated and build patient loyalty:

Use their names and give them your full attention

Listen to their concerns and ask follow-up questions

Thank patients for showing up on time

Send birthday and holiday cards

Update patients on events, tips, or promotions

Relate to your patients and exercise sympathy - sometimes situations beyond their control come up. In that case, work with them to find the best alternative solution

When you make happy patients feel valued, you help reduce no-show appointments and late cancellations.

Keep a waiting list

In the event that a cancellation is unavoidable, keep a waiting list to help fill gaps in the schedule. This is a list of patients who have flexible schedules or are available last minute. Make sure to check frequently that this list is up-to-date.

How to deal with difficult patients

Despite your best efforts, there may still be patients who continuously fail to show up or are consistently late. In these cases, try the below tactics:

Request a deposit so they have a financial incentive to show up

Warn repeat offenders that if they miss another appointment, you will no longer be able to accommodate them as a patient

Consider cutting ties if they’ve accumulated a set number of no-shows in a year

Ready to reduce no-shows? ClearDent can help!

Book a demo today

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Top 4 Dental Scheduling Tips

Without proper dental scheduling, there are many ways that time can be wasted in a busy clinic. And when time is lost, revenue and morale take a hit too.

A full schedule does not always translate to productivity and profitability. The goal of an efficient schedule is to run your dental clinic smarter not harder, maximizing time and revenue. A well-managed appointment scheduling system allows you to anticipate, prevent, and react to unexpected changes while minimizing the impact to both your team and patients.

Everybody suffers with an ill-managed schedule:

Patients are kept waiting when appointments are overbooked or lagging behind

Potential revenue is lost when appointments are under-booked

Dentists are burnt out when there is no balance between types of appointments

The team feels stressed and overworked when they’re behind schedule

The role of a dental scheduler is not an easy one but we’ve got four dental scheduling tips that will help you avoid the problems above, run an efficient schedule, and optimize your clinic to its fullest potential.

Dental scheduling tip #1: Set goals for your clinic

Your dental clinic is a business like any other. Before you delve into the nitty-gritty of day-to-day scheduling, take a step back and look at the whole picture.

Ask yourself what is it that you’re trying to accomplish; it will help you set a production goal for your dental scheduling.

To create a profitable schedule, work backwards:

Determine how much profit you want to make in a year,

Then translate that to a monthly goal,

And get your daily average production goal by dividing your monthly goal by the total number of working days in a month.

This gives you an idea of how much production you should aim for in a day. Use this goal as you schedule a mix of routine and complex appointments. However, remember to be mindful of available resources, which leads us to our next tip.

[Keep track of your goals easily using ClearDent analytics, aka ClearInsight - book a demo today to learn more]

Dental scheduling tip #2: Schedule dental appointments strategically

When scheduling appointments, you have to consider factors such as available time slots, types of procedures, cancellations, and much more to ensure the mental, emotional, and financial health of your dental clinic and team. Use these tactics to strategically schedule appointments:

1) Organize your daily schedule in blocks to accomplish your goals

Designate time blocks for different types of procedures, such as:

Routine procedures: cleanings

High-ticket procedures: root canals, periodontal surgery, crowns, bridges

New patient appointments: consultations

Determine how long procedures take by timing each accurately for the most common length. Don’t forget to factor in time for the anesthetist, hygienist, and dental assistant. This exercise will give you a good idea of the average time needed for each procedure.

For example, complex restorative procedures can sometimes require 2 hours or even more. While on the other hand, new patient consultations don’t require as much time but are equally as important. You need to allocate enough time to a first appointment so the team can make a good first impression and build a relationship with the patient - new business is critical to growth.

For longer procedures, consider blocking off a specific time slot for that type of procedure each month so when a patient wants to book a longer procedure, there’s an appointment available.

