I have become extremely conscious of the relationship between a patient’s emotional state and ultimate practice success.  To some, that may seem like a bit of a reach. Have you ever spent time thinking about your dental patients and what the role of the amygdala plays in case acceptance? The amygdala hijack is powerful and shouldn’t be disregarded.

The amygdala is part of the brain located near its base. It is the source of strong emotions: fear and pleasure, for example.  The term “fight-or-flight” originates from early humans, who were potentially exposed to the threat of death or injury much more often than we are in the modern day. When a person feels threatened, the amygdala is what is in charge of this response. In modern times, the amygdala can be triggered by anxiety, fear, or similar emotions. It will signal the release of hormones that evoke the fight-or-flight reaction.

Sometimes, people can control or even override this reaction by using other parts of the brain, specifically the cerebral cortex. This is the part of the brain that is used to make more thoughtful and rational decisions.

The “Amygdala Hijack”

Psychologist Daniel Goleman coined the term “amygdala hijack” to refer to a time when the cerebral cortex is simply unable to override the amygdala.   Imagine you are taking a nice hike through the woods.  It’s a beautiful day. You are noticing flowers, the birds, the clear sky, and the lake off in the distance. Suddenly, you turn the corner and in front of you is a big rattlesnake. (Or maybe a bear depending on where you live.)  Your amygdala will immediately assume control of the situation. You will forget about the surroundings.  Your blood pressure will rise and blood will be sent immediately to your legs and other major muscles in case you need to run or fight.

The organs that are not essential will slow or even stop. Your airway will open as much as possible to take in more oxygen.  Your pupils will dilate to allow more light and improve your vision.  You are now ready to fight or flight.

While there may not be a rattlesnake or bear in your dental office, many patients are in a state of controlled or partial amygdala hijack when they’re sitting in your operatory. The courage required just to walk in your office door was huge.  Of course, their cerebral cortex  is forcing them to control or suppress their emotions. They breathe in what seems like an odd way in an attempt to control the situation.  What they really want to do is fight or flight.  (If they choose one, let’s hope it’s flight.)   

During a patient’s treatment, we can use calming techniques like relaxed words, headphones, nitrous oxide, medications, etc.  That said, in non-treatment moments, like a recall exam or limited exam, if that person’s amygdala is overriding the cerebral cortex, he or she is literally unable to devote as much brain power to understanding our consultations.   This is why I strongly recommend that if you are fortunate enough to have a consultation room in your office, it be used to discuss treatment.

All treatment, no matter how small.  Of course, the consult room is still in the dental office, but it is not in the middle of drill and suction sounds, scary looking instruments, etc. We should also ask patients if they’d like to see close up pictures of scary things before we put an intra-oral photo on the monitor or TV.

I am thoroughly convinced that case acceptance is much higher when a patient is in the correct moment to hear and understand treatment.   If the amygdala is controlling the moment, the patient will usually say something like “I’ve got to think about it” just so he or she can get out of there…. flight. 

A huge part of this is improving treatment plan consultations and therefore case acceptance.  If you are ready to take your consultations, and therefore your production, to the next level, call us. We are here for you.

As a former healthcare banker that worked specifically with privately owned dental practices, I can honestly say that 85-90% of all the dentists I worked with had no clue how to manage a business or general financing. This is not their fault. They paid good money and lots of it to learn how to be a dentist. It is truly unfortunate that probably, 95% of the dental schools provide no curriculum on owning a practice.

Compound that with high school and under-graduate curriculum that do not provide any insight into personal finances. You have a disaster waiting to happen. It is no wonder that so many of the practices we work with are highly leveraged, choking on high interest rate loans both personally and professionally, have never prepared a budget, have little knowledge of how they are performing against dental benchmarks of high performing practices and are stressed out about their scheduling when they have gaps.

They hire bookkeepers and accountants to handle their books and prepare their taxes. What they don’t do is sit down with them quarterly, semi-annually or even annually to understand what they are looking at and what the numbers mean let alone how to effect their bottom line.

