May 12, 2025 • 11 mins
Ever struggled with hygiene cancellations while simultaneously facing a backlog of patients desperate for appointments? You're not alone, and there's a brilliant solution hiding in plain sight.
What makes this approach so powerful is its triple benefit structure. Your practice maintains a more predictable schedule and improves productivity. Your patients gain more consistent access to care when they need it. And your local community organizations receive much-needed support. It's a win-win-win that aligns perfectly with modern dental practices that aim to be forces for good beyond their clinical contributions.
Ready to transform your practice's cancellation policy while making a real difference in your community? Try this approach and email us at dentalpracticeheroes@gmail.com to share your results. For more innovative practice management solutions and to join our community of growth-minded dental professionals, visit dentalpracticeheroes.com and become part of the DPH Hero Collective today.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Have you ever came up with a really good idea that
you just had to pop out of bedand write it down, because you
were like this is the greatestthing I've ever thought of in my
life?
Well, I want to share somethingwith you today, because I had
one of those ideas and I feellike you're going to like it.
I am going to give yousomething today that I think you
are going to find is veryuseful, and you are going to be
(00:22):
able to show up on Monday andstart using it.
So stay tuned.
You're not going to want tomiss this one.
Thank you so much for listening.
You're listening to the DentalPractice Heroes podcast.
I'm your host, dr Paul Etcheson, and I am the author of two
books on dental practicemanagement.
I'm a dental coach and I amalso the owner of a large
(00:43):
four-doctor practice in thesouth suburbs of Chicago.
My goal is to teach you how tostep back from the chair,
empower your team and build apractice that gives you your
life back and lets you spendyour time doing exactly what you
feel like doing.
So if you're ready for apractice that supports your life
instead of consuming it, youare in the right place, all
right.
So I was thinking of this newpolicy today.
(01:04):
You know I love policies, youknow I love systems, and that's
what this podcast is about andI'm going to tell you about that
policy in a second.
But it got me thinking, like.
I started feeling, startedquestioning myself like is this
okay?
Is this ethically okay?
And I was thinking to myselfhave ever done anything like
this before?
This very much hinges oncapitalizing on a current
(01:27):
situation.
Okay, we're capitalizing onsomething happening and we're
using it for our gain.
So then I started to wonder andasking myself, paul, have you
ever done anything like thisbefore?
Like, have you ever perhapsused the excuse of inflation to
argue a point or to makeyourself look better or to
(01:48):
change a policy?
I don't know.
Maybe I have.
Have you ever maybe used thelack of post office workers to
explain why a patient's lab casedidn't arrive on time?
Well, maybe, and maybe that waskind of a fib, maybe we just
didn't send out the case.
Have you ever maybe around 2021, 22, perhaps like you had an
(02:11):
Invisalign refinement you shouldhave sent off and you didn't
send it off and the patientcalled and then you went on your
computer and you logged intothe site and then you sent it
off that day, but then you toldthe patient well, you know, the
shipping channels are all backedup and this stuff's coming from
out of the USA.
So sorry, yeah, maybe I didthat.
And what I'm saying is we'vedone these things before.
(02:32):
Ok, maybe some like white lies,maybe somewhat harmless, maybe
it falls under the whole thingof how you do.
One thing is how you do allthings.
I'm not here to judge you do.
One thing is how you do allthings.
I'm not here to judge, but hereis what I'm here to tell you is
that there is a currentsituation that I think you could
possibly use to your advantagein your practice right now.
So what is going on in theworld that you could use to your
(02:55):
advantage?
And I know what you're thinkingit's tariffs, isn't it Wrong?
It is not tariffs.
We've talked about it a fewtimes in my last episodes.
It's the hygiene shortage.
It is very much on my mindbecause I'm trying to help a lot
of clients that don't havehygienists.
So I'm working with a fewclients.
They have a shortage ofhygienists.
They're struggling to see alltheir patients.
Patients are calling, they'reupset that they can't get in and
(03:18):
there's really nothing we cando.
Yet every single morning we mayhave anywhere from 10 to 20% of
our schedule just drops off theschedule, and I know people say
, well, you've got topre-collect.