Set up your schedule with blocks dedicated to each type of appointment in a way that helps you reach your production goal. Complexity and time involved for each procedure are both useful to know when scheduling appointments so that you can make sure to properly block off enough time for the procedure, as well as to let patients know how much time they need to take out of their schedule.

2) Stagger the schedule

Creating an effective schedule is almost like a puzzle. When scheduling appointments, always keep your team in mind. Complicated procedures can be mentally and physically draining for both dentists and dental assistants. Schedule procedures in a way that gives dentists and assistants some buffer time to recover by alternating routine and complex procedures.

3) Maximize the team’s time

Avoid dental assistants waiting for the dentist by scheduling their tasks separately. This way, both dental assistants and dentists can perform tasks concurrently, maximizing everyone’s time. In addition, try to schedule appointments so that the dentist is able to use at least two chairs at any given time, rotating between the patients.

Dental scheduling tip #3: Set up proper clinic practices

There are certain procedures you should have in place that allow you to organize your schedule more efficiently.

Keep detailed notes on your patients

Some appointments require more time depending on the patient, and detailed notes can help you plan for that. For example, a dental cleaning will take longer on someone with gum disease than one that does not or certain patients may be chatty, while others just want to get in and out. Maintaining notes about patients’ preferences and history can help you properly schedule sufficient time for each.

Automate patient recalls

Ensuring your patients return for regular check-ups helps keep your schedule populated. Using an automated patient recall system takes the onus off of you to keep track of when it’s time to reach you. You can set up reminders in the form of email, text, or phone call that automatically go out letting them know it’s time to reschedule.

Dental scheduling tip #4: Minimize patient cancellations

No-shows and last-minute cancellations are an unfortunate but inevitable part of running a dental clinic. However, there are ways to minimize its impact.

Send appointment reminders

Considering appointments are often made weeks, even months, in advance, relying on patients to remember their appointments is likely to lead to many unnecessary cancellations. Prevent this by sending reminders a couple weeks before the appointment date, asking patients to confirm the appointment and allowing them to reschedule if the time no longer works for them. Follow up with another reminder within 24 hours of the appointment if they haven’t confirmed.

These days, many dental solutions have patient communication tools that not only sends these appointment reminders automatically but allow you to communicate with your patients through their preferred method of contact, whether it’s by email or text.

Have an on-call list

A patient waiting list can help you fill gaps that last minute cancellations create in the schedule. There are a number of dental systems that help you maintain online waiting lists. These allow you to send out a mass notification of an opening to patients on that list, rather than having to go down the list and call each person. This instant communication significantly increases your chances of filling the slot.

Creating an efficient appointment scheduling system is a fine art, requiring carefully honed skills over time. These tips will help you schedule effectively and run a well-optimized dental clinic.

Let us show you how ClearDent can help you maximize your schedule.

Book a demo today

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Improve YOUR Practice: Set Your Course

This article uses information from the insightful book by the long-time dental consultant, Bianca Dornan at Practices Made Perfect. If you would like access to the entire ebook, click here to download it for free.

Staff at your practice (or any company) can be sorted into 3 basic categories; drivers, survivors, and hiders. 

Drivers are employees that do things for the good of the company, even if that means they have to do things the hard way. They look for ways to improve the company and are engaged and invested in the successes or failures of your practice. 

Survivors are those who want to do what’s best for your practice, but may not go out of their way to seek out ways to do things better. Survivors can be very helpful employees but likely need a little more motivation and coaching from their management.

Hiders are the underachievers of the bunch. These are people who are doing the bare minimum to complete their job, resist change and are unaffected by successes and failures of the practice. 

Fortunately, these labels are not for the people themselves, but rather for the level of engagement that those people are feeling. That means that if you feel like you have an office full of Hiders, there is still hope. There are changes you can make to convert those same people into Survivors or even Drivers. Likewise, if you are working with some Drivers, it’s not guaranteed that they will continue to be Drivers forever. In both circumstances, work needs to be done to maximize your employees.

