9 Practical Mistakes Not To Do As A Professional Dentist
#5. Never give in to bargaining
In my first job, I used to think that it was okay to compromise on treatment costs.
Within a few weeks, I got to realize that case quality had dipped many-fold.
We were also losing more patients to our competitor across the street because those patients weren’t as interested in treatment quality as they were in the cost. For a practice to run successfully, we must keep overhead costs in mind.
All treatment costs must be kept reasonable to be able to give better treatment to our patients.
Doctors Must Compete on Quality Alone: My Boss made me understand that all dentists must compete on treatment quality, and never on price.
On the topic of price wars among dentists – we have another great article to read:
3 Practices that every dentist must follow for uplifting dentistry.
#6. Never push any product
There are a few medical representatives who “advertise” completely useless products to doctors just for the sake of promotion and sales. They even offer gifts in exchange for prescribing their brand of medicines.
They even offer gifts in exchange for prescribing their brand of medicines or dental/oral hygiene products. I never fall for such gimmicks.
I never fall for such gimmicks because a bad dental product will be detrimental to my practice in the long run.
#7. Do not over socialize with patients
I once gave my number to a young female patient because she wanted “to book appointments with me over the telephone”. Also, be very careful to be overtly friendly with patients on social media.
Next thing I knew, she and her friends had become friends with my social circle and all of them would expect me to give them discounts each time any one of them came in for treatment.
It gets very tricky. In such a scenario, if you say blunt NO, then the same people might spread negativity about your practice. And if you say YES every time, then you and are your skills/services are taken for granted. Hence, the sensible approach is to be friendly to your patients but at the same time do not be forthcoming in providing a discount to every client that visits your practice. You have to be picky about it. As a rule, you can provide a 5% discount to new patients. For patients, who are now your regular and who bring in a lot of referral patients or their relatives for dental treatment, you can consider providing extra discounts and some free dental gifts.
See Next Page for Points number #8, #9 & #10, that you must never do as a Professional Dentist/Doctor
