Are You Forgettable?
I suppose that I will never cease to be amazed at how many transfer patients cannot remember the names of their original orthodontists. After all, they see us every three to five weeks for two years or more. Maybe it just happens with the patients who move, but I rather think that this is a universal experience. Obviously, many of us will be chagrined to learn that coming to our offices is such a forgettable experience. But it happens. too often and too predictably to owe to chance alone.
It is interesting to consider the causes for this patient amnesia. We might start by asking ourselves what we are doing to make our patients' orthodontic experience, if not unforgettable, then at least pleasant. If we look at the 1983 JCO Orthodontic Practice Study, we see that few orthodontists are doing much for their patients outside of the treatment itself. Only about half of the orthodontists surveyed had an office bulletin board to display newspaper clippings about their patients, and I imagine it would be safe to estimate that only about half of those who have bulletin boards write congratulatory letters to their patients on a systematic and regular basis. About 10 percent sent their patients newsletters with articles about recent developments in dentistry and orthodontics. Less than 30 percent used patient motivational techniques.
We do score a little better when it comes to writing thank-you letters to patients and parents who refer others to us. Seventy-five percent of us admitted to this practice, but that leaves 25 percent of a university-trained, professional group acting like crass ingrates. Only about 13 percent of the survey group provided any kind of social entertainment for their patients, and less than 20 percent gave their patients any kind of gifts. A silver toothbrush for the new baby of one of your patients or the parent of a patient is not a very expensive gift, and the goodwill and pleasant memories it generates far outweigh the cost.
Only 19 percent ever used a patient satisfaction survey to find out strengths and weaknesses of their practices. Only 38 percent of orthodontists had established any systematic method of delivering progress reports to parents, and only 35 percent had posttreatment conferences in which the patient and parent could be given a final thank you, before-and-after photos, encouragement about the retention phase, and a final pitch to enlist them as missionaries for the practice.
Insurance salesmen learned long ago that it is not the new client who produces most of their sales. Rather, most of their revenue is produced by selling new policies to old clients. There is a lesson in this for orthodontists: we need to stay in touch with the people we have already treated. As Samuel Johnson once said, "People don't need teaching as much as they need reminding". Our former patients need reminding that we are still in business and that we appreciate them and the referrals they send us. There are many ways of doing this--birthday cards, newsletters, social events. But first, we must recognize the need for this effort if we are going to remain professionally viable in an orthodontic market that is becoming increasingly competitive.
If we are chagrined to learn that many of our patients do not remember us, how embarrassing and humiliating is it for us to forget their names. This happened to me often enough that I finally tried a new strategy for remembering at least my current patients. Every orthodontist takes patient photographs that go back in the files after the consultation and are used infrequently thereafter. I have put these photos into an album. The patient's name and significant details are written on the back of each photo, and I study them (with the help of a passenger) when I travel to satellite offices. Your memory may not need this kind of mnemonic crutch, but for me it has reduced those excruciating social moments when names of patients and parents are forgotten.
My point is that there are many things we ought to be doing for our patients aside from the treatment. Common courtesy should be incentive enough for some of the tasks I have mentioned. Beyond that, we can rely upon an enlightened self-interest. According to a survey conducted by NF Inc. for the AAO in 1982, 94 percent of the patients who come to our offices are referred by another person--relative, former patient, friend, or dentist. If you are expecting to get your fair share of a dwindling orthodontic population from the AAO or ADA, from media blitzes or Yellow Page advertisements, or even from TV, radio, or newspaper advertisements, then you might now have cause to rethink your strategy.
Your most potent referral base is people--and particularly, I would think, those people who already know and appreciate you. If you don't know or care who your patients are, if you are providing one of those forgettable experiences, then maybe you shouldn't be too surprised when your practice stops growing.
