It's All About Patients
Hygiene Production
Do you know what your patients want?
Hygiene drives the growth of a practice. The rewards of doing good hygiene are great, but there are pitfalls. It’s a tough job. Patients return when they get what they want. Practices are built--and grow--based on giving patients what they want. What’s important to be clear on right off the top is that what patients want and what we think they want can be different. For instance, while it’s true that you have a clear idea of what a good cleaning is, it can’t be the single goal of the visit in your mind. Giving the patient what they want must be the paramount goal. Here are two things we know for sure from customer data: 1)Patients don’t want to be in the chair more than 52 minutes. 2)Patients, reasonably enough, absolutely don’t want to be hurt. So the goal is to do what we can do to perform thorough hygiene painlessly and comfortably for the patient within 52 minutes. In order to painlessly, comfortably perform hygiene within 52 minutes, you must build a connection and trust through good Face-to-Face that allows you and the patient to both understand at all times what is happening and how well you are performing with respect to their needs, wants, and comfort. Without a trusting relationship, the patient will not be comfortable freely sharing this feedback, and you will not be able to care for them properly, within their comfort zone, and in such a way that causes them to return to you for care. If a patient is uncomfortable, hurt, or stuck in the chair too long, you will lose them. If you have the rare patient who expects and will tolerate some pain in exchange for extra cleaning attention, you need to know that for a fact before you perform it. Otherwise, since this will not usually be the case, that patient will simply and silently elect never to return to the practice. Things like soft tissue management are performed with the intention to help and care for gums, but it hurts patients, and they don’t want it. To be unaware of this and things of this nature is how practices lose patients due to bad hygiene experiences.