I understand that we do that onthe doctor's side.
It results in almost nobodycanceling on the doctor's side
and nobody knows showing on thedoctor's side.
(03:39):
But what about hygiene?
And I can tell you at mypractice we do not have a
hygiene shortage.
We have 11 hygienists right nowand we have tons of hygiene.
We have almost 9,000 activepatients, but we have a lot of
hygiene cancellations.
So this is something I've beentrying to address and we have
got a meeting coming up at theend of May where we were going
to address it.
Now I wanna share with you whatmy idea is and then how it
(04:02):
changed this morning.
So my idea is utilize thehygiene shortage.
It is true, it is legit and ina lot of practices it is the
reality.
We need to tell every singlepatient hey, mr Jones, listen,
there is a shortage inhygienists.
We are lucky to have thehygienists that we have at this
office, but it is very criticalthat you keep this appointment.
(04:24):
I'm letting you know we need totake a deposit.
We need to take a $50 depositto hold this hygiene visit and
if you do not give us 48 hours,we're going to have no other
choice but to charge you forthat, because we've got lots of
patients that want to get intothe hygienist and it's very
important that we don't wasteany of our hygienist time.
Okay, so here what that was myidea.
(04:47):
It's kind of very similar, in asense, to my previous reducing
cancellations method.
It requires that there's alevel of confidence in
delivering it, there's a levelof confidence in forcing it.
But what is the thing that werun into?
Why doesn't this always work,or why does this upset patients
so much?
And the reason is is becausethe patients often feel like
we're trying to get somethingfor nothing.
(05:09):
So they will make up excuses.
They will tell us that peopleand their family have died, and
we know they didn't die orthey've been dead for years.
You know, and sometimes youknow we've got a lot of patients
that are telling the truth.
They really do get sick.
I'm not saying that thingsdon't happen, I'm just saying it
is definitely an abused policyand if you've been in this
industry for any amount of time,you will know, it is very much
(05:30):
more abused after COVID than itwas pre-COVID, right?
So how do we convey to thepatients that we're not getting
something for nothing?
And what we used to do in thepast is we would give them a few
strikes.
We would always explain we'renot doing something for nothing.
We would send them a letter andthis system is all in the
OmniPractice program on myonline training all the forms
(05:50):
that we send.
It works, but I've got a twiston it now.
So we're telling all thepatients they have to show up
because of the hygiene shortage.
But here's what else we'redoing.
We're going to find 12 localcharities, one for each month of
the year, and we're going totell the patients, when we tell
them about this policy, thatthey have to put the deposit.
If they don't give us 48 hoursfor any reason, we will take
(06:10):
their deposit and we will donateto X charity, which is the
charity of X month.
So we're taking all of themissed appointment fees and
we're donating them to a localcharity.
So when they say you're gettingsomething for nothing, we say I
am so sorry, this is our policy, there's a hygiene shortage and
what's what we're doing?
And we're not taking your money.
We're donating to this charity,so feel good about that.
(06:30):
And this works in three ways.
Let me tell you how One.
This is going to be so easy toget the team behind it.
They are going to be behindthis.
We're doing something good forthe community and we're doing
something good for all of ourpatients Because think about it
the motive it's pure.
We're giving away charity, butwe're also helping all the
patients that we have thatreally want to be seen and they
(06:51):
can't have.
You had anyone call your officeand get pissed off because you
can't get them in for like threemonths in hygiene and then the
next day, like literally sixopenings pop up, you know, and
now your team's scrambling tofill them.
Sometimes they fill them,sometimes they don't, but it
really sucks because weshouldn't have to do that at all
.
People should respect our time.
So our motive is pure.
It'll be very easy to get yourteam behind it.
(07:12):
But then the other thing isthat this is still going to piss
off some people.
Isn't it?
Because we've worked indentistry long enough to know
that, no matter what we do, somepeople will be pissed off.
But here's what I love about itthose people that get pissed off
.
We're going to stick tight toour guns because if they're
upset about that after weexplained it to them verbally,
after we said we're not eventaking their money, we're giving
(07:33):
it to charity, well, they cango somewhere else and I hope
they leave a one-star reviewbecause I can't wait to respond
that we explained this to you,we donated it to this charity.