The best way to push your employees away from being hiders, and towards being drivers is to make sure that they are invested in the direction that your practice is heading. The best way to do that is to be clear and concise with where the company is headed, and exactly what each person/team/role needs to accomplish. 

Setting your practice’s direction - When setting the direction of your practice, do not focus on what you want to do. Instead, focus on WHY your business is operating. Your employees and customers alike will be drawn to a ‘why’ much more than a ‘what’, making it easier for each group to engage with your company. When setting your ‘why’ don’t rush it. Think long and hard about a ‘why’ that truly and genuinely represents the reason your company is operating. This ‘why’ if used properly will emanate throughout your company from top to bottom. 

Once you have your ‘why’ get support by giving your staff goals that support your ‘why’. When they can see how their set of goals fits into the much larger direction of the company, they will feel like they are making meaningful contributions.

Setting your goals - The often repeated, and still the best way to set goals is to use the S.M.A.R.T. acronym. 

S - Specific. Ambiguity creates confusion.

M - Measurable. Success should be pass/fail with no grey area.

A - Attainable. Keep goals grounded in what’s possible.

R - Relevant. How does your goal relate to your ‘why’?

T - Timely. By what date/time should this goal be completed?

Creating a ‘why’ and setting SMART goals are certainly not the only ways to push all your employees towards becoming Drivers, but they will definitely help. Try implementing this at your practice and see what profound effects it could have on the way you operate.

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Improve YOUR Practice: Delegate Like a Pro

This article uses information from the insightful book by the long-time dental consultant, Bianca Dornan at Practices Made Perfect. If you would like access to the entire ebook, click here to download it for free.

In your dental practice, there are hundreds of tasks that can be done at any given time to improve the business. Knowing how to use concentration tricks to uncover these tasks is the first step. Having the capacity to accomplish them is the next one. 

Unfortunately, no one person can hope to have enough capacity to accomplish every business boosting tactic on a regular basis. You’re going to need help! Delegating these activities to the people within your practice accomplishes a number of things on top of the actual jobs. Things like;

Uncovering hidden talents of your employees

Increasing buy-in from your team around business growth

Adding accountability for task completion

Opportunity to learn and expand abilities

For many practice owners or office managers, the problem isn’t with the concept of delegating tasks, but rather the execution of it. Especially in cases where your practice has been operating in a certain way for a long while, people in the practice can often be, or appear to be, resistant when asked to take on more duties. To tackle this, Bianca Dornan has developed a 4 part strategy to asking for help.

Step 1: Begin the ask with an action statement and an objective. Make sure your action statement is specific enough that the direction of the task is clear. 

“Can you please help me with marketing. I would like to use social media [action] in order to get our name out to the community [objective].”

Step 2: Include key factors in order to further specify exactly what you’re looking for with this task, and make the results measurable.

“I would like to make sure that our personality shows through in every post [key factor]. I can commit to a budget of $100 per month from now until September [key factor]. My end goal is to have 150 new followers by September 30th [measurable goal].”

Step 3: Ask for their opinion on this new task. Perhaps they will need further clarification, training, or will have an objection. In any case, it’s important to get their feedback so that they feel included in the decision and buy-in to the results.

“What are your thoughts on this project?”

Step 4: Find out what they need in order to get started, and make a plan to provide them with it.

“What do you need from me in order to get going with this project?”

Every employee is different, and there may still be pushback. By using this guide to delegation, the stars in your office will become more obvious, and the weaker members that may require more managing/training will too. In either case, this exercise provides you with an opportunity to get your whole team moving towards better business outcomes.

Read the next article in this series: Set Your Course

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

How to Improve YOUR Practice: Identifying Opportunities

This article uses information from the insightful book by the long-time dental consultant, Bianca Dornan at Practices Made Perfect. If you would like access to the entire ebook, click here to download it for free.

