Jen (00:02.633)
Hi everyone, I’m Jen, the marketing specialist here at Kickstart Dental. Today I’m here with Dr. Lee Harris with Harris Dental Solutions. Dr. Harris has been on the show in the past, but a quick background is that Dr. Lee Harris is a dentist educator and a practice growth expert who’s helped countless practices boost productivity, build stronger teams and turn their goals into reality.
Whether you’re a new grad or seasoned dentist, Dr. Harris definitely has the insights to help you level up your practice. Today, Dr. Harris is here to talk about what happens after case acceptance. How does a practice keep patients engaged so that they complete their treatment plans? Now, this is a real struggle for a lot of dentists. Now, Dr. Harris, why does this even happen in the first place?
Lee Harris DDS (00:53.228)
You know, dentists don’t always follow through. I think that case acceptance has three things. You have to have the right systems. You have to follow through and you have to set clear expectations of what treatment is. And if you don’t do that, the patient doesn’t get engaged. They just lose interest and they don’t finish. So you have to constantly remind them.
urgency helps, that they know that if they’re going to have consequences if they don’t finish treatment, those kinds of things.
Jen (01:32.733)
Right, no exactly, and a lot of that sounds like just straight up education. How much of this is related to patient education versus patient experience versus practice follow-up?
Lee Harris DDS (01:45.324)
Well, I think you constantly have to be educating your patient. We assume as dentists that the patient knows what you’re going to be doing. But if you use words like, we’re going to do a root canal, they may not know what that is. So using language that patients can understand when you’re educating them helps. I’m going to clean out all the bacteria and infection that’s in the tooth. We’re going to fill it with an inert material. And then we’re going to build something that will last you for some years to come.
Those are the kinds of things that you can say. I try and tell them it’s like building a house. You have to maybe get rid of some of the, demolish some of the old stuff first, put up some new walls, and then put a roof on the house so that you can live comfortably. Kind of, you know, make it analogous to something that a patient can understand.
Jen (02:33.387)
know that makes a lot of sense kind of educating them what happens before, during, and after so that they know what’s going on. Now what’s the first conversation after a patient accepts a case that sets them up for success?
Lee Harris DDS (02:46.766)
Well, the first thing I try and do is tell them that, you know, there might be, dentists kind of overwhelm patients with a treatment plan. So there might be eight or 10 things on that treatment plan that the patient needs to do, but I try and break it down into sort of the bite-sized pieces so that they can understand it. So I use a phrase all the time when I consult with dentists and I say, urgent, nice to have.
And so we’ll break down the treatment and says, you know, Mrs. So-and-so, let’s do this first. This is the most urgent need you have. Let’s get that taken care of. Put it in the context of the whole plan. Then there’s some other things that we need to do. And then at the end, we’ll worry about those cosmetics, those nice to have things. And you got to constantly remind the patient that those are the kinds of things they need to worry about. And then also, as I mentioned before, consequences are really important. So
If you’re in the middle of a treatment, you tell them the consequence is not following through and completing it. So breaking it down, it also can help them with the barrier, the biggest barrier being finances, usually. And if you break it down into smaller pieces, they can handle it financially better as well.
Jen (04:06.227)
Right, yeah, no, really prioritizing what we need to fix now, what’s more cosmetic, but is nice to have and kind of breaking that all down. That’s a great approach. Now, how do you approach patients who delay or resist treatment for financial time or fear related reasons? Kind of branching off what you’ve done.
Lee Harris DDS (04:24.002)
Well, yeah, in my experience, if postponing treatment always costs more in the end. So I try and educate patients about that. if you miss a cell and so this cavity is pretty deep. Now, if we handle it now, we may be able to just need a filling or an inlay. But if we wait, then it might need that root canal. might be the decay might get into the nerve of the tooth. And then it’s going to be a whole lot more costly for you. And you may need a crown.