TAKE ACTION NOW!

If you see yourself in the above, take action now. Find a CPA that works specifically with dental practices and knows the benchmarks and will talk to you at least annually about what the numbers mean. Find a banker that knows your industry and can analyze your debt, personal and business, to see where you can consolidate, refinance or pay it off sooner while still allowing room to save for retirement or college for your children. If anything gain understanding of general financing for dental practices

Finally, get a free analysis of your practice from AMP to see where you can improve quickly so you can reduce your stress, enjoy your life and build a retirement future that does not rely solely on the sale of your practice.

How are you and your team getting through COVID in the dental office? I mean REALLY IN THE MIDDLE OF A PANDEMIC? Are you experiencing the lull in your schedule six months post COVID?

Why is it some offices we serve are closing days in October and November and some are completely full with business as usual?

Stephen Covey’s, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, focuses on the human relationship while understanding human behavior. These habits provide clarity in and for your audience. Although these habits are relational, he says IT MUST START WITH YOURSELF.

Using COVEY to get through COVID in the dental office

Habit 1. Be Proactive

• How many of you out there planned LAST MARCH AND APRIL for today? Or, did you focus on immediate needs?

Habit 2. Begin with the end in mind

• What is your goal through this pandemic? Have you reverse engineered to get there? Did you think of this last March? If you did, what did you do about it last March?

Habit 3. Put first things first

• Back in March, were you panicked or calm? Where are you today? Still panicked? What is the most important thing to act upon now?

These three habits, 1-3 are dependent as Covey describes. They are introspective.

Habit 4. Seek first to understand, then be understood

• Way back, last March, did you happen to try to understand the craziness of a pandemic? Did you act upon the near future (October and November) to try to understand the impact this may have on your business? Did you stop long enough to “HEAR,” really hear? Or did you ignore and just provide opinions? Once one stops long enough to listen is when that person is ready to really hear.

Habit 5. Think win-win

• Our brains are programmed for war! I win, you lose. A great example of this is sports. One wins, one loses. This concept permeates throughout our lives – IF WE LET IT. How can we approach situations to win/win? Think about that. How can we approach October and November for a win-win? Can we provide dialogue for our hygiene team to offer another prophy to those overdue recare patients who look like it will take 4 hours to clean their teeth? Offered effectively, patients generally will very willingly return and pay for another appointment to get them back to health.
  
  How does this relate to win-win? The patient wins/ better health. The hygienist wins/better patient care. The office wins/fuller chairs. The antithesis of this is – say very little clinically to the patient while thinking – I will never get all this build-up off, but I will work really hard, begrudgingly, not accomplishing a potential health state for the patient. Who wins? NO ONE. This is a win lose scenario. 

Habit 6. Synergize 

• Covey says the energy rises using habits 4 and 5! This is results oriented positive energy. It is win/win. It is mutually agreed upon end in mind! A disciplined process. How disciplined were you last March? Did you have the end in mind….. October and November hygiene?

Covey calls habits 4,5 and 6 Interdependent or involving you and others

Habit 7. Sharpen the Saw

• One area Covey focuses is to be strong in the hard moments. This predicates this habit. He says growth, or sharpen the saw, occurs when you are able to contribute to others regularly. He uses 4 dimensions; Physical, social/emotional, mental and spiritual. Self-evaluate. How well do you participate in improvements in these areas?

Moving forward,  how can you use these habits?

• With yourself
• With your team
• With your patients
• With your family
• With your relationships

Give is a call after reading this, let's talk about how to use these tools in your dental office to overcome COVID . This resource paired with a great coach, is a recipe for success.

When was the last time you thought about whether or not the dental banker you have, is the right banker?

I am a former banker of 34 years. I have worked with healthcare practices, primarily privately owned dental practices, for the last 14 years of my career. One of the many things I learned during this time is bankers are perceived to be a dime a dozen. For the most part that is probably true. But there are many fine banks and bankers out there that are true consultants to their clients. They provide analysis and advice to improve efficiencies that will impact the bottom line of their clients.

