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
Eliminate Hygiene Cancellations with This Simple Policy
Ever struggled with hygiene cancellations while simultaneously facing a backlog of patients desperate for appointments? You're not alone, and there's a brilliant solution hiding in plain sight.
What makes this approach so powerful is its triple benefit structure. Your practice maintains a more predictable schedule and improves productivity. Your patients gain more consistent access to care when they need it. And your local community organizations receive much-needed support. It's a win-win-win that aligns perfectly with modern dental practices that aim to be forces for good beyond their clinical contributions.
Ready to transform your practice's cancellation policy while making a real difference in your community? Try this approach and email us at dentalpracticeheroes@gmail.com to share your results. For more innovative practice management solutions and to join our community of growth-minded dental professionals, visit dentalpracticeheroes.com and become part of the DPH Hero Collective today.
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The 2025-2026 DPH Mastermind is now taking applications! Make this the year you decided to create the practice you've always dreamed about!
Take Control of Your Practice and Your Life
We help dentists take more time off while making more money through systematization, team empowerment, and creating leadership teams.
Ready to build a practice that works for you? Visit www.DentalPracticeHeroes.com to learn more.
Have you ever came up with a really good idea that you just had to pop out of bed and write it down, because you were like this is the greatest thing I've ever thought of in my life? Well, I want to share something with you today, because I had one of those ideas and I feel like you're going to like it. I am going to give you something today that I think you are going to find is very useful, and you are going to be able to show up on Monday and start using it. So stay tuned. You're not going to want to miss this one. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1:You're listening to the Dental Practice Heroes podcast. I'm your host, dr Paul Etcheson, and I am the author of two books on dental practice management. I'm a dental coach and I am also the owner of a large four-doctor practice in the south suburbs of Chicago. My goal is to teach you how to step back from the chair, empower your team and build a practice that gives you your life back and lets you spend your time doing exactly what you feel like doing. So if you're ready for a practice that supports your life instead of consuming it, you are in the right place, all right.
Speaker 1:So I was thinking of this new policy today. You know I love policies, you know I love systems, and that's what this podcast is about and I'm going to tell you about that policy in a second. But it got me thinking, like. I started feeling, started questioning myself like is this okay? Is this ethically okay? And I was thinking to myself have ever done anything like this before? This very much hinges on capitalizing on a current situation. Okay, we're capitalizing on something happening and we're using it for our gain. So then I started to wonder and asking myself, paul, have you ever done anything like this before? Like, have you ever perhaps used the excuse of inflation to argue a point or to make yourself look better or to change a policy? I don't know. Maybe I have. Have you ever maybe used the lack of post office workers to explain why a patient's lab case didn't arrive on time? Well, maybe, and maybe that was kind of a fib, maybe we just didn't send out the case. Have you ever maybe around 2021, 22, perhaps like you had an Invisalign refinement you should have sent off and you didn't send it off and the patient called and then you went on your computer and you logged into the site and then you sent it off that day, but then you told the patient well, you know, the shipping channels are all backed up and this stuff's coming from out of the USA. So sorry, yeah, maybe I did that. And what I'm saying is we've done these things before. Ok, maybe some like white lies, maybe somewhat harmless, maybe it falls under the whole thing of how you do. One thing is how you do all things. I'm not here to judge you do. One thing is how you do all things. I'm not here to judge, but here is what I'm here to tell you is that there is a current situation that I think you could possibly use to your advantage in your practice right now. So what is going on in the world that you could use to your advantage? And I know what you're thinking it's tariffs, isn't it Wrong? It is not tariffs.
Speaker 1:We've talked about it a few times in my last episodes. It's the hygiene shortage. It is very much on my mind because I'm trying to help a lot of clients that don't have hygienists. So I'm working with a few clients. They have a shortage of hygienists. They're struggling to see all their patients. Patients are calling, they're upset that they can't get in and there's really nothing we can do. Yet every single morning we may have anywhere from 10 to 20% of our schedule just drops off the schedule, and I know people say, well, you've got to pre-collect. I understand that we do that on the doctor's side. It results in almost nobody canceling on the doctor's side and nobody knows showing on the doctor's side. But what about hygiene? And I can tell you at my practice we do not have a hygiene shortage. We have 11 hygienists right now and we have tons of hygiene. We have almost 9,000 active patients, but we have a lot of hygiene cancellations. So this is something I've been trying to address and we have got a meeting coming up at the end of May where we were going to address it. Now I wanna share with you what my idea is and then how it changed this morning.
Speaker 1:So my idea is utilize the hygiene shortage. It is true, it is legit and in a lot of practices it is the reality. We need to tell every single patient hey, mr Jones, listen, there is a shortage in hygienists. We are lucky to have the hygienists that we have at this office, but it is very critical that you keep this appointment. I'm letting you know we need to take a deposit. We need to take a $50 deposit to hold this hygiene visit and if you do not give us 48 hours, we're going to have no other choice but to charge you for that, because we've got lots of patients that want to get into the hygienist and it's very important that we don't waste any of our hygienist time.
