The Importance Of A Prompt Follow-Up

We’ve all be in situations where we needed to ask a question or voice a concern to a vendor or a healthcare provider – how did your situations vary in circumstances where they promptly called you back to answer your question or address your concern, versus the times you never heard back? Obviously we think much more highly of a person or a place of business that takes us seriously. The same goes for your patients.

We can address this issue with two examples. First, let’s say a patient calls the front office to ask a question regarding his bill and your front office staff needs to call his insurance provider to figure out the answer. The issue becomes your team’s ability to prioritize the patient’s question along with everything else they need to do for the day.

The first thing they’d need to do is adjust their to-do list to fit the patient’s needs in with the needs of the practice. Your dental service doesn’t begin and end in the dentist chair, but extends out to how professionally and how promptly any concerns are addressed. Your front office should make it a priority to figure out the issue and get back to the patient as quickly as possible. In return, he’ll trust your practice and continue seeing you.

In the second scenario, you’ve placed a filling or a crown and sent your patient home. But once the anesthetic wears off, your patient realizes the new crown is a little high and his bite doesn’t feel quite right. Many times, a patient will assume that this problem will correct itself or go away, but it doesn’t. So, as time goes on, your patient’s mouth is uncomfortable and he loses trust in your practice.

This problem can be avoided by a simple phone call to your patients a day or two after treatment to make sure everything feels ok. If the patient mentions that something doesn’t feel right, you can schedule an appointment to fix the problem and regain their trust.

We’ve found that any extra effort extended to your patients in the form of prompt follow-up will pay for itself many times over. For help with this issue or any other customer service concerns, please contact CTC National to speak with a skilled dental consultant.