Every dentist wants to increase patient visits. In our current economic environment, more and more patients are opting for insurance plans with higher deductibles. This helps to keep their insurance rates lower, but the ugly side effect is that those patients put off visits to keep out-of-pocket expenses at a minimum, too.
Short of solving the economic problems of the world, how do you overcome this phenomenon? How do you drive in more patient visits?
Outreach and education can help. One thing we know from human nature is that most people have a habit of avoiding pain. This includes avoiding all thoughts of dental visits until it becomes impossible to ignore them. Part of your outreach might include a colorful cartoon to explain how waiting will only create more pain and problems. And it could end up being more expensive in the long run. Tell them how a simple cavity could escalate into the need for a more costly root canal.
For some of your patients, the “stick” of comparative pain may not work; you may need to entice them with more “carrot” of pleasure. For instance, make it easy for your patients to pay for their visits on a monthly payment plan.
Another option might be to barter your services. Say, for example, that you need electrical work for your office or home and your patient is an electrician. One endodontist in California liked his patient’s artwork so much, he gave the client a hefty discount in exchange for one of their paintings.
They key, here, is to look at the problem from the viewpoint of the patient. How can you decrease their pain while increasing their pleasure?
From the standpoint of bartering, consider joining or establishing a barter co-op in your area. If you don’t need electrical work, but need help with a finicky computer system, perhaps some other business in your area needs your electrician patient’s help at the same time that they have a computer expert customer who could fulfill your needs. A barter swap could extend your reach. Such creative, out-of-the-box thinking could keep your patients coming more often, because the hurdles are no longer so high. They understand more completely the risks of putting off a needed visit. And they see the benefits of timely visits.
Share this article with your staff. Have a brainstorming session with them to see what wild ideas come to their minds. Then use those “wild” ideas as catalysts to help your team come up with something which your dental office can implement.
If you’re not familiar with the proper steps in good brainstorming, the following, brief overview can help.
The goal of brainstorming is to come up with good ideas that might not otherwise have been obvious or even possible to imagine. The first phase of good brainstorming involves a “shotgun” free-for-all of ideas. One of your staff should take notes or perhaps record the audio for later transcription. During this phase, criticism is forbidden. Simply start with the first word or phrase that comes to mind. Any and all ideas are welcome, no matter how crazy, irrelevant or non sequitur they may seem.
After two or three minutes of craziness, take your list of words and review them, thoughtfully and with critical thinking. But be sure to throw in a good measure of creative fun, too. Like Albert Einstein once said, imagination is more important than knowledge. Such creativity can take you places you never thought possible. While reviewing your list of “crazy” words, you might ask for each term or phrase, “If this word were the key to solving this problem, what would that solution look like?” From this second phase discussion, you achieve a list of ideas. Again, keep criticism out of the discussion. Creativity is sometimes timid and needs to be nurtured. Criticism comes later.
The third and final phase of brainstorming is where the criticism and discussion takes over. Ask, “How could this idea work? What would it take?”
Brainstorming is a tool. It requires a degree of skill. It can be done in a group or as a solitary exercise. Out of such brainstorming, great ideas are possible, especially if you expect and allow the best to happen. And when increasing dental patient visits is the desired outcome, everyone wins.
