“We had a great time at ATV last week! As you know we’ve been working hard to stay at and above our goal but things have been a bit slower the last couple of cycles.
Yesterday I had a WONDERFUL call from one of our patients that had been considering a large treatment. I saw her name pop up on our caller ID but was on the line with another patient at the time. While this patient did not leave a message I called her right back to see if I could be of any help. Happily, she told me she was ready to schedule her treatment and wanted to prepay for the entire amount (we had discussed outside funding and other options but she chose to “remodel her house and herself at the same time” and got a home equity loan to finance it all).
Then came the challenge, how could we get this case scheduled in this cycle? We only had a couple of days to choose from because we needed the entire morning and we didn’t WANT to rearrange other patients if we could avoid it. The other “glitch” was whitening the patient’s teeth and getting the color for the veneers. If we had to wait to whiten we would not be able to get the treatment started this cycle.
The team began to brain storm and we presented to Dr. Hennington working a different process than we normally do. Usually we would take impressions at one appointment, bring her back to whiten at another, wait a couple of weeks to prep the veneers and then place the permanent veneers a couple of weeks after that. We didn’t want to wait that long to get the production scheduled and the patient prepay but not get to enjoy any change for several weeks.
Since we are placing 12 anterior veneers (6 upper and lower each) we suggested to Doc we take impressions for wax-up today and begin prepping the teeth on Thursday. We spoke with the lab to see how quickly we could get that back. Our awesome lab is picking up the impressions this morning and will have the wax-up returned tomorrow afternoon. We will then show the patient on Thursday morning when she returns to get her prep and temp veneers placed. We will also give her trays to whiten at home at that time. This will allow the patient to begin the treatment, whiten and the lab will finalize the shade of the veneers 7 days prior to placement!
When we discussed this with Dr. Hennington his first concern was giving the patient the best dental treatment. That’s always foremost in his mind. After some discussion we realized we can definitely meet the patient’s goal of getting this treatment and our goal for the cycle if we just brought some enthusiasm to the process and did things a little differently.
Here’s one of the greatest parts. As Dr. H and I were talking about this later he mentioned that he appreciates this kind of discussion and feedback because we have patterns of thinking and working that have been effective but he appreciates when we challenge those with ideas that benefit the patient and the bottom line. It is always easy to say, “this is how we do it, this is how we’ve done it, this is how it has to be done”. It’s much tougher to say “how can we make this happen?” Dr. Hennington has allowed us the freedom to bring an idea to the table with varying ideas of how to address it and work together as a team to do things differently.
We don’t have to try to defend “the way things have always been done”! That’s probably the greatest paradigm shift any of us can face in our lives.
The great part for the patient is she will see a significant amount of treatment this week with her temporary veneers in place rather than a long appointment to whiten and then waiting for 2-3 weeks before beginning treatment. We also let the patient know that we had already notified our lab that we would be customizing her shade so not only would she improve the function of her teeth but we would make certain the appearance was awesome, too! (She was so grateful that we were going the extra mile for her)
The great part for us is this equated to over $17,250 in prepayment, $9,000 in production this cycle and $9,000 in the next cycle and the patient will leave this week with temporary veneers that will look as good as the permanent veneers!!! THIS IS THE FUN PART!!!
Thanks for all you do and for the Brady Group’s guidance that has led us to this place.”
Alanna Enriquez, Office Administrator
Trade Winds Dental, P.A.
Dr. David Hennigton’s office
Georgetown, TX
Brady Group LLC
Coaching Dentists and Their Teams to Happiness 