The RIGHT banker

Practice owners pay CPA’s, bookkeepers and attorneys for their time. Perhaps that is why they are more likely to take their call than their banker’s call. Banks do not charge for their time and maybe that is why they are deemed less important or not a true advisor.

I can assure you that the right bank and banker can provide you with much insight and value if given the time to understand your practice. Yes, there are products and services that have monthly fees. The right banker will recommend the product or service that will decrease risk of fraud and provide front office efficiencies. The cost will more than pay for itself in reduced time performing daily tasks, allowing for a more productive use of time, and reduced risk of fraud which impacts three out of five dental practices.

Every dental practice owner should have a banker that:

• Knows your industry and banks many other professionals like you
• Provides consistent and timely (quarterly, semi-annual or annual) reviews of your account relationship which includes any changes in your practice, checking account activity, liquidity position, merchant provider activity and financial changes in your business and personal life. This conversation should also include short term and longterm plans or objectives for you.
• Has products/services designed with you in mind. There are a few banks in the nation that have a division within their institution that works solely with dental practices. These banks have designated bankers and products/services designed to help you the owner prevent fraud and be more efficient in your front office procedures.

If you do not currently have a relationship with your banker that provides the above level of service or value it is time to shop bankers or banks. I know how difficult it is to switch banks but the effort will be worth it if you receive the value you deserve and have a right to expect.

As a dental office Coach with Accelerate My Practice, Inc. (AMP) there are many things my fellow Coaches and I research when we visit dental offices all around the country. One item that is very important is what we call the “Perio Percentage.” 

The Perio Percentage, simply put, is the number of periodontal procedures (scaling and root planing, periodontal maintenance, etc.) expressed as a portion of the overall amount of hygiene procedures. Mathematically, we will calculate a fraction, where the numerator is the amount of periodontal procedures and the denominator is the total amount of hygiene procedures.

For Example

Let's say in a certain month, a hygienist sees 120 hygiene patients.  Of those 120 visits, 95 of them are adult prophylaxis and 25 are periodontal in nature as described above.  In this example, the Perio Percentage would be 25/120 or 20.8%.  

According to the CDC, in the general population about 47% of adults over 30 years of age have some sort of periodontal disease.  That number climbs to over 70% in adults over 65 years of age.  Per our research at AMP, in a healthy practice, the Perio Percentage is a minimum of 30%.  In an office that serves an older demographic, it should approach or exceed 40%.

A nice high Perio Percentage really means two things: first, and most importantly, we are providing excellent care for our periodontally involved patients. Second, our production will be higher on an hourly basis since the fees for periodontal procedures tend to be higher than that of standard adult prophylaxis.  And that’s without any increase in overhead.  So, everybody wins!

If your percentage is too low, it's likely due to one of two things.

• We are not probing frequently or accurately enough and therefore not diagnosing disease.
• Our case acceptance is too low amongst these patients.

I will discuss both of these factors and how we can improve our Perio Percentage in future blogs.

Let's imagine a scenario, not one too far fetch from that of dental case presentation. There is a weird noise coming from your car. There is a weird noise coming from your car, so you take it to the repair shop.   The shop owner himself takes a look at the car. He then says, “I would like to sit down with you and talk about this problem.”

“The transmission is a part of the overall drive system of the car. It adapts the output of your internal combustion engine to the wheels.  Internal combustion engines need to operate at a high rotational speed which can cause problems with starting, stopping, and slow travel unless geared down. The transmission will reduce the higher engine speed to a slower speed at the wheel, increasing torque.  It is connected to the crankshaft with a flywheel and then to the drive wheel via a driveshaft and differential. The valve body shifts gears using fluid pressure in response to throttle input.  Your torque converter has malfunctioned. Usually it will multiply torque when the rotational speed of the engine is low and allows fluid coming off the curved veins of the turbine to be deflected off the stator which is locked against a one-way clutch.”

