External marketing efforts are certainly necessary to keep new patients flowing to the practice, but it is in your existing patient base that you have the best chances of getting case acceptance. Especially those patients that are big fans of your practice.

These patients are what I call the “low hanging fruit”, and if it wasn’t for patients like these, a lot of practices would be starving or gone.

I call these the “Shut up and take my money” patients

Chances are you have plenty of these unsold patients in your practice right now,  because when these patients tell you things like: “it bleeds every time they floss that spot”, or, “what is that little brown stain on my tooth, can you do something about it?” you proceed to whip out your dull explorer or your perio probe that you still have from dental school, the one that you can no longer even see the millimeter marks and you check around and go “Don’t worry, It’s nothing, I’ll keep an eye on it” or “we’ll put it in observation” you know like we learned at the “observation” pre-clinic in dental school.

Next time this happens try this: “Humm! How come we’ve never talked about doing a (crown, filling, scaling, laser) for this tooth before?”. To which the patient is probably going to answer: “I don’t know”, I have no idea”. It’s a big mystery for them, it’s an enigma that you’re not more proactive about their dental care. 

I’m not saying go back to your practices and start doing unnecessary treatment, that’s not what I’m saying at all. What I’m saying is if it’s something makes sense because it will give you and your patient some peace of mind, why not? One less thing you have to keep an eye on hoping that it doesn’t get worst. And hope by the way, is the worst strategy, because you’re adding one more step to their home care routine: brush, floss and pray!

And we all know praying can only go so far.