 Hello everybody, Andrea here. Happy New Year. It's January 1st. If you're like me, I take the new year as time to get organized, to clean up my entire house, organize my paperwork, files, I do my taxes, all kinds of things. But if you have your own dental hygiene practice, one of the things you probably thought about is how can I do better for the new year? Whether that be as an entrepreneur, business, patients, it doesn't matter. But you want to do better probably in all aspects of your business. If you're lucky and you don't feel like you have to do better, good for you. Please comment below and let me know what you're doing because even I feel that I can improve on things too. But one thing that I don't have a problem doing, which I realize is a very lucky attribute, I guess, is that I am always fully booked with patients. So I want to share with all of you guys how I do that and how you can prep for the new year now to be fully booked with patients as soon as you do get back to work. So hopefully you have taken time off. So the first thing to do is go through your recall lists. So if you have a dental software, depending on what software you have, you will be able to print out or at least save to your computer recall lists. So that means you can see what patients are do now, what patients were do a couple months ago. It's time to start calling those patients, emailing them, messaging them, however you stay in contact with them and just let them know they are due for their appointment. 99% of my patients, honestly, they are more than happy to book their appointment but they forget or they assume that I've done it for them or did I mention they forget? Like that's truly what happens. So don't think it's because your patients don't want to be booked in. It's because they just simply forgot and they've been thinking, oh yeah, I need to call Andrea to book my teeth cleaning but they just forget to do it and unfortunately they will contact you when they're in pain and that's just a whole other story. So look at your your re-care lists first, okay? So I'm a mobile hygienist. So things are a little bit different for me where I go to different cities on different days. So my re-care list is a little bit more confusing where it depends on what patients are in what area. So that takes me a little bit longer to do but it's amazing how I just simply send them a quick message and I actually say something like this. So I say I have tentatively booked your appointment for you for the end of the month so pick a date. I had this booked in already to hold your spot. I look forward to seeing you for your teeth cleaning appointment. Let me know if another day works for you and that's all I do you guys. So what I don't do is I don't say hey you're due, I mean nobody would say hey but you know hey you're due for your teeth cleaning please let me know when you want to come in. You should really book that appointment for them. Hold that spot. Yes, you're taking a risk. Hold that spot and hopefully they will let you know and call you back, message you back, whatever. So what happens if a patient doesn't get back to me? I will actually message them back a couple weeks later so I don't do it the next day. I don't do it a couple days later. I do it a couple weeks later because they might have been busy. They might be on holiday, I mean not holidays but because we can't go anywhere right now because of COVID but they they could just be simply busy right or they don't know their work schedule yet because they have taken time off so I do leave it a couple weeks. If I still don't hear from them after that then I will take that time out of the appointment book because I don't want to hold it. I'm just assuming they're not going to come. And with me it's a little bit easier because I'm a mobile hygienist so it's not like they're just going to show up in my office and say oh you said I had an appointment. No, I would have to go to them right and how it works with me as I send them a COVID pre-screening the day before so I kind of know what's happening before I just show up at their house. So does that make sense you guys? Let me know if you have any questions on wording or anything about that. Another thing to start doing is book their appointment before they leave. I do this with all my patients. In fact if I forget to mention to them that I've booked it they will say to me so can you just book my next appointment and let me know when I'm due and that's what I do. So I do just book their next one even if I haven't talked to them even if we haven't worked out a time yet. I put it in my computer so I hold that spot. That's easier for me than printing out re-care lists anyway. So when that appointment comes up or I should say that week comes up or that month I look to see who I've pre-booked. So they're not confirmed yet. I do expect my entire month schedule to change because they're not pre-booked yet but I still book them in to hold that spot to remind myself that they are due. I have heard from so many patients they really appreciate this. They don't want to be bothered with having to remember to book appointments. Heck I'm the same way when it comes to my car appointments when it comes to my hair appointments when it comes to taking my dogs to the vet. I like things to be pre-booked because then by the time I realize their appointments are needed I can't get in for like a month. So it's a little bit crazy right? So pre-book their appointments works every time. Another tip if you're not direct billing yet I suggest you do it. This is what keeps my schedule full as I tell every single patient I direct bill for you. I also do something a bit different where I don't ask for payment upfront even if I know for a fact they're 80% covered or 85% covered whatever. I don't ask for payment upfront. I send it through to their insurance. I let them know that I will simply send them an invoice. When I when I hear back they can pay by email money transfer whatever and I go from there. Patients really appreciate not having to pay upfront but it is a risk obviously. I haven't had any problems yet knock on with somebody not paying me. If or when that ever happens then I might have to stop that. I would probably ask for a deposit or something but that seems to help so many patients because I know a lot of people won't book their appointment because they simply don't have the money. They will say okay it's great that you send everything to my insurance first. I just simply don't have the money to even pay the difference so I'll let you know in a month but then a month comes up and they don't have the money again so that's just what I do that keeps my schedule full. It truly does. Now people ask me about emergency appointment times so I'm different because I'm not a dentist but I do still have a lot of patients that say oh my goodness my two thirds can you just come have a look. Quite often it's because they have gingival recession. I apply desensitizer they're happy. So a dental hygienist can carve out time for emergencies but I also carve out time for new patients or for those patients who just simply email me or message me and say oh you know what I'm off next week I really want my teeth cleaned can you fit me in. That's not an emergency but they will go into that spot that I had on hold for such I guess a reason it's not an emergency but I want to make and keep my patients happy right so instead of me saying oh geez I'm booked two months in advance you could have told me this two months ago and then they say okay sorry well I'm off next week that's that's it I guess I'll let you know when my next time off is that's what happens so I do suggest carving time in your schedule to bring in those patients who really want to be seen plus new patients. There's nothing worse than telling a new patient you can't see them for two months. Again it's a good problem to have if you're that busy but I have lost patients in the past where I do say to them okay I can't see you for about a month I promise to tell you if something sooner comes up. I might tell them in a month oh okay perfect you are I'm seeing you in three days for your dental hygiene appointment I can't wait to meet you and then they say to me oh shoot I went to the dentist after all because I couldn't wait the month they didn't tell me but you know it's a good thing I did call to remind them of their appointment so it's really really good to have those time slots available. Another tip is accept email money transfer a lot of dental hygienists don't I don't know why it's very easy I accept email money transfer I accept credit card I prefer email money transfer because it goes right into my account and there's no processing fees but people do like email money transfers so I do suggest accepting that. That was actually a longer video than I had intended so I hope this helped you guys but those are I would say the simple things that I do to keep my schedule booked. One thing that I didn't mention mention is to market it's a great idea to market if you have a page on Facebook a website post it doesn't have to be every day it could be every other day but just post things about you you know smiling you're about to see your patient of the day you know post a picture of your new polishing tool post a picture of all the toothbrushes that just came in the mail post post post that's about marketing you're not saying hey guys who wants to have their teeth cleaned not necessarily so you're not being pushy but people like those posts and they like to see that so let me know if you guys have any other tips or any questions I look forward to talking to you guys soon happy new year and have a good day