“There are 3 options to solve this.  I can replace the transmission with a new part, replace it with a remanufactured part, or attempt to rebuild the transmission myself.” says the shop owner. 

“Let’s go over each option thoroughly.  I have some diagrams and pictures of the inside of transmissions.  Or, you can watch a 5-minute video on trans----.”

“OK!” you say, cutting him off and completely confused.  Unable to really know what’s best, you only come up with one question: “How much will those cost?”

 “I’m not sure; I’ll need to send in someone else to talk about that,” says the shop owner who knows everything.

That’s odd, I think to myself.  After all that, he doesn't even know what his own shop charges.  How can I trust all that other nonsense he told me?

Maria arrives, the shop owner disappears, and a talk about money ensues.  Options, zero-interest financing, more options, 5% prepayment discount.  You are frozen.

“I will need to think about it,” you mutter, defeated.  And head back to your dental office.  Moments later, you are back in your comfort zone, explaining to people about strep mutans and zirconia versus e.max, teaching where the DEJ is on x-rays, and offering lots of treatment options.

And worrying about the cost of the new transmission.

---

Do you need help with dental case presentation?  Ask us!

It’s that leaf dropping, pumpkin spice flavor, sweater wearing time of year that’s upon us. Fall is in the air as well as using your end of year dental insurance benefits. 

Dental insurance companies hang this theme over the insured heads – you pay us to have insurance, we will pay back minimally AND if you don’t use the present benefit, we will take all the remaining and you will lose all remaining benefits for the year! It sounds daunting, yet it is how the insurance companies actually work.

AMP teaches by late summer or early fall to reach out to all active patients who could still benefit from using their remaining balances before they are irrecoverable at the close of the calendar year. Specific narrative training is important to put needed dentistry on the books. Most teams do this quite successfully.

Dental Insurance food for thought

For those patients in network with their PPO and struggle to get their needed dentistry completed because “they ran out of benefits” are the very patients STILL COVERED. Here is how this works. Once the maximum benefit is used, the patient still enjoys a discounted fee on all procedures if they are insured. Let us say that again. The patient has benefits after their maximum. 

Example – the UCR for a prophy is $100. Your PPO discounts this prophy fee to $70. That’s a 30% discount! YOU CAN HAVE YOUR TEETH CLEANED 10 TIMES OR MORE A YEAR FOR $70 each with the first two covered by insurance. Do this math – Your first two cleanings cost you nothing (not really, you must pay to have the coverage) although your out-of-pocket expense is zero. The next two cleanings cost you $70 each, or, $140. Take the $140 you spent over a year of 4 cleanings. This averages out to $35 per cleaning. 

Why would someone want to do this?

Here is why -

• The patient benefits by maintaining a healthier periodontium because they are seen more often
• The provider benefits from a more frequent interval, allowing the patient to maintain a better health standard AND the provider doesn’t ‘push’ to do more than intended for the time allowed
• The office benefits from future chairs filled more often. Hygiene tends to grow faster with this model.

Although we have mentioned two dynamics here; 1. Use your insurance or lose it, and, 2. Your in-network provider will continue to offer you a discounted fee as long as you are insured. Why both?

If your dental health requires repair and you choose not to address this ‘until next year’s benefits,’ you could cause bigger and more expensive dentistry to be done. Dental decay NEVER heals itself. It is always best to fix a tooth at the earliest possible time; when the decay is small and the tooth is still strong. Delaying treatment for insurance reasons, or, any other will cause decay to grow. These costs the health of your tooth and a deep dig into your wallet. 

Use your benefits up.
And remember, get all your dentistry done at the earliest time possible. Your next steak meal will thank you!

One of the hotter topics for all businesses is how the CARES Act impacts their business and specifically the SBA loans are being administered. Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephen Custer of DMLO which a large accounting firm based in Louisville, KY. Stephen is not only a CPA but also an attorney, so he is a wealth of information on this topic. If you want to see the video recording of this interview, you can find it at www.Facebook.com/AccelerateMyPractice. For more detailed questions on this topic, I would suggest reaching out to DMLO via their website or phone number, www.DMLO.com or 502–326–2376

A big challenge we face with the CARES Act is that it is ever changing. The information we have today could become outdated in a week or two. We stalled a bit doing this interview waiting for the speed of change to slow down. So hopefully everything we do write here remains relevant, but do understand this is being written and published on 4/15/2020.

