Ready or Not…DMC Expands Dental Outreach to Sint Maarten

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Sint Maarten. My Island Bride. I Crave Your Curves: Hillside, Bays and Beaches, Narrow, Wide. Some Parts Raw. Some Gentrified. Your Warm Embrace, Sunnyside Let’s me Hike or Bike, Mountainside. Swim or Sail, Race or Ride. While Gentle Breeze Makes Heat Subside. Statehood-wise, a Great Divide: French – to the North; Dutch – South-side. But When … Read more

How Community Involvement Grows Your Dental Practice

Being a truly great dental practice isn’t just about treating patients — it’s about creating a business that uplifts the lives of all around it. Finding meaningful ways to serve in your community will help you build a practice that team members and patients are proud to share. In a recent interview with My Social … Read more

Have You Aligned Your Dental Website with Facebook?

The sustained popularity of Facebook as the leading social media network can be effectively leveraged to promote your dental website. In a highly competitive online environment, you need more than just website promotion and internal SEO to reach your target audience. Social media marketing plays a vital role, and Facebook continues to be the social … Read more

Where is dentistry going? A chain of prevention practices.

Three news items crossed my desk in the past month. All seem to point to a future for dentistry which features more specialization around managing the cause of poor oral health. One news item was a video interview with a number of dental opinion leaders in Minnesota, about the emerging role of dental therapists. Dental … Read more

Uber’s Message for Dental Care

The March 3, 2016 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine has a provocative article called “Uber’s message for healthcare”. The thrust of this article is summarized below by the Kaiser Foundation: “Unreliable service, inconvenience, uncomfortable surroundings, and high prices make customers unhappy, and given the opportunity, they will go elsewhere. Uber, Silicon Valley’s … Read more

Smarter shopping for dental care — does it really happen?

A new report shows that more user-pay has little influence on comparison shopping for medical care.  Even with “skin in the game” via high-deductible health plans, Americans did not normally seek out cheaper medical services.Instead, they simply avoided shopping for medical care altogether, and in many cases, failed to get preventive care. Canadian insurers and … Read more

The Silent Issue of Dental Affordability

One silent issue in the dental industry is affordability. Surgical care is so expensive that it has restricted dental visits over the past few years and, in turn, driven down dental incomes by more than 20% since the start of the Great Recession (2008). Over the Holidays, there were more reports about this affordability problem … Read more

Do Your Patients Own Their Oral Health?

Help patients say “yes” to the treatment they need…. How would it be if all our patients accepted our treatment recommendations without having to be pressured, without stress or rejection? Why do dental patients reject appropriate treatment? 85% of case acceptance is related to our social skills and ability to relate to people, 15% is … Read more

The New Patient Call

Turning inquiries into appointments.. Dental  administration team members are truly the “Directors of the First Impression” for new patients, and they have approximately 17 seconds to “make it or break it.” Many new patient phone calls start with the patient asking: “Do you take my insurance?” While your first instinct is to provide an immediate … Read more

Getting ready for the grey hairs

“British Columbia’s population now has 31 people 65 years old or over for every 100 working-age persons. In a decade, the ratio will be 41 to 100. Ten years later, in 2035, the ratio will be 48 to 100, according to a recent paper from the Business Council of British Columbia. Put another way, the … Read more

Floss or Brush First?

Essentially, we don’t know which hygiene procedure should be done first, nor for that matter, whether flossing has any preventive effect on dental decay. Read this quick review by the New York Times about the limited evidence to support flossing. So why do we recommend it, and even gently nag our patients about flossing? There … Read more

The BIG issue: Affordability

A recent survey of American adults found that 1 in 4 did not purchase needed dental care last year, because they couldn’t afford this service. Dentistry was, amongst all healthcare services, the least affordable (see chart).   And this was when the American dental waiting rooms have never been emptier, and dental incomes at their … Read more

Presciption for us ALL!!

This may be habit forming … I have to share the prescription I received last week from my medical doctor upon completion of my annual physical examination. My doctor stated that he was going prescribe a rare and unique script for me that I will be required to adhere to for the remainder of my … Read more

A new pitch to your community?

Are we beginning to see a change in how dentistry is pitching itself to the community? Perhaps, if this ad in a local newspaper is indicative. The ad says a lot and very little. “Complete health dentistry” is a new brand, one which responds to the overriding preferences of this aging and largely uninsured community … Read more

How loyal are patients to their dentist?

In the US, there has been a surprising level of shopping and switching health care insurance plans during this second season of renewals under Obamacare. Almost 1 in 3 changed plans on the public website for health care insurance (HealthCare.gov). And for those who switched, most saved money. We know that America is the land … Read more

My community’s struggle to access dental care

My community newspaper recently featured a story about an overload of patients visiting a non-profit community dental clinic. The irony of this story is that most dentists in my community have fewer and fewer recall patients. Most want and need to get busier. My community’s struggle to access dental care – Partners in Prevention So … Read more