Why Is Maximizing Hygiene Production Important?
Most dental offices understand the importance of a dental hygienist in the practice, but majority of these offices are not maximizing on their potential production through hygiene appointments. It is said that up to 30% of a dental practice’s production should be coming from hygiene, but the reality is, only 10-15% of practices are meeting that goal.
What Is the Reason?
The main reason your hygiene production may be lacking is not due to your patients, but really due to the importance your practice places on hygiene appointments. Most patients are not aware of the benefits that continual hygiene appointments will have for them in the long-term and believe the only “important” appointment to attend is the one with an associate. In the long run, this causes more strain on the associate who has to do even more work on a patient to get them to a healthy point.
What Can Our Office Do?
It is the responsibility of the entire team to educate their patients on the importance of their hygiene visits, and to encourage patients to continue their oral health care once they are home.
However, the first step forward always begins with the leaders, and therefore, associates/practice owners need to be the ones to initiate the conversation with their patients and team. The conversation for the team should be a clear explanation of what the hopes for your hygiene department is, and which individuals will directly affect the production. Most likely, your lead hygienist will take on the role of growing your hygiene department, and work in conjunction with your front desk staff in order to speak to and educate patients.
The last step is to ensure you are monitoring the progress of your hygiene department, and this is best done by tracking your recall appointments, and not just to see if your hygiene schedule is full. A full hygiene schedule can be deceptive, as it doesn’t show true growth of your department, unlike the recall appointments which can show you how many recall patients are you gaining/losing.
All in all, the entire practice should put an emphasis on growing your hygiene department, as it could be the difference between a good practice and a great one.
