Practice Management Toolkit: The Path to a Preventive Practice

Involve the Entire Team

• Discuss how a preventive model works
• Advantages to the practice
• Importance of follow through

Now we need to talk about some of the key skills that are needed to run a preventive practice. The first step is having the entire team understanding how a preventive model works. A great deal of this will depend on the scheduling person bringing the patient back on a regular basis; but at the same time our hygienists and our assistants are absolutely critical in terms of patient education, following the steps that are laid out in terms of the preventive model and preventive health, and product recommendations. We need to be specific about this. What are we going to tell these patients for education, what products are we going to recommend? It’s important because patients who do not know what products to go buy often leave the practice and don’t follow through. So even if we bring the patient back every six months in our preventive model, if they don’t follow through in between in terms of oral home care we really will not get the results that we are looking for.