Hey my friends! Hopefully you have started reaching out to patients who have unscheduled treatment and remaining dental benefits this year. Remember to use this process during the time of the year where your most popular dental plans renew the patient benefits. When I lived in Washington state, it was July for Boeing patients, October for school districts and January for all others. For my Boeing patients, I would start my active campaigns in April. This also worked well because a lot of patients were getting their tax refunds back and were ready to schedule.
Another thing I thought of this week is that you can block out a few more perfect day blocks for the month of December for those patients who will procrastinate. You know, the patient who calls on December 15 and wants to get that crown completed before he or she loses benefits. This always happened in my office and it was hard to turn patients away, so I finally got smart and reserved more time for these procrastinators.
You can do this by just using some random events in the appointment book or, if you are using Perfect Day Scheduling, you can add more blocks in the setup. One thing you could do is name them “EOY” for End of Year in case you want to remove them later.
When I was working in a practice, I knew that I was in control of my schedule. I had to put in the work to have a full and productive schedule. You cannot rely on patients to respond to text messages and random email campaigns to schedule their recommended treatment. Our patients need to be nurtured and educated about the benefits of scheduling treatment. I am assuming you accepted a career in the dental industry to help people improve their oral health and overall health. Now is your chance to improve their oral health and help them save money.
