Brush up your dental compliance campaign

A great way to generate an action plan for marketing your dental compliance campaign is to review the status quo of your client education, says Bash Halow, CVPM, LVT, and partner at Halow Tassava Consulting. Halow says to identify the good things you already have in place (Crowns), areas that need immediate attention (Cavities), opportunities for improved reach out (Polish Points) and areas you need to keep your eye on (Starting to Smell Bad).

Take a look at this sample chart to get started, then download this blank chart to fill out at your next team meeting.

Education points

Crowns

Cavities

Polish points

Starting to smell bad

Website

Search engines

love us! We have no dental education web page. Opportunity to create a dental blog page that could double as a source of client handouts. We are appearing in fewer search results for 'veterinary dentistry'

Compliance tools

We have an 'oral health exam' reminder. Clients are unaware that we are doing an 'oral health exam' during their visit. Opportunity to build dental assessment form with written action plan for preventive dentistry. Improves compliance and demonstrates expertise. Team members are too lax about following reminder protocols. We're putting in the 'oral health' reminders inconsistently.

While the client waits in the lobby

Clean, comfortable and not too loud. The little client education we have on dentistry is not branded to our practice and isn't reflective of our practice's specific expertise in preventive oral health. Opportunity to build an interactive tool or game about pet dental health for kids to play. Gets the whole family thinking about dentistry and keeps kids occupied. More and more of our clients have their heads buried in their cell phone. It's more difficult to grab their attention.

Technicians

Really believe in the value of preventive dentistry. Too few are allowed to participate in our client education. Opportunity to enrich the role of veterinary technician and give them more job satisfaction. Not allowing our techs to function on a higher level selects for lower performing technicians over time.

Veterinarians

Dedicated and huge advocates for our clients. Some believe that our dental prices are too high so they don't recommend the service effectively. Since they are so well loved, if veterinarians spent more time talking about dentistry, we would bond more clients to the practice. Some of our veterinarians are increasingly concerned that all we ask them to do is sell stuff.