3 Bad Habits Your Dental Practice Should Avoid

Dental practices that employ good habits will find that they have more return patients, days that run more smoothly, and higher revenue. However, some practices struggle, and this struggle can usually be traced back to bad habits that are totally avoidable! A few of these habits with easy fixes are:

1. Avoid speaking to your patients in dental lingo: This is a quick way to confuse and overwhelm your patients. Instead, take a little extra time to explain things in simpler language, and you’ll find more of your patients will schedule time for treatments you recommend (and they can understand)! 
2. Crown buildup on treatment plans: The main reason we find that build ups aren’t being billed out is that they aren’t being included on the treatment plans. Unless you’re sure a build up isn’t needed, always include it on the treatment plan and make sure your dental team is double-checking with you regarding build ups whenever a crown is diagnosed.
3. Be careful how you deal with dental emergencies: Patients who call in with dental emergencies are most often put in the schedule whenever there is an open operatory. This is a bad habit, as it doesn’t take into account whether or not the dentist has enough time to treat the patient. If he or she doesn’t have time, the entire practice will be running behind schedule for the rest of the day, causing every scheduled patient to sit in the waiting room for long periods of time. A better way to handle this issue is to block out times each week for emergencies, either before or after lunch or at the end of the day. This way, you’ll be able to accommodate emergency patients without negatively affecting scheduled patients.

Once you have good habits in place, they’ll be just as difficult to break as the bad habits! For more tips on how to employ better habits in your dental practice, please call CTC National to speak to a dental consultant!