Speaker 1:Okay, so here what that was my idea. It's kind of very similar, in a sense, to my previous reducing cancellations method. It requires that there's a level of confidence in delivering it, there's a level of confidence in forcing it. But what is the thing that we run into? Why doesn't this always work, or why does this upset patients so much? And the reason is is because the patients often feel like we're trying to get something for nothing. So they will make up excuses. They will tell us that people and their family have died, and we know they didn't die or they've been dead for years. You know, and sometimes you know we've got a lot of patients that are telling the truth. They really do get sick. I'm not saying that things don't happen, I'm just saying it is definitely an abused policy and if you've been in this industry for any amount of time, you will know, it is very much more abused after COVID than it was pre-COVID, right?
Speaker 1:So how do we convey to the patients that we're not getting something for nothing? And what we used to do in the past is we would give them a few strikes. We would always explain we're not doing something for nothing. We would send them a letter and this system is all in the OmniPractice program on my online training all the forms that we send. It works, but I've got a twist on it now. So we're telling all the patients they have to show up because of the hygiene shortage. But here's what else we're doing. We're going to find 12 local charities, one for each month of the year, and we're going to tell the patients, when we tell them about this policy, that they have to put the deposit. If they don't give us 48 hours for any reason, we will take their deposit and we will donate to X charity, which is the charity of X month. So we're taking all of the missed appointment fees and we're donating them to a local charity. So when they say you're getting something for nothing, we say I am so sorry, this is our policy, there's a hygiene shortage and what's what we're doing? And we're not taking your money. We're donating to this charity, so feel good about that.
Speaker 1:And this works in three ways. Let me tell you how One. This is going to be so easy to get the team behind it. They are going to be behind this. We're doing something good for the community and we're doing something good for all of our patients Because think about it the motive it's pure. We're giving away charity, but we're also helping all the patients that we have that really want to be seen and they can't have.
Speaker 1:You had anyone call your office and get pissed off because you can't get them in for like three months in hygiene and then the next day, like literally six openings pop up, you know, and now your team's scrambling to fill them. Sometimes they fill them, sometimes they don't, but it really sucks because we shouldn't have to do that at all. People should respect our time. So our motive is pure. It'll be very easy to get your team behind it. But then the other thing is that this is still going to piss off some people. Isn't it? Because we've worked in dentistry long enough to know that, no matter what we do, some people will be pissed off.
Speaker 1:But here's what I love about it those people that get pissed off. We're going to stick tight to our guns because if they're upset about that after we explained it to them verbally, after we said we're not even taking their money, we're giving it to charity, well, they can go somewhere else and I hope they leave a one-star review because I can't wait to respond that we explained this to you, we donated it to this charity. I'm sorry you feel this way. I suggest you go be someone else's problem Because, guess what, I don't want you in my practice Because if you're that upset about that, you probably weren't showing up to your appointments anyway.
Speaker 1:This is my new idea. I got to give thanks to the charity thing for somebody in my online mastermind group that came up with that and they're under a pseudonym, so I don't know who it was. I really wish I could call them out by name on the podcast, but that was not my idea. But the previous part of utilizing the hygiene shortage and actually verbally explaining it was my idea and I think just doing that alone is gonna get a lot more people to show up. But I think this combination of things we're gonna roll this out and typically I wouldn't ever talk about something I haven't rolled out in my office on the podcast yet, but I am very confident that this is going to work and I feel like the risk is so low that I wanna share this with you right now so you can implement this in yours. So, hey, if you try this out and this works at your practice, let me know. Shoot me an email dentalpracticeheroes at gmailcom.
Speaker 1:I would love to hear what you guys are doing in your practice, what you guys are up to and what's working for you guys, and this is the sort of stuff on the DPH Hero Collective. This is our community. We've got a systems tab and people are posting things on there all the time. We're having mastermind meetings twice a month where we're getting on there. We've got such a good group and it's been so much fun to get to know some new dentists that all share the same passion for practice management and we're all sharing ideas growing together. If that sounds like something you want to join so you can have a better practice and enjoy a better life, go to dentalpracticeheroescom and sign up for the DPH Hero Collective.
Speaker 1:We also offer one-on-one coaching options, so there's nothing wrong with using a current situation and using it to your advantage. That is the way of the world. That is called using an opportunity, and I feel okay about it. So we're going to do it and it's going to work and it's going to rock and roll and it's going to save oodles and oodles of money and, honestly, it's the right thing for the patients. It is not fair to our patients that want to be seen that we have people that don't respect our time. Hey, give that a try. Let me know how it goes. Everybody. Have a great week. I hope you had a great, a magical summer of a lot of practice, growth, but also take the time off and do the things that are truly important to your life. All right, take care everybody. We'll talk to you next time.
