Preparing your Dental Practice for Emergency Patients
Having helped dental practices with emergency dental marketing services for over a decade, we have found that there is certainly proper way to go about handling these calls, and are happy to share these with you. By following a few simple steps, you can incorporate emergencies into your regular practice with minimal impact to your overall operation, allowing you to have a steady source of consistent growth over time.
“My tooth is killing me.”
We’ve all received these frantic calls from patients (and they are usually not even our regular patients). Nobody wants to deal with a toothache – not the patient and certainly not the scheduling coordinator. However, “emergency patients” are an integral part of a growing dental practice. We must change our mindset around how we see and deal with a dental emergency. Rather than viewing it as a disruption to the day, look at it as an opportunity to welcome a new patient into the dental practice.
Be Helpful And Positive
Emergency patients are patients who only call us when there is a problem. They usually are motivated by pain and often have had a negative past experience in the dental chair. Don’t hold this against them. They are doing the best they can with the experiences they’ve had. Now it’s our job to show them that those negative experiences don’t need to drive their fears anymore.
Our number one goal when seeing any patient in the office should be compassion and excellent quality dental care. We need to welcome our emergency patients into the office the same way we welcome a traditional new patient – By providing the best care possible with a smile, caring and kind attitude. The only difference is that we focus on getting them out of pain or fixing their problem first.
Scheduling Emergency Patients
Starting with the initial phone call, be empathetic and reassure the patient we are more than happy to see them and help treat their issue. Ease their fears. Let them know we are here to get them out of pain. And that we will use techniques to make them as comfortable as possible. Make the patient a priority by scheduling them either the same day or the very next day. This builds the relationship and trust with your emergency patients.
In the schedule, allow for an emergency appointment by blocking off time specifically to see emergency patients. Some practices choose to block an hour at the end of Monday, Wednesday and Friday as well as an hour in the mornings on Tuesday and Thursday. This ensures there is time to see the patient without overwhelming and disrupting our regular daily schedule.
Tips to Remember for Dental Emergency Patients
- Be kind and compassionate when taking emergency calls.
- Reassure the patient we are here to help and get them out of pain quickly.
- Schedule the emergency patient the same day if possible in the emergency block.
- At the emergency visit, provide the best care possible to reduce pain and fix their dental concern.
- Follow up with the emergency patient the next day, via a personal phone call, to see how they are feeling.
If we’ve treated our emergency patient in this manner they will almost always convert into a traditional new patient for the practice. Don’t be afraid to ask the patient, before they leave their emergency visit, if they would like to become a full time patient. This is the best time to schedule them for an initial new patient examination to evaluate all their dental needs and keep their mouth healthy. Growth will occur naturally if we are truly caring for our patients and serving them to the best of our abilities.
Dental Website
Design & Development
Search Engine
Optimization
Paid Search
Marketing
Emergency
Patients