I'm sorry you feel this way.
I suggest you go be someoneelse's problem Because, guess
what, I don't want you in mypractice Because if you're that
upset about that, you probablyweren't showing up to your
appointments anyway.
(07:54):
This is my new idea.
I got to give thanks to thecharity thing for somebody in my
online mastermind group thatcame up with that and they're
under a pseudonym, so I don'tknow who it was.
I really wish I could call themout by name on the podcast, but
that was not my idea.
But the previous part ofutilizing the hygiene shortage
and actually verbally explainingit was my idea and I think just
doing that alone is gonna get alot more people to show up.
(08:15):
But I think this combination ofthings we're gonna roll this
out and typically I wouldn'tever talk about something I
haven't rolled out in my officeon the podcast yet, but I am
very confident that this isgoing to work and I feel like
the risk is so low that I wannashare this with you right now so
you can implement this in yours.
So, hey, if you try this outand this works at your practice,
(08:37):
let me know.
Shoot me an emaildentalpracticeheroes at gmailcom
.
I would love to hear what youguys are doing in your practice,
what you guys are up to andwhat's working for you guys, and
this is the sort of stuff onthe DPH Hero Collective.
This is our community.
We've got a systems tab andpeople are posting things on
(09:00):
there all the time.
We're having mastermindmeetings twice a month where
we're getting on there.
We've got such a good group andit's been so much fun to get to
know some new dentists that allshare the same passion for
practice management and we'reall sharing ideas growing
together.
If that sounds like somethingyou want to join so you can have
a better practice and enjoy abetter life, go to
dentalpracticeheroescom and signup for the DPH Hero Collective.
We also offer one-on-onecoaching options, so there's
(09:21):
nothing wrong with using acurrent situation and using it
to your advantage.
That is the way of the world.
That is called using anopportunity, and I feel okay
about it.
So we're going to do it andit's going to work and it's
going to rock and roll and it'sgoing to save oodles and oodles
of money and, honestly, it's theright thing for the patients.
It is not fair to our patientsthat want to be seen that we
(09:42):
have people that don't respectour time.
Hey, give that a try.
Let me know how it goes.
Everybody.
Have a great week.
I hope you had a great, amagical summer of a lot of
practice, growth, but also takethe time off and do the things
that are truly important to yourlife.
All right, take care everybody.
We'll talk to you next time.
Have you ever came up with a really good idea that
you just had to pop out of bedand write it down, because you
were like this is the greatestthing I've ever thought of in my
life?
Well, I want to share somethingwith you today, because I had
one of those ideas and I feellike you're going to like it.
I am going to give yousomething today that I think you
are going to find is veryuseful, and you are going to be
(00:22):
able to show up on Monday andstart using it.
So stay tuned.
You're not going to want tomiss this one.
Thank you so much for listening.
You're listening to the DentalPractice Heroes podcast.
I'm your host, dr Paul Etcheson, and I am the author of two
books on dental practicemanagement.
I'm a dental coach and I amalso the owner of a large
(00:43):
four-doctor practice in thesouth suburbs of Chicago.
My goal is to teach you how tostep back from the chair,
empower your team and build apractice that gives you your
life back and lets you spendyour time doing exactly what you
feel like doing.
So if you're ready for apractice that supports your life
instead of consuming it, youare in the right place, all
right.
So I was thinking of this newpolicy today.
(01:04):
You know I love policies, youknow I love systems, and that's
what this podcast is about andI'm going to tell you about that
policy in a second.
But it got me thinking, like.
I started feeling, startedquestioning myself like is this
okay?
Is this ethically okay?
And I was thinking to myselfhave ever done anything like
this before?
This very much hinges oncapitalizing on a current
(01:27):
situation.
Okay, we're capitalizing onsomething happening and we're
using it for our gain.
So then I started to wonder andasking myself, paul, have you
ever done anything like thisbefore?
Like, have you ever perhapsused the excuse of inflation to
argue a point or to makeyourself look better or to
(01:48):
change a policy?
I don't know.