Timing — The timing of when to take your PPP loan is of vital importance. Once your loan is closed the bank is required to fund your loan within 10 days. Meaning you will have your cash within 10 days, which is good news. If your business is not considered an essential business and you can’t work, you will have a challenge. When the loan is funded, you will have 8 weeks to spend 75% of these funds on payroll. After that point your “forgiveness rate” starts to become modified. It is really a challenge to say the least. The smartest thing you can do, is wait as long as possible to close your loan. That way you don’t get it before your business can even open. Side note, this might be a great thing to write your elected officials about so perhaps the Treasury Department changes these rules ever so slightly.

Proper use of Funds — A business can use these funds for anything really, but your forgiveness is entirely based on your using these funds for qualified things. These are: payroll costs, mortgage interest (for mortgages that existed before 2/15/2020) rent and utilities. You have to use at least 75% of the funds for payroll or again your forgiveness rate will change. We were unable to gain clarity at the time of this interview if payroll taxes were a qualified use of funds. They might not be!

Repayment — the loans have deferral of interest and payments for 6 months. Meaning after you use the funds up, you will need to contact your bank and request the forgiveness. Provide evidence to your bank of how the funds were used in order to qualify.

EIDL loans — I have heard many conflicting things with this and within this interview we provided some clarity on the topic. If you took the EIDL loan prior to the PPP program launching, the amount you qualified for was likely reduced. At this point, most businesses with employees would be better suited with the PPP program. Personally I applied for an EIDL loan for one of my businesses and got an email back stating that business would only qualify for $1000 per employee. Which of course is dramatically different than what the rules were when I applied. For a sole proprietor business, you would have to run the math to see which option would be more advantageous. I don’t think anyone could make a blanket statement that one is better than the other without detailed information about your business.

In addition to the above, if your business didn’t lay off employees, you could qualify for employee retention tax credits. The last I read was $10,000 per employee. It is my understanding that you can’t do both tax credits and PPP for the same business. Businesses that also didn’t lay off can qualify for deferred payroll taxes, the keyword being deferred.

The bottom line with all of this is having a qualified professional giving you advice during this rapidly changing time is really smart. No one person can write an article that will provide you with sound advice without knowing your business precisely. If you lack this professional advice (CARES Act), I would suggest reaching out to DMLO at the contact at the beginning of this article.

Author does not claim to be a CPA or tax attorney, nor is he employed by DMLO. He simply found their advice to sound good advice that he could share with others.

Given the number of calls that myself and my team are fielding, there are plenty of cashflow fears for business owners. I want to share some thoughts on this topic, but please realize you will have to check your local listings on these topics. Each state is different and impacted differently, but I want to provide resources that will likely become available over time to you in your locality.

Over Communicate with the Team

The biggest thing every business owner needs to do is over communicate with their teams. Much like you owners have fears about your futures, your employees do as well. So let them know if they will have a job when this ends. If they won’t, let them know now so they can start planning. I bring this up because one option you can utilize if your business has been asked to close by your local government is unemployment. Many states have made changes in their policies with unemployment. Most have waived the waiting period meaning your team can get payment via unemployment right away vs the traditional 1 week waiting period.

States have also waived the requirement of seeking employment knowing most will return to their jobs. One thing that can be done to help preserve your companies cashflow is to furlough your employees. I do want to be clear about one thing, this won’t be an easy conversation for you to have. I am not suggesting this is what you do but it is one option for you. If you have the cash reserves to survive this lull and you decide that is the best thing for your team, so be it. I sure hope your practice has all of its maintenance done and cleaned amazingly then!

