Six Tips for Hygiene Patient Reactivation and Unscheduled Treatment
June 18, 2024
Reactivating hygiene patients and following up on unscheduled treatments can be challenging, but with the right strategies, you can effectively bring patients back into your practice.
Here are Six Tips for Hygiene Patient Reactivation and Unscheduled Treatment to help you improve your patient outreach and increase patient engagement.
Let’s explore these actionable steps to ensure your patient engagement and follow-ups are successful.
1. Cultivate a Positive Mindset
Summer is upon us. That means patients are on vacation, holidays are near and patients may think they are too busy to schedule a dental appointment.
But wait! Let’s check our mindset and get over any negative thoughts such as, “no one wants to come in” or that “it’s the 4th of July and no one wants to come in!”
Approaching calls with these negative assumptions makes it harder to achieve your goal of getting patients back into the office. Take a deep breath. Create positive thoughts as you make phone calls to patients. Your mindset is crucial for successful patient reactivation and all patient engagement.
2. Evaluate Your Outreach Efforts
Keep track of how many calls, emails, texts, and letters your employees are sending to existing patients. Review the volume and effectiveness of these outreach efforts and your patient engagement system. If outreach is high but responses are low, consider the message being conveyed and the manner in which the team members are attempting to engage with patients. A team member who sounds bored or disinterested will not engage patients effectively. Patient engagement can be a boring task. Automate as much of this as possible.
We suggest automating short and sweet text messages. We teach clients to use a specific rhythm to send message and how often to send these messages.
3. Personalize Your Message
Using a script can be helpful, but it’s important that it doesn’t sound robotic. Patients can tell when someone is reading from a script versus speaking genuinely. Train your team to use scripts as guidelines, allowing them to personalize their messages and sound more natural.
Utilize a specific template for various types of text messages when reactivating overdue hygiene patients.
Example: Text 1 is sent to patients today.
Text 2 is sent in 5 days when there is no response to text message 1.
After a 3rd text without a response we do suggest a phone call be made.
Most patients are not as likely to quickly respond to your phone message so make it short and sweet. Basically let patients know, “It’s time! Please give us a call about your dental appointment.”
Be prepared to have patients respond, “I don’t have an appointment.” With your patient on the phone you need to click on their electronic chart, look at their necessary unscheduled treatment for restorative and/or hygiene care. You must speak with words that create urgency to schedule.
Example: “Doctor asked me to call. She is concerned this tooth is going to cause you pain.”
Talk about putting a halt to “inflammation”, “lose a tooth”, “more cost for a tooth that has a hole”, etc. Use words that paint a picture and create urgency.
4. Train and Practice
Team training is imperative if you wish to continue growth and your current level of success. Practice makes perfect and it’s crucial for the team members who are making calls practice to make patient calls effective. Ensure your employees feel confident sending text messages and emails each week, month, etc, by providing regular training and role-playing different scenarios.
Pair less experienced team members with seasoned team members to practice handling various phone situations, starting with simple scenarios and progressing to more complex ones.
Use an expert coach, a trainer to make sure this practice occurs and it can make it more fun to work with an expert who routinely works with teams on these skills. Schedule a half-day workshop or a few hours of ZOOM coaching with an expert who can offer expert guidance.
5. Clarify Your Purpose
Beyond getting patients back on the schedule, the purpose of keeping your patients on the schedule is to ensure optimal oral health leading to a longer-healthier life. Demonstrate genuine care for the patient’s well-being and you will significantly impact the outcome of your patient engagement and the amount of scheduled patient appointments which will decrease the time spent on reactivation of unscheduled patients.
Understand what your patient values and always make everything you say and do benefit the patient.
6. Vary Call Times and Use Multiple Communication Channels
If you’re having trouble reaching a patient by phone, try calling at different times of the day. You never know when a patient might be available.
We recommend that you 1st send a text message and if there is no response after a 2nd text message that week, make a phone call to your patient. Patients in todays world respond to a text message much faster than a voice message.
If you must leave a voice message make it short and sweet with a phone number to call back your office about their dental appointment. Do not leave long-winded voicemail messages.
Always follow up at least 48 hours when a patient leaves without scheduling for restorative care or a next hygiene appointment. When patients do not respond to your text messages or phone calls use a patient engagement system to email your patients. Most patient engagement systems will have specific templates with informative videos about your patient’s specific care needed.
Always personalize your text messages and emails. These emails and text messages can be automated when you use robust dental office patient engagement solutions.
Need a patient engagement solution?
We are happy offer a few great suggestions to get this system automated and working effectively.
Let us know!
Summary
These tips should help improve your patient reactivation and even reduce the need to chase patients to get them back on your schedule.
For further assistance, consider registering for one of our Summer 2024 Dentist Power Hours when we are discussing patient reactivation and retention.
Are you wondering if you have untapped potential? Tired of working so hard?
Consider booking a no-cost opportunity ZOOM call here.
Or contact us at: 623-252-1941.