UNSCHEDULED TREATMENT The first step. If the patient cannot schedule, for example, because the patient needs to review finances with their spouse, whoever did the consult needs to get the patient’s agreement to follow up with a call the next day if at all possible. Get a specific time and the phone number the patient can be reached at.  In the situation where the patient needs to talk to a spouse but, after doing so, the patient still does not schedule, suggest to the patient that the spouse come in so that the treatment plan can be explained and why the...

No one likes no shows or cancellations but they happen bit your scheduler nneds to know how to properly call a patient who has missed an appointment. Done properly you can hopefully get the patient in, as well as find out what may have caused the patient to miss their appointment and remedy any internal problem that may have contributed to the patient not showing up. Have the person with the best communication do this as you don't want to make the situation worse by having a poor communicator do the calls. This only applies to those who have not already...

The industry standard for periodontal procedures is between 30-35% of hygiene production. Periodontal maintenance (D4910), of course, follows SRPs. It is not preventive. It is after-care.  However sometimes patients are billed for a prophy (D1110) when in fact what they got was a D4910 or some other after-care treatment. If this is happening in your practice there is likely a significant loss of production. Sometimes this occurs as that’s the “way it’s always been done” or because the hygienist and/or front desk person do not know how to comfortably explain the differences in the treatments so they opt for the path of...

I am often asked if you need to pay your dental office staff for CE, meetings, seminars, etc.  In general the answer is YES. Based on US Department of Labor rules here are the basic guide lines.  1. You can pay your staff a lower rate for events, CE, meetings and such provided it is away from the office and worked out in writing in advance. With the possible exception of hygienists I do not recommend doing so as it has the potential to upset your staff which is counter productive and not the frame of mind you want your staff...