Marc Ackerman
Ben Burris
It’s fun to watch things we’ve championed for years become mainstream. In spite of great resistance, the concept of putting braces on the same day as the new patient visit is now a mainstream option. That’s great. Except recently we have realized that now it’s time to flip the page and change our vocabulary as well as our mindset when it comes to giving patients what they want and not wasting their time. We need to stop talking and thinking about same day starts as an oddity and instead think of delivering appliances in a timely manner as the rule with delayed delivery of appliances the exception to the rule. This mindset has tremendous benefit to patents and our practices! Consumers want what they want on demand and they have better things to do. It’s time to start listening to them.
In our estimation, the only way to successfully make this change is to understand and truly believe that this is what the consumer wants. Going forward, we have adopted the terminology “immediate delivery” (aka same day start) and “delayed delivery” (aka not a same day start). This is much more logical and using these words will convey to the patient the value we bring in starting treatment (or scanning for aligners) today. After all we don’t go to the barber shop and schedule a haircut – we either make an appointment for our enhancement or walk in and get it done. Either way we walk in expecting to have the procedure done and the barber obliges us. What we do is no different – or at least it shouldn’t be in the vast majority of cases.
We are sure you can think of lots of outliers or reasons this can’t or won’t work and why your office is “different”. That is certainly your prerogative but we are convinced that making this change and buying into this concept will have significant and lasting positive change in your office with very little effort and zero cost.
Who doesn’t want that?
How do you he the staff to accommodate braces going on? I can see a scan or idb impressions.
This is the most common question we get on same day starts. The answer is simple and sometimes annoying – you just do it. Meaning that it’s not negotiable and we will put braces on the day the patient wants them. If you have to do it during lunch or stay late then do so but once you do that once or twice the staff will figure out that it’s better to fit the patient into the normal day. Funny how that works!