When in the daily grind of running your practice, figuring out all the possible ways to improve your practice can feel overwhelming or even unproductive. You have enough on your plate, how can you be expected to set aside time to think about ways to add more work? If, however, you aspire to make the most out of your practice and possibly even expand it, brainstorming about what the issues are and how to address them is a necessary investment for you to make.

Figuring out which areas can be improved in your practice is so difficult is because you are concentrating on something that you spend all day working on, your dental practice. If there are glaring issues and inconveniences, you have probably made an effort to address them already. Here are four tried and true ways to unlock the type of thinking that you need to uncover hidden potential. (Hint: none of them involve concentrating harder)

Do something that is unrelated to your industry: You are consumed by the dental industry. And, within that industry, there may be people doing great things that you can apply to your practice as well. But, if you want to become truly inspired, it is useful to take a step outside dentistry and see the ways that other industries are dealing with issues and creating more possibilities; they may apply to you. Attend a lecture for an industry you’re not familiar with, visit and read about businesses in different industries, and talk to people who have had success in their careers! You never know what will spark an idea that you can use.

Find inspiration online: Inspiration doesn’t need to take a lot of your time. You can find an unlimited source of inspiration for any topic online. Create a repository of interesting or inspiring articles, websites, images, and videos that you find online. When you have that, you can revisit these things to get your mind out of its regular routine to see things from a different perspective.

Be creative: Working in a similar way to finding inspiration online, being creative on your own can also open up your thinking to new possibilities. It is said that problems often get solved only when you stop thinking about them. Doing something creative that is out of the ordinary will force your mind to concentrate on something new. Try something new, or revisit a hobby that you haven’t done in a while; anything that breaks the cycle that you may have fallen into.

Map out your thoughts: Sometimes what is stopping you from figuring out the solution is the sheer amount of information that the problem has. To combat that, there is a process called mind mapping. The idea is that you take a large issue and break it down into smaller, more manageable, chunks. Then, you take those chunks and break them down even further. With that completed, all the action items or individual issues can be identified and addressed easily. Give it a try. Canva has a really useful, free mind map creator.

Which of these ideas appeals most to you? Give it a try and see what kinds of amazing things you could be opening yourself up to. Read the next article in this series: Delegate Like A Pro

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

[power tip] Change your treatment plan status!

Trainers spend their days navigating systems for different practices and advising them on how to best use their practice management software. Not an easy job. Every practice has their own way of doing things for their own specific reasons, and it’s the trainer’s job to implement, teach, and sometimes create best practices that will fit with each specific set of needs. Because of this, when you ask a trainer for a great power tip, they often can’t give you a simple answer. Frustrating. However, Faryial, one of our amazing senior trainers, pinpointed a tip that she likes to give to every single office:

“Change your treatment plan status”

By that, she means that it’s not good enough to simply label your treatment plans as planned or pending. You can do your practice a world of good by adopting AFRX method. 

A - Accepted: Schedule the patient immediately.

F - Future: The patient wants the treatment, but something is preventing them from being able to move forward immediately, so put a task in your to-do list to follow up with them on a specific date.

X - Rejected by patient: The patient doesn’t want the proposed treatment. If the treatment is important, gently follow up with them to encourage them to approve it before the issue gets worse.

R - Rejected by insurance: Follow up with the patient only if their insurance status changes.

Label your treatment plan status with these and you can save your treatment coordinator a huge amount of time since they will now automatically know which patients to follow up with first (accepted), and how to approach patients that fall into one of the other categories.

This small change can make a big difference, and those are the best changes to make! Try implementing this at your practice and let us know what you think!

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

[trainer story] Finding over 10,000 incorrect payments

In his time before becoming a ClearDent trainer, Jim both trained practices on other dental software as well as worked in many dental offices. To say that he knows the ins and outs of running a dental practice would be an understatement. Recently, Jim reflected back on a time from a previous employer when he performed a routine check at a large dental practice he was training and found over 10,000 past payments that were incorrect.

That's right... over 10,000!