SBA Loans

Should you be short on cash, as areas are deem disaster areas, you would qualify for short term SBA loans at discounted costs. The current interest rates on these loans for for profit businesses is 3.75%. To see if your area qualifies, go to this site. https://www.sba.gov/disaster-assistance/coronavirus-covid-19

Contacting the Bank

I would also suggest contacting your banks and anyone you have loans with. Having spoken with management within one of the larger banks, they started creating contingency plans for this last week. I would assume each company will handle it differently. Some might let you completely pause payments and others might want interest only payments. But either way it will make cashflow easier for you.

Lastly, from a cashflow perspective, if you have and emergency patient in the chair, you might as well get as much done as the patient is willing to do. They are there, and you have a light schedule and they likely are only returning home, get as much done while there as you can. It only makes sense.

Take a deep breath to calm yourself and wash your hands. This too shall pass!

I want to weigh in on this topic of COVID-19 for our industry and offer a few thoughts of preparedness you might want to consider. First I want to offer some facts on the topic and to be clear these aren’t my facts but rather from either the CDC or WHO and I will reference all my sources at the end if you want to read them yourself. I share all of this because between the media and social media, it is very difficult to get to what is real, so I will provide what I believe to be credible sources of information. The reason why this is important will be obvious to some, but not all.

Misinformation about COVID-19 is causing widespread panic and resulting in people stockpiling a years worth of toilet paper as an illustration of the level of the insanity in the world right now.

COVID-19 Facts

According to the CDC the seasonal flu in the US in 2017–2018 resulted in 61,000 deaths and 810,000 hospitalizations with 45,000,000 illnesses. This works out to a case-fatality rate (CFR) of 0.13%. In the years 2016–2017 it was 38,0000 deaths and 497,000 hospitalizations for 29,000,000 illnesses. This is a CFR of 0.13% as well.

As of 3–13–2020 in the United States, there have been 41 deaths for total reported cases of 1,629. This works out to a CFR rate of 2.5%. This CFR rate is expected to change quite a bit because of the test methods being limited to those who had foreign travel. This change in testing protocol just changed this week. So likely there are far more who have the illness but have not been tested. I am not under the impression that ultimately they think the CFR rate will go up or down. I think there is too much unknown at this point.

COVID-19 Transmission- One of the challenges creating some the hysteria is that there isn’t enough known about how this virus is spread. It is thought to be spread via liquid sprayed from a person to another via cough or sneeze. There is thought that the virus can live for some time on a hard surface such as a door knob. No evidence of its transmission via water but has been found in feces. Some early evidence shows that a person exhibiting no symptoms could be contagious. This is disturbing for sure. Lastly it appears as though the incubation period for this virus is about 5 days and the symptoms appear to develop in about 11 days.

What does it all mean?

If you are a “normal healthy” person, the likelihood of death from COVID-19 is quite low. Now that being said, you might be miserable for 2 weeks while you recover from it. So clearly, not getting sick is the best method and hence the world closing most all large gatherings lately. So the odds of your dental office being impacted with no shows and cancellations is quite high. The fact that many schools across the country have closed is going to impact every parent in this country and create employment challenges for them all.

What could happen next?

My prediction if things continue to get out of control is this. Assuming hospitals start to overflow and can’t handle the volume of people needing or wanting to be tested for COVID-19, public health officials are likely to seek other facilities and teams to do this testing. I see them next turning to medical and dental schools to be transformed into triage facilities for testing and potentially treatment. In areas that lack these facilities, I could see a potential of public health officials tapping into surgical facilities and dental offices. Think about it, where else are their facilities and employees with asepsis training and capabilities? If things get out of control, I think this would be a real possibility.

Now that I have shared my doom and gloom prediction about COVID-19, I think the more likely is something less dramatic. I for sure see economic loss for business owners as a result of this crisis. If we as trained professionals can calm the public and teach them logical things to do, such as good hygiene, the severity can be decreased. Sadly, there is plenty of the opposite of being level headed.

