Have your patient visit communications suffered because of the pandemic?  Do the family want more information at their visits than they are getting?  Maybe this pearl can help improve your communications.

Pandemic social distancing and crowd cluster restrictions is taking its toll on practicing orthodontics today.

In the "good old days" patients would walk in, brush their teetha and wait on-deck to be treated as their families waited in the reception area.  Today, the patients and family wait in their cars until called by cell phone.  Once called, the masked patient is met at the door, has their temperature taken, is asked questions, is then escorted to the tooth-brushing area and finally to the chair.

Refer to the pearl "Making Patient Visits More Exceptional" to see how much patient traffic procedures have changed.  Now back to our discussion.

When checking out, the assistant can't escort the patient to the reception area and discuss what was accomplished today.  The family is typically called on their cell phones and asked for help with the patient's next visit.  The family and reception staff misses their usual communications that make the visits more social and help promote the practice.

When the family has concerns about treatment they have little access to the doctor to voice them and may become frustrated about it.

But there is a way to improve this situation—immediate doctor communication with the family at the end of each visit.  This not only makes the family feel better about the treatment, it makes them feel more important and want to promote the practice.  Here's how it works:

At the end of each visit, as the patient is being dismissed, the doctor calls the waiting family on his/her hands-free "visit" cell phone and tells them what has occurred on this visit and any important instructions (better brushing, doing well with the removable appliance, etc.).  It is best to do it while with the patient, but can be done while washing and gloving up to save time in busy practices.

You may think that this is a large amount of time to add to your busy day, but it isn't.  It only takes about 30 to 60 seconds for the average communication.  And if treatment time is tight for the doctor, the chairside assistant can make the call with the doctor only making calls when it is important to talk with the family.

If the doctor is making the calls, do it for just a few patients at first until you get the rhythm of doing it on every patient.

I hope that this helps you to improve your patient communications so that they and you can get the most out of their visits and you can better promote your practice.