How could there possibly be that many errors, you ask? Well, it happened as a result of years of errors with backdating payments as a result of adjustments to things like procedure codes or providers associated with payments. This means that potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars had been misallocated, or uncollected over the years without anyone even noticing. 

Right about now, you're probably wondering if this could be happening at your practice, aren't you?

There are 2 ways that Jim can suggest to make sure your practice is safe:

First, you can do daily checks and balances to ensure everything is correct and adds up the way it should. Jim recommends that each dentist in your practice signs off on their daily reports so that if a discrepancy does slip through, you can look back to the confirmed records to see how.

Second, you can take advantage of the tools that ClearDent has in place to prevent exactly this. ClearDent's system is constantly scanning reports to look for ones that have been printed, changed, and not-reprinted. That way, when a change is made, it will point out that the change needs to be rectified before it can be considered complete. 

Protect your practice finances both now and in the future. Make sure your financial ducks are in a row.

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

[support story] How an issue with ScanX brought the best out of ClearDent’s support team

If you want to maintain your paperless practice, very few tools are more useful to you than an x-ray scanner. One of the most popular scanners to use, and the one that we at ClearDent recommend, is the ScanX by Air Techniques. Because of how important it is, when a Windows update crashed the ScanX integration within ClearDent, getting a solution ASAP was priority #1. This happened in April of this year, and ClearDent was instantly flooded with calls from customers who needed a solution.

The case was assigned to Henry, an experienced member of our support team, to determine the solution for our customers. He took the issue away to figure out exactly what was wrong and after some back and forth, he determined that it was Air Techniques, not ClearDent that was causing the issue. Air Techniques needed to provide customers with a new driver, a software update, and possibly a firmware update in order to be compatible with the newest version of Windows. Once that was complete, a simple integration check was all that was needed from ClearDent.

To recap; within 24 hours of the issue being reported, all of the following happened:

A senior member of our team was assigned to the case

He tracked down the origin of the problem in A DIFFERENT COMPANY

He documented the steps to correct the issue

He confirmed ClearDent’s involvement in the solution (a quick check)

The solution was communicated to affected customers

In most cases, the solution was available before the practice even realized there was a problem. Exceptional work from our support team!

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Over $500,000 in Support

Giving back to the community means a lot to us.

ClearDent has always been actively involved in providing support to Canadian charities, schools, and organizations. Since our humble beginnings over 15 years ago, ClearDent has been able to provide support to Canadian organizations totaling over half a million dollars. We are extremely proud of this.

Through our donations, we have been able to help organizations such as BC Cancer, BC Children’s Hospital, Rideau Community Health Services, University of Winnipeg, and the University of Saskatchewan.

We want to keep making a difference by providing our industry best software solution to deserving organizations throughout Canada, and we are looking for any help we can get. Do you work for, or know of, an organization that could benefit from ClearDent software for their dental offerings?

If you do, let us know! 

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Great support can make all the difference

ClearDent puts more effort and resources into supporting our customers than any other dental software company. It shows in what our customers are saying! Great support can make all the difference ClearDent puts more effort and resources into supporting our customers than any other dental software company. It shows in what our customers are saying!

"I am grateful ClearDent's support is as awesome as it is. No matter how complicated it seems on our end, support always pulls through with an answer. Thank you!" Stacey Bakker Dr. Barry Dextraze "I know nothing about computer programming or fixes and I learnt Cleardent on my own without training, your IT people are great" Dawna Hawkeswood Dr. Guy S. Girtel

"Your customer service team is always friendly and accommodating. They are great at resolving our issues immediately." Brittany Jensen Hello Dental

Great support is just one way that your practice will benefit from better software

Get more insights! 

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

Over 1 Million Charts Converted

Consider this – your patient data, whether in a database or on paper, is your practice's most valuable asset.  As explained by Henry Doyle, the managing broker at Al Heaps & Associates, the majority of a practice's value lies in the quality of their patient charts – not the building, not the equipment, but the data. When buying a practice, selling a practice, or upgrading your software, the treatment of your data conversion should be taken seriously!

