5 Mistakes That Are Costing You Thousands – Part 1

Health Articles | March 26, 2010

Are you making mistakes in your dental office? Those mistakes can cost you money. This article will show you how to prevent the top 5 mistakes from happening in your office.

#1 Assuming Perio is Taken Care Of

Having a sharp hygiene team is a beautiful thing. But assuming everything is being taken care of is a big mistake. Be sure you know that a complete perio exam is taking place at every hygiene visit AND the data is being recorded. This is a huge area of liability for you and it's your hygienists responsibility to collect and analyze this information. One way to find out where you stand is to do an audit of your charts. Randomly pull 20 charts of adults seen in the last 6-12 months. How many have a complete perio exam recorded in the last year? Chances are very good that if the percentage is low, so is the amount of perio treatment.

#2 Starting Perio Treatment Too Late

My interpretation of the AAP's Perio Classification system is that Beginning (slight) periodontal disease is 4mm pockets with bleeding and slight bone loss and 1-2mm CAL. This is a huge distinction for many dental teams. Often, these are the "difficult prophies" or the patients that have 3 month prophy intervals. I see it time and time again- teams waiting until pockets are 5-6mm deep before beginning treatment while valuable the patient loses valuable bone that could have been saved.

#3 Too Little Time for Hygiene Visits

I've mentioned this before and I'll say it again. Every time I have ever coached a team to increase their hygiene time, their production has increased as a result. Now that wasn't they only thing they did. They put in place systems to deliver a higher level of service and enroll more treatment. Critical steps that drive production are left out of the hygiene exam when time is short. When you choose to allow 60 minutes for adult recare and perio maintenance, it's important to outline exactly what will take place during that time. If you are going from 40min hygiene visits to 60min, what are you going to add?

To Be Continued...

Wait- Here are a few action steps to help you get started NOW:

• Do a chart audit-look for current perio charts
• Communicate to your hygiene team that you'd like them to do a complete perio exam on every adult patient
• Give your hygiene team the time they need to complete a comprehensive hygiene exam
• Be proactive and get the information you need to really believe that starting perio therapy early is the right thing to do.

Article Tags: Complete Perio Exam, Hygiene Team, Complete Perio, Perio Exam

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Owner of Inspired Hygiene, Rachel Wall helps dentists tap into hygiene’s profit potential. Rachel draws from her 19 years of experience as a hygienist and practice administrator to deliver proven solutions for increased revenue and productivity. Inspired Hygiene’s programs include in-office coaching, the High Performance Hygiene Mastermind group and the High Performance Perio webinar series. Get your copy of Rachel’s FREE audio CD “Top 3 Secrets to Increased Hygiene Co-Diagnosis” at http://www.inspiredhygiene.com/.