Complete Dentistry: Marketing your services to the community – part 2

By Dr. Malcolm Kerstein

Dr. Malcolm Kerstein previously wrote a blog post about how he uses local advertisements and seminars to fill his schedule with new patients, and techniques he uses to get them to accept treatment.

How to Cut Down Follow-Up Appointments

My practice takes T-Scan recordings on all patients who have signs of Occlusal Disease or have trouble keeping their mouth open during hygiene visits due to muscle soreness. With the help of my hygienists, I am able to review dynamic recordings of my patient’s bite using T-Scan and schedule follow-ups for those that are required. The staff will take the recordings when the patient comes in for treatment and I will then schedule necessary follow-ups if I notice malocclusion.

The T-Scan system has reduced my orthotic adjustments from an average of five or six to only one or two adjustments.   This is because I am able to get the patients more comfortable with their splints and they do not require further adjustments.  Most importantly, I am able to finish my equilibrations to a much higher level of perfection.

Seeing Improvement

I can now see graphically, in the dynamic playback of a recorded movie, the improvement in force and balance.  The recorded improvement is very vital information about the speed of disclusion of the posterior teeth, which is essentially a measurement of a perfected anterior guidance.

Vicki, my assistant, and I love to see those “Bulls Eyes” on the center of force and those disclusion times of less than .5 seconds, as we finish up a complete and thorough equilibration (as Pete Dawson has taught us to strive for). Our patients love the way their bites feel and how the chronic headaches they have been suffering with are now a thing of the past.

After all these years, I find myself not planning to sail away into retirement, but to keep on treating, learning, and spreading the word that there are truly thousands of undiagnosed cases of Occlusal Disease in dental practices.

Now with the availability of a recorded movie and documentation equipment like the T-Scan, we can show our patients and interested colleagues what our pioneering teachers have been talking to us about for the last 50-plus years.  Occlusal disease is the most under diagnosed and often, incorrectly or incompletely treated disease that Dentistry is charged with treating.