Aspire2d's Basics Series: Track Your Incomplete Treatment

In this series we'll offer up practical and effective techniques to improve and develop all the basics involved in the A-Z of a purposeful, productive dental practice focused on creating the ultimate customer service culture.

What is Incomplete Treatment?

Incomplete treatment refers to the dental treatment that has been proposed by the dentist based on their diagnosis and clinical findings and that the patient has yet to schedule an appointment to complete it.

Incomplete treatment is any diagnosed such as examination, cleaning, fillings, crowns etc. It is treatment that is required to restore the patient back to 100% health and function. Any dental service that is considered optional, such as purely cosmetic work, is not classified as incomplete if the patient does not go ahead with it.

Why don't patients schedule?

Often patients who do not see the value or do not understand the treatment recommended, do not schedule.

A quick note on this:  This is the responsibility of the dentist.  Your Front Desk team and your Dental Assistants are there to support you and further problem solve obstacles to your patients saying YES but they are certainly not the people ultimately responsible for case acceptance.  Dentists really need to ensure they have the skills to instil value in treatment and to understand and meet their patient's needs and wants - concerns and motivations.

Don't let them slip between the cracks.

Never let a patient walk out of your practice without either of these two things happening:

One. An appointment is scheduled for the future - whether it is the preventive care (recall), hygiene or next visit on the treatment plan.

It's good practice to encourage scheduling the recall now for six months time - for the health of your hygiene/preventive program and also to keep the patient IN the system and have another opportunity to discuss or review for treatment planned but not completed.

Two. A follow-up date to call the patient to schedule the incomplete treatment.

Log the incomplete treatment to be followed up.  Have a paper or electronic log sheet to track these patients.  Whenever a patient does not schedule (unless they decline the treatment outright), their name, the treatment details and a follow-up call date is entered on the log. So simple.

The key to this is to actually follow-up these patients personally, with a phone call.

Avoid sending letters. Letters are generally ineffective and a lost opportunity to problem solve with patients  the obstacles to proceeding with treatment.  Personal contact means you can also explain the benefits of completing treatment now to encourage patients to schedule today and not to put it off any longer. Who wants to wait around for patients to respond to a letter?

Make that phone call.

Before the patient leaves your practice, make a time to call them to schedule the appointment. It can be next week, in a fortnight, one month or even 3 months depending on the situation.

If they're not keen (and you haven't been able to ascertain why) "check in" with them in a few weeks.  Whatever happens, gently but confidently say to the patient "we'll give you a call in .... and we'll see where you're at".  Unless they protest (then you know you have a real problem) go ahead and set a date for your Front Desk team to call them.

Whenever the date, make a note on the log.

A great system we use is to have a Front Desk Reminders column alongside your dentists' appointment columns on your computer system. Each incomplete treatment follow-up call gets entered as a 'to-do' on the date it was agreed to happen.  When the call is made, you check off it off as complete.  If it wasn't done or a message was left, you copy and paste it to the next day.  If the patient still isn't ready to commit, another follow-up date is made.

Update the log and always enter contact notes in the patient's file.

Establish Accountability.

If it's not important to you as the business owner, no one else is going to care.  Therefore, make sure your Front Desk team is fully accountable for maintaining the log and the follow-up calls.  Track and analyse your results.  Appreciate (and reward) your team for the effort they're putting in to convert these patients

Back Up Plan

Always motivate the patient to return for preventive care/recall when they're due even if they are not ready to schedule for treatment.  As mentioned earlier, it's a great idea to have the patient in the practice for a recall so the dentist can have another opportunity to discuss the incomplete treatment.

Still not Converting?

If patients still aren't scheduling, you have to look at your own communication skills as a dentist as well as the verbal skills of your Front Desk team.  The future production from these valuable patients is at risk.  You and your team should seek out the training you need to get this right.