ORTHOBITES changes in the afternoon. Parents do not mind their child missing one morning for placing the braces, but they do not like multiple appoint- ments in the morning. Schedule operative production procedures in the early morning and just after lunch if needed. Keep the afternoons for the orthodontic patients. Think about it, when are you most fresh? Surgeons do not usually schedule extensive procedures in the afternoon. It is nearly always in the morning. Save you after- noons for the fun stuff, orthodontics. 4. Schedule your orthodontic patients out every six weeks. This frees up a lot of chair time. Free chair time allows you to see more operative and orthodontic patients. your practice if you have documented before, in progress, and final photos and records……no one! As you gain more knowledge in orthodontics, begin a side journey through the AOS Tier Advancement Program. Besides making you a better clinician, you will gain so much more courage and confidence. First, attain your Achievement Award, followed by the Fellowship Award, and ultimately, the prestigious Diplomate Award from the American Orthodontic Soci- ety. The journey is worth it. The journey is filled with educational experiences, annual meetings, discovering new friends and making lifelong relationships with fellow colleagues. The final Diplomate destination is rewarding, but the journey is the excitement. Day-to-Day Orthodontic Operations As far as some basic pearls in the day-to-day opera- tions of your orthodontic practice, here are a few: 1. Schedule orthodontic patient wire change appointments together. This makes you as well as your assistants think orthodontics as a team. Do not put a root canal finish adjacent to three orthodontic procedures. It does not work. Keep apples with apples. 2. Assign one or two afternoons a week for orthodontics only. As above, you and your staff will think only orthodontics. It will shift the focus on orthodontics only, increase your clinical skills and improve your whole team. 3. See your banding and bracketing patient in the early morning or early afternoon; see your wire 14 May/June 2010 JAOS 5. Have your financials and consent forms signed prior to treatment. Besides completed and quality orthodontic records, you must have your business side in order prior to beginning the orthodontic case. Always have all consent forms signed and never finance more than 12 months. If you have need of proper forms, simply visit my web site, www.orthoplusseminars.com, go to downloads, click on Orthodontic Forms for your practice, and type in the password: 2010/2011. You will find an extensive array of documents to aid you in “form- ing” your practice properly. 6. Employ Nitinol archwires in your treatment. We are in a new millennium folks. Nitinol keeps working long after stainless steel stops. If brackets come off, you simply replace the brackets and continue with your wire series. This allows the six- to eight-week appointment scheduling as discussed above which frees up your income centers (dental chairs) for other productive procedures. Building Your Orthodontic Base Prior to treating orthodontic patients, you must first find ways to get them to come through your door. Sure you can have all of the “freebee” patients to treat at first, but sooner or later, you want to begin to make a financial return on all of the money you have spent to learn this modality. As in general dentistry, marketing is the key to grow- ing your orthodontic practice. There are two avenues to do so: Internal Marketing Are Keys To Success Nothing tops the “word-of-mouth” advertising of a patient. Here are a few simple things that I have employed for over 30 years to bring in new patients from other patients of record: n Ask your existing patient for a referral. This is the most powerful tool you possess and it costs nothing. Believe it or not, there are patients in your practice that think you are too busy for more patients. Simply say something like, “Mrs. Jones, thank you for letting
Journal of the American Orthodontic Society May-June 2010: Page 14
