Making It Easy for Patients to Say “YES!” – 2.0 by Dr. Paul Homoly

Course Outline

Lesson 1: Patient experiences—good or bad—will shape your career

The big picture of career prosperity

• Your good dentistry doesn’t guarantee good patient experiences. It’s human nature for patients to want to be well cared for. It’s the experiences they have before, during and after treatment that signal to them the quality of care they’re receiving. Good experiences signal quality care, while poor experiences signal poor care. A big question for you is this; is your quality of your dentistry better than the quality of your patients’ experiences?
• In this lesson you and your team will discover why high-value patient experiences are as important as clinical outcomes for practices to thrive. You’ll see a bigger picture of practice production—that it’s not just the dollar value of your clinical care, but the accumulation of quality patient experiences. You’ll learn that career prosperity is dependent on distinguishing between standard of care vs. Standard of Caring™.

Lesson 2: If your practice were a restaurant, what would you serve?

Offering experiences patients value

• What’s on your menu? Is it what your patients want? In this lesson you’ll use our Complexity Scale™ to distinguish between modest and complex care patients, and how they differ in the way they value their experiences. You’ll discover why some patients place a high value on patient education while others don’t, and what to do about it.
• In this lesson you’ll learn specific drivers of treatment acceptance based on the complexity of patients’ conditions. We’ll develop a nomenclature that enables you and your team to influence patients in half the time with twice the impact. You’ll stop having to guess about which experiences patients value. You’ll save time, have far less stress, and patients will love you for it.

Lesson 3: Start doing the dentistry you love

Fine-tuning your practice

• This lesson puts you in the driver’s seat when pursuing the dentistry you most enjoy. I’ll show you a map on how to begin refining your practice. Whether your goal is to practice every day bread-and-butter dentistry or complex care, or both, you’ll see a proven path to follow.
• In completing this lesson, you’ll be able to assess where your practice is, see where you want it to go, and learn how to make the right adjustments to get there. When you know where you are and clearly see the path ahead, you’ll get there faster.

Lesson 4: Stop holding yourself back

The limiting vs. enabling beliefs about treatment acceptance

• There’s an old saying, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

• This lesson teaches you how to get out of your own way and start implementing ideas that could have the greatest positive impact on your career. Using our Mind-Set Matrix™, you and your team will discover the four dominant beliefs about treatment acceptance, as well as which ones you own.
• In this lesson, you learn both the enabling and limiting beliefs that influence patients, and, in turn, how they determine practice growth. This lesson is important because it alerts you that your mindset is the lens through which you will view the remaining lessons in this program. Your mindset will influence you to accept or reject this program’s lessons.

Lesson 5: Four critical conversations that transform relationships

The Four Chiefs™

• The time-honored concept of chief complaint is a woefully inadequate inquiry into patients’ concerns. In its place are The Four Chiefs™— the four critical conversations you must have prior to treatment recommendations. Your study of The Four Chiefs™ will reveal how to immediately connect with patients. You’ll find The Four Chiefs™ are at the heart of making an outstanding first impression and providing patients incredible value.
• This lesson will be the turning point in distinguishing yourself in your patients’ minds as the dentist they’ve been looking for and eliminating many stressful, time-consuming and frustrating events that can accompany practicing dentistry.

Lessons 6 and 7: Stop educating patients out the door – Parts 1 and 2

Excelling in benefit-centered conversations

• Dentists spend a lot of time in “how to”, process-centered conversations explaining to patients how to fix their teeth. You’ll learn in this lesson these process-centered conversations often are not what patients want to experience. They want benefit-centered conversations that reassure them they’ll feel good about the outcomes of their dentistry.
• You’ll learn from real-world case studies how to excel at benefit-centered conversations and become patients’ #1 choice when selecting a dental practice. A big part of our role during the new patient process is influencing patients to imagine how much they’ll enjoy their day-to-day life when their dentistry is completed. You’ll be relieved knowing that you don’t need to put patients through a mini dental education. You’ll feel refreshed during patient conversations and out of the rut of explaining the same things day after day.