The worst story I have heard thus far was from a physicians assistant who took a call from someone asking if they were at risk because they ate Chinese food last week. Now I am not trying to pick on this person’s ignorance. This level of ignorance and then inciting panic as a results with similarly minded people will stir the public into a frenzy. My greatest concern for this country and world isn’t the sickness but the damaged caused from the panic.

Mindset matters

I have studied neuroscience for the past 10 years and here is a super short lesson on it. The frontal lobe of the brain is responsible for many things but relative to this, judgement, planning and problem solving. The amygdala by contrast is responsible for the processing of emotions and specifically for this purpose, fear. When one becomes fearful, the body shifts blood flow from the frontal lobe to the amygdala so it can decide whether you should fight or flight. Clearly when you see people fighting over toilet paper in Costco, I can tell you where the blood flow in their brain is and it sure isn’t to the problem solving portion of the brain. One’s ability to solve problems during this “triggered” time is quite low. The problem is that right now we all need better problems solving skills!!

What can you do?

What can you do to be more rational during tough times? Some simple things can help. Just stop and take at least 10 really deep breathes. This will not only help you make better decisions but also help to boost your immune system during a time when we all need this. You will find a calm at the end of taking deeper breaths. Another technique we teach all the time is to change your focus. Being entirely focused on the terrible news or social media feeds that are “scaring” you, you will create a perfect storm in your brain.

If by contrast you can find something positive or bright in your day, celebrate something, enjoy a moment or anything to pull your attention away all off the doom and gloom, again you will shift the blood flow in your brain and dramatically increase your problems solving skills. Now some of you might be asking yourself the question, but I don’t have something bright today or something to celebrate? Look harder, of course you do. Maybe you don’t have COVID-19, or your family doesn’t or you still have a job, or your son or daughter is desperately seeking your attention during this scary time. You should be thankful you have this son or daughter. If you even try a little bit you should be able to create a list of reason to be thankful for!!!

I have great concerns for anyone who has health issues and I am equally concerned for the impact of the panic on our children. This virus has the ability to dramatically negatively impact our children for years to come. The economy will recover, our health for most of us will recover. The emotional scars of any of us acting like fearful idiots could leave life long scars on our children. My advice, calm down so you can calm your family. Turn off the news and turn on a family comedy. Laughter can very positively impact your immune system and your body as reported by the Mayo Clinic.

The Dental Office and COVID-19

People in the medical community are seen, on some level, as experts in health and medicine. Act like an expert and talk sense into your patients, friends and families. Do what you can to attempt to maintain normalcy in your life and practice. But use every chance you have to inspire hope and calm into the public. You have to live it to be able to lead people to it. If you need someone to talk you off the ledge of panic, hit our website (https://acceleratemypractice.com) where we have people standing by on our chat that can offer you some peace in the storm. It would be our pleasure to serve you and help you and your team during this crisis. We can offer you ideas with your practice, patience and family. We are here to support and serve you!

In the meantime I would suggest writing/publishing a Facebook, YouTube, email message to your patience explaining the following. Infection control measures that have always existed in dentistry and were designed such that dental offices assume all patients are infected with something. Meaning, there is no safer place in this country than a dental office. For sure safer than your local grocery or big box store. I would scream this message from the roof top!

From a social distancing perspective, consider having your patients wait in their cars for you to call them in. Patients and staff members are able to stay in a safe spot but yet still get done the things that need to be done.

A Healthy Mouth

Also, one of the best ways to prevent you contracting any illness is to ensure your mouth is healthy. One of the biggest pathways for disease into your body is your mouth. An unhealthy mouth would be far more prone to infection than a healthy one. In addition to this, if you body is busy fighting oral infection, it is taking away resources to fight other and potentially more important infections. There is no better time to have great oral health than now!! I would also passionately share this message with your patients. Feel free to cite the resources I have as evidence to support this message.

Bottom line, the dental office is a very safe place to be right now. Patients can get sound professional advice on public health topics from dental professionals. There is no better time to have great oral health than right now.

Be the calm in the storm for your patients and wash your hands!

Sources & References