Kaitlyn Cole 0:01
Hey everyone. Welcome to the dental education podcast with class solutions. This podcast is a community of dental professionals who share their knowledge and experience in order to provide value to you and your dental practice. I'm your host Caitlin Cole, also known as the K in class. In this episode, our hygiene coach Wendy Sparks is going to talk about how our hygiene departments will recover from COVID 19.
Unknown Speaker 0:25
Hi, everybody, this is Wendy sparks with class solutions. I'm your dental hygiene coach, and today I'm here to answer a question that we've been getting quite often from our dental practices that we serve. The question is how are we going to recover once we are back in business after Coronavirus? And I totally understand this. We have been rescheduling hundreds of dental hygiene appointments. And as it was before the Coronavirus, we were totally booked. So where are we going to put these patients once we can reopen our doors. First of all, stay calm. Show your patients and staff that together as a team you're taking proactive measures in order to come out of this stronger and more knowledgeable and with more resilience than ever before. Keep a presence on social media, always informing and reassuring your patients. We also want to give information and updates on the virus and reach out to those people who may need help. Make sure your patients know that rest assured you were committed to precautionary standards before the virus and you will continue to uphold the strictest infection control after. In the meantime, encourage your staff to take online, get those continuing education classes underway, update the OSHA requirements in your practice and prepare for that office to reopen. Having said that, I've put together a possible mini recovery system that will help you bounce back from the economic setback due to the recent recommendations by the FDA and ADA. Our practices have many of them have already moved into an assisted hygiene model to enhance the opportunity to see additional patients without sacrificing the quality of care. Many of your hygienist or even staff members will have a filter about this kind of model. Because I think a lot of times they think that an accelerated hygiene model is the same thing as an assisted hygiene model. And they are totally different models. So I want to reassure you that this is not an assembly line type of dental hygiene. And we don't promote that at class solutions. We want to make sure that your patients have a comprehensive visit that it is a health and wellness visit. So without sacrificing quality of care, we have to be very diligent about the model that we are presenting to our patients. Many of our patients have actually reported that they have experienced a higher quality than the traditional model. If you have a very full schedule and patients are waiting several weeks, two months for continued care or periodontal treatment, this model is a great option for your practice to consider. Whether temporarily, maybe one Saturday, a month, or even permanently, there are a few things that you're going to need to know in order to do this type of assisted hygiene model. The first thing is we have to have an effective management of the scheduling process. Class solutions can help you with that. You need a top notch assistant, one whose ideals and philosophy match up with your dental hygiene team. You need a hygiene department that's open minded about this model and a doctor that's flexible regarding examination timing. You're also going to need to lead an effective huddle in the morning. And a team that ultimately works cohesively and professionally. You're going to need a block scheduling system, and that you can contact me or class solutions for more information about that. And you're also going to need an effective communication system with between the patient hijabis, dentist and front desk. So what would be the potential production recovery from using this system? By the way, this system is totally customizable to your practice. So in a traditional model, we usually see one patient an hour. If you have a 32 hour work week, your average production is about $200. Usually for a healthy practice an hour, that would equal about $6,400 in production. Now, that's the traditional model. In an assisted hygiene model. You will have again, a 32 hour work week, but you're going to see about 48 patients, which would equal $9,600 in production. So you can see that just by moving to an assisted hygiene model, you can increase your potential production. Get those hygiene patients in that have been waiting because of the Coronavirus and we are here to support your team. If you're considering this model, I can help you with additional training and education. And our whole team is here and dedicated to your success and we want to support you and your team. Feel free to reach out to me at Wendy w e and d i at class solutions.com Or visit our website anytime at class solutions.com. May you all have a wonderful day. Thanks so much for listening
