Dental Practice Heroes
Where dentists learn how to cut clinical days while increasing profits - without sacrificing patient care, cutting corners, or cranking volume. We teach you how to grow a scalable practice through communication, leadership, and effective management.
Hosted by Dr. Paul Etchison, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach, and owner of a $6M collections group practice in the south suburbs of Chicago, we provide actionable advice for practice owners who want to intentionally create more time to enjoy their families, wealth, and deep personal fulfillment.
If you want to build a scalable practice framework that no longer stresses, drains, or relies on you for every little thing, we will teach you how and share stories of other dentists who have done it!
Dental Practice Heroes
Strengthening Patient Trust to Prevent Second Opinions
Unlock the secrets to preventing your dental patients from seeking second opinions and ensure their loyalty with essential trust-building strategies. Join me, Dr. Paul Etchison, as we navigate the complexities of patient trust in the dental profession. Discover how addressing patient unease about treatment recommendations can save you from losing valuable clients and referrals. We'll delve into a real-life scenario involving a one-star review, revealing the profound impact of lost trust. Learn five actionable methods to strengthen your rapport with new patients through transparent discussions of their dental history and previous recommendations, setting the stage for increased case acceptance and long-term patient loyalty.
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Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
I help dentists create thriving practices that make more money, require less of their time, and empower their teams to run the office seamlessly—so they can focus on what matters most.
Join the DPH Hero Collective and get the tools, training, and support you need to transform your practice:
- Comprehensive Training: Boost profit, efficiency, and team engagement.
- Live Monthly Webinars: Learn proven strategies for scaling your practice.
- Live Q&A Sessions: Get personalized help when you need it most.
- Supportive Community: Connect with practice owners on the same journey.
- Editable Systems & Protocols: Standardize your operations effortlessly.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DPHPod.com to learn more.
The second opinion. When a patient comes to you when they are feeling uneasy about what another dentist recommended. These are seriously the easiest appointments to absolutely crush and blow your patients away. But what about when it's your patient that is seeking the second opinion somewhere else? Today I'm going to show you how to avoid your patients going anywhere else for dental advice, what you can do and not do during your appointments with the patient to ensure this, and how following this protocol can increase trust, case acceptance and increase the amount of patients your existing patients refer.
Speaker 1:Growing your practice let's get into it. You are listening to Dental Practice Heroes, where we help you create and scale your dental practice so that you are no longer tied to the chair. I'm Dr Paul Etcheson, author of two books on dental practice management, dental coach and owner of a $6 million group practice in the suburbs of Chicago. I want to teach you how to grow and systematize your dental practice so you can spend less time practicing and more time enjoying a life that you love. Let's get started. Time enjoying a life that you love let's get started. All right, All right, Welcome back. I'm so thankful that you are here with me today. Now I want to talk to you about a text that I just received from a coaching client and it was a screenshot of a one-star review that he received from a patient. All right, so this is a one-star review and here's what it says. All right, Quote I go to the dentist every six months.
Speaker 1:I've had one cavity in my life, 55 years. While out of town, my wife and I visited this dentist for what we thought would be a cleaning. I had four cavities that needed to be drilled. My wife had five cavities. According to this dentist, I went in for the work, my wife did not. My wife went back to a normal dentist. Not one cavity or issue was found for drilling. Oh my gosh, I am still having problems with the tooth he drilled twice. I blame myself for agreeing to the work. I knew better. Now how does that look when you stamp that on your practice for any future prospective patients? That might be well, I'm looking for a new dentist. I want to check this one out. Everybody looks at the amount of five-star reviews and everybody reads the one-star reviews.
Speaker 1:So how many times have you been told as a dentist, when you see a new patient, that they say something like you know what my last dentist didn't mention any of this stuff, or huh. I just went six months ago and I didn't have anything, and you know what? That is the same feeling that a lot of our patients have, but the problem is that not a lot of our patients will even vocalize this. So when people don't vocalize this, we don't get a chance to address it. And most of the time they don't vocalize it, they just go somewhere else and get a second opinion. And when the patient seeks a second opinion, they almost always stick with the second dentist. And this is why Because it is so damn easy to be the hero when you're the second opinion.
Speaker 1:Even if you told your patient that they needed three teeth that needed fillings or something like that, the second opinion could be like well, I only see two. And then you're the greedy dentist and they are the hero. So you don't want your patients to sense any mistrust. You don't want to give them any single reason to go get that second opinion, because ultimately, when they go get that second opinion, you are losing out, and you're losing out on that treatment. You're also losing out on any future patients that might come from that patient. You know they refer people and you're also losing out because you got this someone going around town saying hey, I went to that doc, he told me I need five fillings. I went back to my old dentist. He said zero. Oh man, your reputation is on the line.
Speaker 1:But if you can build trust in a way that works for all your new patients and you keep them from getting that second opinion, you can get them saying yes to more work, which will ultimately result in you helping more people. So what can you do? Do not give the patient a single reason to seek out a second opinion, and here are five ways to do that. First, ask the patient the last time they went to the dentist and if they are recommending any treatment that hasn't been completed. This should be a question that every single one of your hygienists or whoever's seeing the new patient ask these things, Because if they went to a dentist recently and they had no treatment, be careful what you recommend. If they went to a dentist recently and they said they did have treatment, don't miss it. You're trying to establish this new patient relationship on some sort of trust, so you want to know what they have been told previously, because chances are they trusted this person at some extent, or maybe they didn't, but you know what? It's another opinion. We want to be all the same and our patients expect us.
