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Blocking the New Patient and Dental Hygiene Appointments are an important piece to increasing your profitability!  \nThe Art of Scheduling Success  \nAuthor: Debbie Seidel-Bittke, RDH, BS  \nTable of Contents  \nThe Art of Continuing Care in Your Dental Prctice pg. 2  \nGet Your Dental Practice on Schedule pg 7  \nAbout the President of Dental Practice Solutions pg.10  \nCorporate Office: 12024 Sunnyside Rd. Suite 711 Clackamas, OR 97015  \nUS/Canada Toll-free: 1-888-816-1511 or Outside US: 1-503-970-1122  \nEmail: [info@dentalpracticesolutions.com](info@dentalpracticesolutions.com) [Website: www.dentalpracticesolutions.com](Website: www.dentalpracticesolutions.com)  \nCorporate Office: 12024 Sunnyside Rd. Suite 711 Clackamas, OR 97015  \nUS/Canada Toll-free: 1-888-816-1511 or Outside US: 1-503-970-1122  \nEmail: [info@dentalpracticesolutions.com](info@dentalpracticesolutions.com) [Website: www.dentalpracticesolutions.com](Website: www.dentalpracticesolutions.com)  \nThe Art of Continuing Care in Your Dental Practice  \nHow do you currently communicate the importance of optimal oral health to your patients? When you understand how to communicate to your patients so they understand you will have happy and healthy patients. This means job security to the employees and increased revenue for the business owner. Preventive care and periodontal maintenance appointment scheduling need to be an important source of success for your dental practice.  \nPreventive care and periodontal maintenance appointment scheduling may be the most important source of success for your dental practice. But not every practice knows how to fully tap this goldmine. Filling your schedule with future dental hygiene appointments is an art that requires a daily system—and forming some new habits—but once learned, it’s a system that will make your dental hygiene department rock-solid.  \nKeep Your Schedule Rockin’ With Pre-Blocking  \nThe most effective way to keep the hygiene schedule full is to, number one, pre-block it. This means blocking out specific timeframes in your schedule for specific kinds of visits. For example, how many hours each day do you need for new patient exams? Do you block a specific time on your daily schedule to see New Patients, Patients for Big  \nRestorative/Cosmetic Dental Cases, Pediatric Patients, Scaling and Root Planing appointments? Include more time to chart important screening exams if you don’t have a hygiene assistant to document, and remember to allow 10 minutes for breaking down the room, disinfecting, and setup. Best profitability and a time saving-tip are to have another auxiliary available to do this simple, yet important task.  \nThe goal of pre-blocking appointments is to keep the hygiene schedule full and to be productive—so that each day brings in the optimal amount of hygiene revenue. Holes in the schedule lead to a domino effect of patients not returning for maintenance care, and the dentist will see openings in the treatment schedule in the very near future.  \nTip: Have the dental hygienist or hygiene assistant schedule future dental hygiene appointments. They are the auxiliary who understands the purpose of the next visit and how much time needs to be allotted for the patient’s next visit.  \nSo, setting up a pre-blocked or tiered schedule is key, but that’s not your only step for successfully scheduling preventive care (Dental Hygiene) appointments. Now you need to make sure that ALL patients make an appointment for their next dental visit. What’s the point of pre-blocking the patient time if you don’t fill the appointment slots, with the correct type of patient treatment?  \nCorporate Office: 12024 Sunnyside Rd. Suite 711 Clackamas, OR 97015  \nUS/Canada Toll-free: 1-888-816-1511 or Outside US: 1-503-970-1122  \nEmail: [info@dentalpracticesolutions.com](info@dentalpracticesolutions.com) [Website: www.dentalpracticesolutions.com](Website: www.dentalprac","cbCainaxaiJZgA1R","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCainaxaiJZgA1R","pdf",203468,"English","# The Art of Continuing Care in Your Dental Practice\n## Get Your Dental Practice on Schedule\n## About the President of Dental Practice Solutions\n## Pre-Blocking Hygiene Appointments\n## Postcards Only Get You So Far\n## It’s All in How You Ask","[{\"question\":\"How does pre-blocking improve a dental hygiene schedule?\",\"answer\":\"Pre-blocking reserves specific timeframes for specific kinds of visits, helping keep the hygiene schedule full and productive. It reduces gaps that can cause patients to miss maintenance care and disrupt the broader treatment schedule.\"},{\"question\":\"Why are postcard recall systems considered less effective?\",\"answer\":\"The document notes that postcard recall can be passive and impersonal, leading to a loss of a large portion of continuing care patients. Patients also delay calling to reschedule when they have to initiate the process.\"},{\"question\":\"What question style helps patients schedule the next appointment?\",\"answer\":\"Patients are more likely to schedule when asked open-ended questions rather than closed-ended yes/no options. Examples in the document show that asking about when they would like to schedule increases follow-through.\"}]","The Art of Scheduling Success - A Guide to Dental Hygiene Appointment Productivity | PDF",1790373317]