Lesson 8: Document what’s important to patients

The Discovery Guide™ – side one

• The Discovery Guide™ makes it easy to document and retrieve the information that’s the most important and influential to patients.
• The Discovery Guide™:
  • Helps patients discover all their conditions
  • Allows dentists and team members to identify patients’ concerns
  • Serves as an easy-to-follow process map
  • Acts as an excellent leadership tool
• The Discovery Guide™ gives all dental team members greater confidence when speaking to patients, and gives patients the experience of being understood. You’ll be excited to see how this guide makes everyone’s job easier and inspires continuous improvement.

Lesson 9: How to talk to patients so they really listen

The Discovery Guide™- side two

• Wouldn’t it be wonderful if when you’re talking to patients you absolutely knew they were listening? This lesson makes it easy for patients to listen, understand, and be influenced by your post-exam conversations. It’s about The Sequence of Influence™ that guides conversations with patients following their exams.
• The Sequence of Influence™ will save you an incredible amount of time and help patients be good listeners and feel connected. You’ll discover how to lead patients in the direction of their best interests and in so doing give them a high-value experience. This lesson will open your eyes to what’s possible when patients feel a personal connection to you and your team.

Lesson 10, 11, and 12: Offering patients Complete Care without blowing them out of the water

Parts one, two, and three

• Have you ever offered patients their Complete Care, blew them out of the water, watch them leave your practice, and post nasty on-line comments about how you’re in dentistry just for the money? Complete Care is the optimal treatment to restore structure, function, comfort, aesthetics and phonetics. Many dentists are reluctant to offer Complete Care out of fear patients will abandon their practice due to sticker shock. Instead these dentists play it safe by offering treatment plans they believe will be less intimidating and costly to patients.
• Through these three lessons, you’ll gain the confidence offering Complete Care regardless of the complexity of care or level of fee without blowing anyone out of the water. This is one of the best changes you can make for your patients and your career.

Lesson 13: Practice makes profit

Rehearsing case conversation

• Does this happen to you; you’re recommending treatment to a patient and half way through you knew he/she stopped listening and will never accept your care? This lesson on Practice Makes Profit solves this.
• In this lesson, you practice case conversations so they’re shorter and stronger when offering Complete Care. You’ll use a tool called the Case Conversation Organizer™. The Case Conversation replaces the concept of case presentation. It’s more influential for patients to engage in a conversation rather than passively listening to a “presentation”.
• This lesson will give you skill and poise when offering Complete Care to your patients. You’ll be twice as influential in half the time relative to traditional case presentations. You’ll enjoy this simple yet effective approach when helping patients make good dental health decisions.

Lesson 14: Stress-free fee conversations

• This lesson is about the art of quoting fees that protects and sustains good relationships between you and your patients. A significant source of stress for dentists and team members is experiencing patients’ shock, anger, embarrassment, and rejection over fees. This is especially true for complex care patients where fee levels can easily get above $10,000.
• This lesson will teach you a 4 step stress-free process for quoting fees that are designed to avoid negative patient reactions over fees, watching them walk out your door, and never return. This process is adaptable to every conversation your team members have with patients about fees.

Lesson 15: Who gets more upset about fees, patients or you?

Increasing your financial comfort zone

• Many dentists and team members have money mind-sets—financial comfort zones—that work against influencing patients and creating positive experiences. A common mind-set among dental teams is believing patients can’t afford fees for Complete Care. This mind-set is often based on dentists’ and team members’ own financial situations. If they can’t afford the care they’re recommending, they tend to believe their patients can’t afford it either. The mortal sin of offering Complete Care is imposing your own financial limitations on patients.
• This lesson will enable you and your team to confidently quote complete care fees without discomfort or hesitation. This lesson increases the financial comfort zone in your practice and enables you to be compensated at levels you’ve earned and deserve.

Lesson 16: How to keep patients in your practice who are not yet ready for care

• One of the most perplexing questions in dentistry is: What do you do with patients who’ve been well educated to their dental needs but are not yet ready for treatment? Do you educate them more? Do you have them sign a noncompliance form? Do they fall through the cracks and leave your practice? This lesson answers this question by teaching you our process called Building Stacks™. You’ll learn that patients often need time to find the opportunity, money, and courage to take on complex care. Building Stacks™ keeps patients in your practice during this time so that when they become ready, they’ll choose you.
• Of all the lessons in this program this is the one my students tell me is most enlightening and liberating. Expect to feel relieved, expect patients to remain with you during their readiness periods. Most importantly, expect your practice will thrive when you don’t make patients’ immediate case acceptance a condition of a good continuing relationship.

Your Instructor