Keeping Smiles Healthy: Preventative Dentistry and Patient Satisfaction

Preventative care in all aspects of your health helps you enjoy life to the fullest. It’s especially important in dentistry, where a lot of the good practices that promote healthy habits happen at home. Provide ample preventative care and you are sure to see higher rates of patient satisfaction.

From regular brushing and flossing every day to six-month checkups, preventative dental care keeps your patients smiling, quite literally! 

When you promote preventative care practices and education, you make visits easier and breezier because your patients know what to expect and they’re less likely to present with serious issues—all because they’ve been taking care of their teeth with your help! This leads to long-term patient satisfaction, patient retention, and minimizes the need for extensive or complex procedures. 

So what does expert preventative dentistry look like? Let’s learn more about the power of preventative care and how it results in lasting patient satisfaction.

Regular Check-ups Promote Patient Satisfaction

This seems like Dentistry 101 – but it can’t be overemphasized. Your patients need to see you on a regular, returning basis to keep their teeth healthy. The Canadian Dental Association officially recommends that people see their dentist once every six months. By coming in for regular check-ups, patients can avoid big problems down the road. Seeing people twice a year (or more if necessary) allows you as a healthcare provider to catch any small issues, adjust care, and plan for the future. This is sure to lead to a rise in patient satisfaction rates.

Appointment reminders are so important for busy patients, which is why patient software with reminder tools are so great. This also frees up time for your front-of-office staff who spend endless hours trying to reach patients. Your team can focus on what matters most—patient satisfaction and in-person communication that makes people want to return to your practice. 

Because your patients know when they have to come in and are reminded to do so, small issues don’t turn into extensive problems. Catch anything that may be happening right away when you see your patients often. This greatly reduces the likelihood that someone will have to undergo a complex procedure or experience a costly dental emergency. 

More visits mean more opportunities for preventative dentistry. That will help your practice promote patient satisfaction and a lifetime of good oral health.

Educational Material Means Patient Satisfaction

Chances are that most of your patients aren’t dentistry experts. That’s why they’ve come to see you, after all! Educational material about procedures, cleanings, at-home preventative care, and more help your patients understand the process and result in better patient satisfaction. Educational material can also show off just how important preventative care is and remind patients the value that daily brushing and flossing holds.

Dental practices can provide educational value in the form of PDFs, informative graphics, videos and more. These resources are easy to access for your patients and highlight how much preventative care matters. Everything lives online, too, so your patients can return to educational material if they need reminders or want to help someone else in their household get better at preventative care. 

Said educational material can cover topics in a fun way by offering simple tips and tricks on how to be a great flosser. Or, they can delve more deeply into the science side of things with interactive models and demonstrations that your patients can engage with at home. Making educational material appealing for all is great for patient satisfaction because they’ll want to engage.  

Boost preventative care and see your patient’s satisfaction and happy smiles grow with each visit. Educational material can help you do just that!

Tools of the Trade to Make Patients Satisfied

Your patients need all the goodies to take care of their teeth at home! Don’t let anyone leave without a swag bag. Toothpaste, brushes, and floss to take home give your patients the tools they need to win the preventative care game. Also, everyone loves a little something to take home and this simple gesture can increase patient satisfaction in a straightforward way. They’re sure to come in with happy teeth for their next checkup.

The bags you provide can also include cards with printed QR codes that take your patients to online resources. Think a toothbrush timer that rings when they’ve brushed long enough, an interactive calendar that helps them track how often they really do floss, or other fun online tools that make preventative care in the morning and evening more enjoyable. 

These kinds of features are especially important for kids and young patients. Give them a reason to want to brush and floss in order to establish healthy habits at an early age. Caring for little teeth starts right away! Future patient satisfaction is guaranteed when they start at a young age.

Dental Health Links to Overall Well-being 

Preventative care in both the form of good at-home practices and regular visits can play a huge role in avoiding gum disease, oral cancer, or other more serious dentistry issues. Explaining the prevalence of gum disease, and how preventative care can easily help patients avoid it, will give them motivation they need to visit you on a regular basis and do the right thing at home. 

Good oral health is generally linked to overall health and a sense of well-being. Untreated dental problems have been linked to a variety of other conditions like heart disease, diabetes, respiratory infections, and reproductive issues. Link preventative oral care to these other medical outcomes and your patients will be more excited than ever to brush and floss. 

Preventative dentistry can reduce the risk of seemingly “unrelated” health issues. When your patients are happy and healthy all over, you’ll see better patient satisfaction rates and retention in numbers. 

Read reviews!

Better understand what kind of preventative care tools you need to provide your patients when you read their reviews. Surveys, written reviews, and more help you know what people liked and what they didn’t. Perhaps they hated the toothpaste you sent them home with or need more than one toothbrush to get them through to their next visit. Those suggestions can easily be clocked by patient engagement software to help you implement change. Patients will be happy to see you’ve taken their tips and turned it into something actionable upon their next visit.

Positive reviews can also be posted to public social media platforms—patients satisfied with the preventative care actions you’ve provided can brag about it on Yelp, Facebook, Google Reviews, and more. This is likely to bring in business since we all do internet research before finding a new healthcare provider. In fact, surveys show that almost half of all respondents choose the dentist with the best Google reviews. Patients who are satisfied with their regular checkups are also more likely to recommend your practice to their friends, family, and coworkers. Word of mouth goes a long way!

Following Up

Reach out to your patients even after they leave your practice. Aftercare is just as important as cleanings, especially if you had to perform something beyond the routing fluoride cleaning. If a patient had a cavity filled or a more complicated procedure they’ll need to be aware of any more complex demands. Make it easy for your patients to know what they need to do with personal follow-up emails, calls, or text messages. These can also be gentle reminders to stay on top of daily routines even after they’ve healed from any more invasive treatments.

This also gives you information on how they are faring, and you can adjust your approach for their next visit. Or, you can provide additional information on preventative measures that will help them avoid more serious issues in the future. Personalized follow-ups create successful outcomes for everyone involved, because you’ll get to personally connect to your patients and communicate in a real way. They will feel more at ease coming back to you for regular check ups and you’ll know just what they need—all because you emailed, texted, or called after their last appointment. 

Keeping Patients Engaged

Keep your patients engaged in their dental care journey. Reminders, educational resources, regular visits, specialized screenings, and swag bags all help patients feel like they are involved in having healthy teeth.

When everyone is more engaged and focused on preventative care you’ll all be happier with the experience. In addition to just making dental visits more pleasant, preventative care helps prevent emergencies, makes long-term issues easier to navigate, and keeps your patients satisfied. 

At Intiveo, we really truly believe in the power of preventative care. It’s not just big issues that keep your business afloat. In fact, it’s more likely that the satisfied patients who return to your practice again and again for preventative care visits are the people paying your bills. Prioritize preventative dentistry in the form of regular visits by using appointment reminders, scheduling tools, six-month follow ups, reviews, and more. It’s all built into Intiveo and ready to be personalized to your practice’s unique needs. Preventative care means patient satisfaction and ultimately a happier you! 

Book a meeting with us today to learn more.