The Most Important 3-Minutes You Have at Every Patient Visit

In this edition of Increasing Case Acceptance, I want to talk about the most important three minutes you have with every patient visit that can lead to case acceptance, either at that visit or in the future.

I believe – and it’s a philosophy that I’ve employed for a long time – is the most important three minutes that I have is at the end of the appointment. And that is when I’m done with the procedure, the handpiece has been put away, the patient’s face has been cleaned up, and we sit the patient up, and I basically get sort of knee-to-knee with them, and we’ll have a little discussion about the procedure, and then I just chat with them. I try to get myself situated so I can see the clock behind the patients, and I try to have a disciplined approach to just spending three minutes visiting with each one of my patients.

Transcript Continued Below…

I heard an important quote one time that patients don’t care about how much you know until they know how much you care.

And as we get very busy in our practices and very efficient with our procedures, it’s easy for us to bounce from patient to patient to patient and do the procedures very well, and then there’s no connection. And I think that last three minutes, that last final touch where you can wish them well and catch up on their family, that’s the stuff that I think really drives trust within the practice that is going to inherently help patients say yes to you down the road.

But you know, beyond that, it’s just fun. It’s the right thing to do with our patients. If you’re going to be spending three, four, five days a week in your practice, why not do it with a bunch of patients, a bunch of clients, a bunch of friends that you want to spend time with day in and day out. I think if you do that, you’re going to find your day is a whole lot more enjoyable, and you’re going to have a lot of these patients saying yes to you just because they like you and because they trust you.

What do you do to build patient trust?