Maybe I have.
Have you ever maybe used thelack of post office workers to
explain why a patient's lab casedidn't arrive on time?
Well, maybe, and maybe that waskind of a fib, maybe we just
didn't send out the case.
Have you ever maybe around 2021, 22, perhaps like you had an
(02:11):
Invisalign refinement you shouldhave sent off and you didn't
send it off and the patientcalled and then you went on your
computer and you logged intothe site and then you sent it
off that day, but then you toldthe patient well, you know, the
shipping channels are all backedup and this stuff's coming from
out of the USA.
So sorry, yeah, maybe I didthat.
And what I'm saying is we'vedone these things before.
(02:32):
Ok, maybe some like white lies,maybe somewhat harmless, maybe
it falls under the whole thingof how you do.
One thing is how you do allthings.
I'm not here to judge you do.
One thing is how you do allthings.
I'm not here to judge, but hereis what I'm here to tell you is
that there is a currentsituation that I think you could
possibly use to your advantagein your practice right now.
So what is going on in theworld that you could use to your
(02:55):
advantage?
And I know what you're thinkingit's tariffs, isn't it Wrong?
It is not tariffs.
We've talked about it a fewtimes in my last episodes.
It's the hygiene shortage.
It is very much on my mindbecause I'm trying to help a lot
of clients that don't havehygienists.
So I'm working with a fewclients.
They have a shortage ofhygienists.
They're struggling to see alltheir patients.
Patients are calling, they'reupset that they can't get in and
(03:18):
there's really nothing we cando.
Yet every single morning we mayhave anywhere from 10 to 20% of
our schedule just drops off theschedule, and I know people say
, well, you've got topre-collect.
I understand that we do that onthe doctor's side.
It results in almost nobodycanceling on the doctor's side
and nobody knows showing on thedoctor's side.
(03:39):
But what about hygiene?
And I can tell you at mypractice we do not have a
hygiene shortage.
We have 11 hygienists right nowand we have tons of hygiene.
We have almost 9,000 activepatients, but we have a lot of
hygiene cancellations.
So this is something I've beentrying to address and we have
got a meeting coming up at theend of May where we were going
to address it.
Now I wanna share with you whatmy idea is and then how it
(04:02):
changed this morning.
So my idea is utilize thehygiene shortage.
It is true, it is legit and ina lot of practices it is the
reality.
We need to tell every singlepatient hey, mr Jones, listen,
there is a shortage inhygienists.
We are lucky to have thehygienists that we have at this
office, but it is very criticalthat you keep this appointment.
(04:24):
I'm letting you know we need totake a deposit.
We need to take a $50 depositto hold this hygiene visit and
if you do not give us 48 hours,we're going to have no other
choice but to charge you forthat, because we've got lots of
patients that want to get intothe hygienist and it's very
important that we don't wasteany of our hygienist time.
Okay, so here what that was myidea.
(04:47):
It's kind of very similar, in asense, to my previous reducing
cancellations method.
It requires that there's alevel of confidence in
delivering it, there's a levelof confidence in forcing it.
But what is the thing that werun into?
Why doesn't this always work,or why does this upset patients
so much?
And the reason is is becausethe patients often feel like
we're trying to get somethingfor nothing.
(05:09):
So they will make up excuses.
They will tell us that peopleand their family have died, and
we know they didn't die orthey've been dead for years.
You know, and sometimes youknow we've got a lot of patients
that are telling the truth.
They really do get sick.
I'm not saying that thingsdon't happen, I'm just saying it
is definitely an abused policyand if you've been in this
industry for any amount of time,you will know, it is very much
(05:30):
more abused after COVID than itwas pre-COVID, right?
So how do we convey to thepatients that we're not getting
something for nothing?
And what we used to do in thepast is we would give them a few
strikes.
We would always explain we'renot doing something for nothing.
We would send them a letter andthis system is all in the
OmniPractice program on myonline training all the forms
(05:50):
that we send.
It works, but I've got a twiston it now.
So we're telling all thepatients they have to show up
because of the hygiene shortage.
But here's what else we'redoing.
