Increasing dental case acceptance: Beaking down clinical barriers for patients

 

As dentists, we are constantly and unwittingly putting barriers in front of our patients, preventing them from getting the treatment they want and need. I believe there are four key barriers that need to be broken down in order to experience explosive growth in a dental practice: informational, financial, communication, and clinical. This article will focus on breaking down clinical barriers and explain why they are holding you back from reaching your practice’s true potential.

First, let’s imagine this scenario:

It’s Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. You have a patient in the chair with excruciating pain on the lower right side. You see deep fillings on Nos. 29 and 30. You suspect one tooth needs a root canal, but you are unsure which one. You tap on a few teeth and do a cold test. You determine No. 29 is necrotic. But because you don’t do much endo, you reach for the referral pad and send the patient to an endodontist who can see the patient tomorrow morning. The patient leaves, and you move on to your next patient.

This is how it happens from our point of view. Now, let’s stop and think about how this same situation occurred from the patient’s perspective.

The patient is up all night in pain. He has to take the day off from work to get his tooth fixed. The pain affects more than just his mouth - it impacts his relationships. It hinders him from being the employee, parent, and spouse he wants to be. The dentist cannot fully help him. He will have to live with another full day of pain and another sleepless night. He will have to call into work again tomorrow. Most importantly, he will wonder why his dentist couldn’t just do the root canal like other dentists do.

In this scenario, you have unknowingly put up a “clinical barrier” for your patient, causing him to lose trust in you as a provider. Could things have gone differently? What if there was a system available to make endodontics simple and predictable? What if you were able to do that root canal Monday morning, along with the buildup and crown prep the same day? How would that make you look in the eyes of your patient? How much trust would be built by getting him out of pain? How profitable would it be for your business to do the same-day treatment?