Now, consider that ClearDent has successfully converted millions of patient charts into our software over the past 15 years. Check out our pain-free process: 

First, we analyse your data. No matter what form it’s in, we’ve seen it before.  

Competitor’s program - Yep. 

Paper charts - Of course! 

Obsolete software - Many times. 

Recovery of botched conversions - Unfortunately, yes.

We perform an analysis before we begin so we have a full picture of what you have, how we can access it, and the best way to transfer it to ClearDent. 

Second, we map your data. We take every piece of data you have and determine the best place within our software to store it. This is where ClearDent differs from other data conversion options.  We’ve seen others offer cheap, sometimes even free, data conversion by cutting corners and dumping all your information into the notes field. While technically the data is transferred, you need your data in the right places or it will be unusable. 

At the completion of the mapping stage, our Implementation Specialists will go over the mapping plan with you to ensure you have a full understanding and are happy with the plan we’ve put together.

Third, we convert your data. With our plan in place, all that’s left to do is to execute. When complete, your data will be ready for you just as we planned, and you will be able to access it and start using your new software immediately.

ClearDent is proud to say that, after thousands of conversions and millions of charts, we have never failed a single conversion. Quality requires investment, so data conversion is something that you won’t want to award to the cheapest option. 

ClearDent makes transitioning to your forever software easy! If you're looking for a change in practice management that can provide real benefits, take a moment to book a demo with ClearDent or come visit us at ASM18. You won’t regret it!

[cleardent-dental-marketing]

5 Reasons To Go Paperless At ASM18 

The testing is over and the results are in; running your practice paperlessly has been shown to benefit your practice both now and in the future. If you've been waiting to look into these benefits, then this post will present 5 valid reasons that will make you realize how much there is to gain, and how little there is to lose. And, if you decide the time is now, ASM18 is the best time to do it.

Enough talk, let's get into the benefits! 

Efficiency - everything is within reach at all times when you are working in a paperless system. No running back and forth to speak to the front desk or get patient files. Whatever you add to the chart will automatically be available to your front desk as a claim before your patient even leaves the chair.

More Revenue - several features built into the right paperless software solution garner higher revenue:

Find patients - patient communication tools allow you to keep your schedule full by searching for and sending messages to patients with overdue recall appointments or stalled treatment plans.

Keep patients - once patients are in the schedule, automated appointment reminders and confirmations will drastically reduce no-shows and cancellations.

Bill patients - finally, when the time comes for payment, instant insurance confirmations allow you to collect the correct amount from every patient, even in complicated multi-insurance situations.

With all the time saved by not having to manually do these tasks, a lot more attention can be paid to attracting new patients and creating more value for existing patients.

Practice Value – when looking to buy a new practice or sell your current practice, a modern dental software will create value unlike any piece of equipment can. The real value of a practice is in their list of active patients, which can easily be found in a software like ClearDent. And, unlike any other investment that you make in your practice, your investment in software will never depreciate.

Disaster Prevention - floods, fires, and burglaries happen to dental practices every day. If you store all your information on paper charts, damage to your practice could mean losing 100% of the records and documents that you've been compiling for years. With digital charts and records, however, backing up your information is easy. And, with your information properly backed up, even if your practice is damaged beyond repair, the most valuable part of your practice, the patient data, can be completely recovered in as little as 10 minutes.

Reputation - the features of a paperless solution will dramatically improve the perception of your practice by improving the patient experience. Automated appointment reminders/confirmations, improved in-practice patient flow, and faster treatment times are all benefits that your patients will notice and appreciate. It's amazing how fast the word can spread when you are able to impress your patients! 

All of the information in this top 5 list is based on the features and functions of ClearDent. It's time to look more seriously at going paperless. Receive our ASM18 promotion when you Book a demo with ClearDent before April 30.