Speaker 1:They think, like a cavity is a cavity, a crown is a crown, and that it's just like a checkbox either it's there or not. They don't realize that there's a continuum of threshold of what you will treat and how you will treat it. I mean, you know, if you ask 10 different dentists, they'll give you 10 different opinions. So our patients don't understand that. So we have to make sure that we're asking them when is the last time they went to the dentist and what did they recommend? Because if they just went, like a month ago, two months ago, I mean, they didn't recommend anything. You're kind of fighting an uphill battle if you do find anything. But I'm gonna talk about that in a second, so stay tuned, All right.
Speaker 1:The second thing is ask the patient when the last time they had a filling or they had any kind of dental treatment. And the reason being is you might see somebody that has maybe a pretty extensive caries history. They've got a ton of old amalgams. Maybe They've got a ton of old amalgams, Maybe they're from 20 plus years ago, but they haven't had any treatment in like a decade. This is somebody you're going to want to tread very lightly with. Again, same reason they are used to not getting done a work and if the first time they meet you you tell me they need a lot of things, they are not going to believe you. So you want to know this. This is another question that you have your hygienist or whoever's seeing that new patient first ask. All right.
Speaker 1:The third thing the only things you should be treatment planning on this patient are things that are visually obvious. Seeing is believing, right. If you can't show the patient a photo of whatever you're treatment planning, if you can't obviously show them on like a bite wing, don't recommend it. Okay, If the patient hasn't had a restoration in a really long time, if they went to a previous dentist recently and they said they didn't need any treatment, you need to tread lightly. And if you're going to diagnose things because I don't want you to say, well, they said they went to another dentist six months ago and they told them they had nothing, so I can't properly do my job and diagnose anything I'm not saying that. I'm just saying if you're going to diagnose something, it has to be something visual. You have to be able to show that patient what you are seeing in their mouth so they can look at it too and go oh yeah, I see that, Okay, I'm in All right.
Speaker 1:The next one, asking the patient what I call in my hero collective, the power questions. Okay, the first power question is that instead of saying do you have any questions, You're going to say tell me what questions you have, because this will elicit that sort of response that the patient looks at you and goes. I just went to the dentist six months ago and they said I had nothing. These are the type of questions when you ask that power question to the patient, they will share that with you. The other thing is is if you're sensing it, you say hey, Mr Jones, I know I just went through a lot of things with you. Tell me what you're feeling about all this, and then they will say the same thing. If they have any kind of doubt, they'll be like yeah, I just it doesn't hurt, or I don't know why my other dentist didn't mention it. Things like that I haven't had a needed to the patient will indicate to you more than likely that there's having some distrust, they're having some doubts, All right.
Speaker 1:The fifth thing is don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever throw the other dentist under the bus. I mean, from a professional standpoint, I hope we never throw our colleagues under the bus Because, truth be told, we don't know what was going on. We don't know what they did or didn't see. I see this a lot with younger dentists. I see this a lot with associates that they're very quick to be the hero and throw the other dentist under the bus as not being competent. And the thing is is you have so much to lose by doing that and you have absolutely nothing to gain, so just don't do it. Remember, at some point this patient trusted that person. At some point they liked that person. They're going to feel stupid, they might be embarrassed and they might think it's super unprofessional. I mean, I think it's kind of unprofessional and they might go get another second opinion because now they've got two conflicting answers. It doesn't rub the patient the right way and they're like let's go get another opinion and put this to the test. I want to know and we don't want to have our patients going for second opinions because we always lose. I want to know and we don't want to have our patients going for second opinions because we always lose, Remember. So here's what you can do instead.
Speaker 1:I like to say things like this. They say you know, if somebody says, and I can show them on the x-ray, and they say, well, I just went, like a year ago I didn't have any cavities, and now you're showing me I have four, I will show them on the x-ray and that's. It should be visual. And I'll say you know what? I don't know if these were here last time you saw your dentist. I don't know if they grew since they won, but I can tell you that our x-rays are the best x-ray technology in the industry and they see things a lot sooner and I can see it right here. See that, Mrs Jones. And the other thing that I like to say is I say you know what? There's no way for me to tell how long that's been there. All I see you is on today and I see it and sometimes dental problems, they're in our mouths for a very long time before they even become visual. So I'm not saying your other dentist missed it, I'm just saying when I look at you today, this is what I see.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's a nice way of not throwing the other dentist under the bus and sometimes I've got to explain to patients. I say you know what? Everybody, every dentist, is going to have a different threshold on what they think needs treatment and what doesn't need treatment and needs to be watched. The only thing I do is I look at your teeth and I ask myself personally, what would I do if that was my tooth? And if that was my tooth I would do this X treatment. I would do whatever you're recommending and I hope that's the way you're treating your patients.
Speaker 1:I don't like to go to the different dentists, diagnose different things very often because I feel like patients just don't buy into that. But every now and then I will have to use that explanation. So if you can do these five things, I mean you're going to make sure the patient trusts you. They're going to say yes to our treatment. That's what we ultimately want, because we want to help more people. So these are the type of things we teach your team in the DPH Hero Collective. Go to dentalpracticeheroescom for more details.
Speaker 1:To summarize those five things one, ask the patient the last time they went to the dentist and if they recommended any treatment that has not been completed. Two, ask the patient the last time they had any dental treatment. Three only diagnose things for the patient that you can visually show. Without a doubt, Seeing is believing. Four, utilize those two power questions to check in with your patient and see what their objections are. And last number five do not throw the other dentist under the bus. You have nothing to gain and so much to lose. It's just not worth it. Tune in later this week, as myself and the DPH coaches are gonna teach you how to make sure, when you go to a weekend CE event, that you come back, you get buy-in from your team and you actually get those things implemented. Thank you so much for listening and have an amazing week.