We're going to find 12 localcharities, one for each month of
the year, and we're going totell the patients, when we tell
them about this policy, thatthey have to put the deposit.
If they don't give us 48 hoursfor any reason, we will take
(06:10):
their deposit and we will donateto X charity, which is the
charity of X month.
So we're taking all of themissed appointment fees and
we're donating them to a localcharity.
So when they say you're gettingsomething for nothing, we say I
am so sorry, this is our policy, there's a hygiene shortage and
what's what we're doing?
And we're not taking your money.
We're donating to this charity,so feel good about that.
(06:30):
And this works in three ways.
Let me tell you how One.
This is going to be so easy toget the team behind it.
They are going to be behindthis.
We're doing something good forthe community and we're doing
something good for all of ourpatients Because think about it
the motive it's pure.
We're giving away charity, butwe're also helping all the
patients that we have thatreally want to be seen and they
(06:51):
can't have.
You had anyone call your officeand get pissed off because you
can't get them in for like threemonths in hygiene and then the
next day, like literally sixopenings pop up, you know, and
now your team's scrambling tofill them.
Sometimes they fill them,sometimes they don't, but it
really sucks because weshouldn't have to do that at all
.
People should respect our time.
So our motive is pure.
It'll be very easy to get yourteam behind it.
(07:12):
But then the other thing isthat this is still going to piss
off some people.
Isn't it?
Because we've worked indentistry long enough to know
that, no matter what we do, somepeople will be pissed off.
But here's what I love about itthose people that get pissed off
.
We're going to stick tight toour guns because if they're
upset about that after weexplained it to them verbally,
after we said we're not eventaking their money, we're giving
(07:33):
it to charity, well, they cango somewhere else and I hope
they leave a one-star reviewbecause I can't wait to respond
that we explained this to you,we donated it to this charity.
I'm sorry you feel this way.
I suggest you go be someoneelse's problem Because, guess
what, I don't want you in mypractice Because if you're that
upset about that, you probablyweren't showing up to your
appointments anyway.
(07:54):
This is my new idea.
I got to give thanks to thecharity thing for somebody in my
online mastermind group thatcame up with that and they're
under a pseudonym, so I don'tknow who it was.
I really wish I could call themout by name on the podcast, but
that was not my idea.
But the previous part ofutilizing the hygiene shortage
and actually verbally explainingit was my idea and I think just
doing that alone is gonna get alot more people to show up.
(08:15):
But I think this combination ofthings we're gonna roll this
out and typically I wouldn'tever talk about something I
haven't rolled out in my officeon the podcast yet, but I am
very confident that this isgoing to work and I feel like
the risk is so low that I wannashare this with you right now so
you can implement this in yours.
So, hey, if you try this outand this works at your practice,
(08:37):
let me know.
Shoot me an emaildentalpracticeheroes at gmailcom
.
I would love to hear what youguys are doing in your practice,
what you guys are up to andwhat's working for you guys, and
this is the sort of stuff onthe DPH Hero Collective.
This is our community.
We've got a systems tab andpeople are posting things on
(09:00):
there all the time.
We're having mastermindmeetings twice a month where
we're getting on there.
We've got such a good group andit's been so much fun to get to
know some new dentists that allshare the same passion for
practice management and we'reall sharing ideas growing
together.
If that sounds like somethingyou want to join so you can have
a better practice and enjoy abetter life, go to
dentalpracticeheroescom and signup for the DPH Hero Collective.
We also offer one-on-onecoaching options, so there's
(09:21):
nothing wrong with using acurrent situation and using it
to your advantage.
That is the way of the world.
That is called using anopportunity, and I feel okay
about it.
So we're going to do it andit's going to work and it's
going to rock and roll and it'sgoing to save oodles and oodles
of money and, honestly, it's theright thing for the patients.
It is not fair to our patientsthat want to be seen that we
(09:42):
have people that don't respectour time.
Hey, give that a try.
Let me know how it goes.
Everybody.
Have a great week.
I hope you had a great, amagical summer of a lot of
practice, growth, but also takethe time off and do the things
that are truly important to yourlife.
All right, take care everybody.
We'll talk to you next time.
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