When Handling Phone Inquiries, Less is More
The idea that “time is money” is a principle that most doctors attempt to incorporate into all operational areas of the practice, and rightfully so: finding ways to reduce the amount of time spent in managing patient flow translates into improved production across the board. At the same time, practices often fail to recognize, or perhaps ignore, the fact that this same need […]
Is a Tour of Your Practice Worth the Time?
When conducting training with practices, I often ask the staff this question: Does your practice take visitors on a tour of your facility? The response was the one I usually get: “no, but we used to”. Which begs the question: is the practice tour worth the trouble? The answer is a no-brainer. Absolutely – but doing it […]
How Your Approach to Scheduling Affects Case Acceptance
In my experience, most practices approach the issue of scheduling new patient consultations in one of two fundamental ways: they either sprinkle them into the schedule along with the other daily activities inherent in running the practice, or they set aside time in the schedule for this specific purpose while doing the same for work […]
How to Secure the New Patient Appointment
When you are on the phone with a caller, the person calling always begins the conversation with questions. Some of the more common questions you will have presented to you on the phone are: How much does it cost? (We will address how to handle this in Chapter 5) What happens at the visit? Is […]
How to Properly Take a Message
In most practices, voice mail is used to provide callers with the ability to leave messages for unavailable staff members. However, there are times, such as those involving urgency, when it is necessary to short-circuit the normal voice mail system and take down and relay a message directly to someone in the practice. In those […]
How to Prevent New Patient No-Shows
One number that recently caught our attention in a practice’s collected data – and this one that is likely to be representative of yours, as well – was the difference in frequency that existed between missed appointments that occur with NP consultations vs. those that occurred with existing patients. Most practices do not track these two sets of […]
How to Obtain Insurance Information
During the course of her meetings with two separate visiting families, a Treatment Coordinator for whom I reviewed recorded consults this past week asked the following questions of both visitors: “Do you have any insurance?” “Do you know if it covers orthodontics?” This is a common occurrence in many new-patient consultations, and whenever it occurs, I […]
How to Improve Patient Communication at the Front Desk
Our ground-breaking, hands-on approach to improving the front desk area of your practice has produced some very interesting data about how your phones are being answered – and where the biggest shortfalls are in the process of handling incoming calls. One specific item of concern, and the subject of this article, is inbound calls that last […]
Medicaid and Orthodontic Case Acceptance
In the United States, Medicaid is a benefit that is generally provided to families of limited financial means to obtain health care services that they might not be otherwise able to afford. (For those of you in other countries where we work, you have similar programs). Some of you accept Medicaid from patients as a […]
How the Front Desk Affects Case Acceptance
Your job of your front desk team is not simply to greet callers and visitors warmly. Being pleasant is important, but it is a personality trait, not a skill. If you just want to train your team in the basics of communicating – how to answer the phone properly, how to put people on hold, […]