As a dental professional, it is always your priority to provide your patients with excellent standards of care, say Straumann.
However, sometimes, patients may not be entirely satisfied with the treatment they have received. To prevent this from happening, it is important to understand what impacts patient satisfaction, and how best to manage patients’ expectations prior to treatment in your practice.
This will help to elevate your patients’ experiences, presenting your practice with a range of benefits.
Patient satisfaction
When it comes to any type of dentistry, meeting patients’ aesthetic and functional requirements is vital. Patient satisfaction comes with so many benefits including; increased loyalty, compliance, willingness to accept dentists’ recommendations, reduced liability claims, and timely payment.
Patient satisfaction can be defined as: an evaluation that the experience was at least as good as it was supposed to be.
This highlights the significant role that the patient’s own expectations can play regarding their satisfaction with their care and treatment outcomes.
While all patients have an expectation for the care they receive, some expect a basic, simply adequate level of service, while others expect much more. The patient’s minimum tolerable expectation will impact how they feel about the service they receive.
In theory, the higher the patient’s expectations, the less likely it is that the provider will meet them, so it is important to manage their anticipation and avoid dissatisfaction.
It is vital to clearly communicate any risks which may occur as a result of having treatment.
Additionally, explaining exactly what treatment can and cannot achieve is useful, ensuring patients have a clear understanding of the likely results.
While it is tempting to try and meet even the most unrealistic expectations, it is important to remember the limitations of treatment, and aim to adjust the patients view, rather than promise results, which are unachievable, even in the best-case scenario.
Meeting patients’ needs
Patients trust their dentists. When they feel involved in decisions regarding treatment, and understand that their clinician is doing all they can to provide an excellent service, patients are more likely to appreciate what dentistry can realistically do for them.
However, sometimes treatments require high-quality equipment or resources, especially when it comes to implant dentistry, for example.
For a new or growing dental practice, it may not be physically or financially viable to invest in cutting-edge equipment or software which would facilitate treatment which meets the expectations of their patients.
Because of this, smaller practices may feel that they are unable to provide the high-quality treatment that they would like, despite having the skills and ambition to do so.
Therefore, it is important to decide which areas of planning and manufacturing should be carried out in-house, and which should be outsourced.
This decision should consider both the patient’s and dental practice’s interests, ensuring high standards of care either way.
Boost your practice with Smile in a Box
When you make the decision to outsource certain elements of your treatment planning and manufacturing process, you are able to elevate the treatment you offer your patients.
Levels of patient satisfaction will increase, and you are likely to see a boost in the number of people attending your practice seeking high-quality treatment.
Smile in a Box is the advanced digital treatment planning and manufacturing service, which allows clinicians to grow and develop their dental practices.
With Smile in a Box clinicians gain access to digital solutions without the need to make investments in additional equipment.
This gives them the freedom to choose what they would like to outsource and what they would prefer to undertake in-house.
For the latter, Straumann will deliver everything required in a single box, for maximum convenience.
For a new or growing practice Smile in a Box is the key to unlocking more advanced dental implant treatment. Services range from single tooth to full arch implant cases, offering patients an individualised solution in every case.
Clinicians are able to choose between various implant systems including Straumann, Neodent, Medentika and Anthogyr.
This allows them to provide a range of treatment options which would best suit each patient’s clinical scenario, through one simple, streamlined workflow.
The convenient delivery, possibility of immediate protocols, and predictable workflows make implant placement simple. Look forward to shorter chair times, and satisfied patients when placing implants using guided surgery.
Take the next steps in expanding your practice capabilities when you work with Smile in a Box.
For more information on the Straumann Smile in a Box, visit www.straumann.com/digital/en/discover/smile-in-a-box.html.
