Ready to Stop Being a Prophy Machine?

Is your hygiene department ready to stop the daily routine of prophy after prophy? Are you ready to have a happier dentist and hygiene team, healthier patients, and overall transform your office into a stellar perio-focused practice?

Instead of limiting yourself to 30-minute patient appointments for a prophy, affording hygienists one hour per appointment, or longer if SRP is scheduled, allows you to offer comprehensive perio services, like salivary testing, non-surgical perio therapy, and maintenance visits at 3-month intervals. These services add an exceptional value to your practice versus a nonstop, one-size-fits-all prophy model.

Do not let the uncertainty of patient acceptance hold you back from having a successful practice.The clinical benefits to patients of a comprehensive approach to perio diagnosis and treatment exceed the level of care achieved by supragingival instrumentation.

An excellent vehicle by which an office can transition to a proper perio-focused practice is by recommending salivary testing to the patient for personalized treatment and disease prevention. How can you establish salivary testing? Let me explain to you how easy it is to test. Testing takes 2 to 3 minutes to administer when you are in the learning curve, which consists of 1 or 2 patients. Afterward it takes less time. Hygienists who have one hour per patient can make it happen effortlessly.

If you are having a hard time breaking the cycle, I highly suggest you connect with a colleague who is hitting it out of the park with perio services and see what their daily routine looks like. Introducing patients to a revised approach to gum disease can be facilitated by citing recent research, improvements in salivary testing metrics and expressing the desire to provide enhanced outcomes for your patients. If we solely concentrate on what’s in it for each patient, the transition from prophy to perio should be widely accepted by our patients and attainable by your team members.

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My Staff Won’t Do It

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Richard H. Nagelberg, DDS

Dr. Richard Nagelberg has been practicing general dentistry in suburban Philadelphia for 34 years. He has international practice experience, having provided dental services in Thailand, Cambodia, and Canada. He is an advisory board member, speaker, key opinion leader and clinical consultant for several dental companies and organizations. Richard has a monthly column in Dental Economics magazine, “GP Perio-The Oral-Systemic Connection”. He is a recipient of Dentistry Today’s Top Clinicians in CE, 2009-2016. A respected member of the dental community, Richard lectures internationally on a variety of topics centered on understanding the impact dental professionals have beyond the oral cavity.

Latest posts by Richard H. Nagelberg, DDS (see all)

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