Let’s handle it now while we can manage the expense and it won’t be so much. The other thing is, that don’t, you know, if you’ve got a big treatment plan and it’s five or $6,000, don’t try and make, sometimes you’re trying to make a financial arrangement for the whole thing. You know, there’s lots of third party financing out there, but sometimes just get your foot in the door. And I, by that, I mean, worry about the first thing and just,
finance that. And so if it’s a tooth that’s really badly broken down and that one tooth needs a crown, then let’s just talk about the crown now. And that builds trust with the patient. Once the patient trusts you and they feel better and more comfortable with you, then you can worry about the whole plan rather than just a part of the plan.
Jen (05:47.825)
Exactly, just getting that first thing under their belt, that trust factor is definitely huge in all of this. Now, as far as measuring success as a practice, what metrics should practices be paying attention to when it comes to all of this?
Lee Harris DDS (06:02.208)
Okay, so I have a series of iQualum KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. It’s a corporate term that I use it for practices. And so I have a lot of key performance indicators that practices should use. So I measure production per day, I measure production per hour, I measure production by provider, I measure production and collections by office. So there’s a variety of things we wanna know.
You know, and you need to, in order to, you measure this stuff, but you need to measure it against a goal. You have to have something in mind, which you’re going to grow your practice. So if I’m doing $3,000 a day, which I don’t think is very much, then maybe we should shoot for $5,000 a day. And that sets up how I arrange my appointment book so I can get to that $5,000 a day. And so these are the kinds of things we put together in practice. We establish the goals.
We establish the metrics to see how we measure them. And the other thing is, as we’re talking about treatment plans, let’s say a doctor has 20 new patients in a month, but he also has about 40 recalls coming in in a month. So there’s really 50 or 60 people that he’s presenting a plan to. And I have a treatment coordinator in every office and they measure the diagnosis that they made and how much they actually sold what they
and we use those tracking logs. We track every one of them and that allows the treatment coordinators to follow up on cases that might have been not accepted at all or only partially accepted. If you don’t track it, you can’t measure it. You have to be able to track something, you’re measuring something, you have to track it or you can’t make any changes good or bad.
Jen (07:55.975)
Right. Yeah, no, I absolutely love that kind of finding that goal and reverse engineering it in your workflow so that you do end up hitting that goal. I really, really like that.
Lee Harris DDS (08:03.982)
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there.
Jen (08:08.379)
Exactly. No, I love it. Now going off your expertise here, what is one thing a practice could implement this week that would make the biggest difference in patient up follow through?
Lee Harris DDS (08:20.878)
You know, I use the rule of twos. Other guys have done the same thing too. So for every, some people use threes, I use twos. That means a patient comes in today, the first thing I do when they walk in the door is I make their appointment, their next appointment today. Before they even go back to see the dentist or the hygienist, I make their next appointment. Second thing I do is I, after their appointment, they already have one,
I follow up in two days. How did your visit go? Is there any concerns that you might have? Was everything okay? Was there any misunderstandings? Then I follow up again in two weeks. If they haven’t made another appointment or if they missed an appointment, I follow up in two weeks. What’s going on? Can I help you make an appointment? Can I help you understand something? Is there something going wrong? And then again, if they still haven’t, that tracking log I use,
If they still haven’t made an appointment, follow up again in two months. So I have two days, two weeks, two months. If I’ve contacted them three times and they’ve, they’ve, they’re, they’re not interested. So then I send them a letter and I, the letter talks about their oral health. It doesn’t talk about anything else. It talks about your, the mouth is a part of your body. If you’re not taking care of your mouth and the teeth, it’s going to affect the rest of your body.
So give us a call, let us know how we can help you out. And if they don’t respond to that, I’m done. You know, you can’t beat a dead horse. You can try all you can. So the rule of twos followed by a letter, that’s how I kind of do
Jen (10:02.867)
Yeah, no, I really like implementing that model that sounds really, really good. Now, Dr. Harris, thank you so much for sharing your insights today. There’s so much that you shared that dental practices can immediately implement into their workflows and increase completed treatment plans. Dr. Harris, I truly appreciate you coming back on. You always give away so much value to our audience.
And everyone, thank you for listening. Thank you so much for tuning into the No BS Dental Growth Podcast. I’m Jen and we’ll see you in the next episode.
Lee Harris DDS (10:35.618)
Thanks, Jen.
