- What's up guys?
This is Dr. O from Innovative Dental.
Pleasure to see all your smiling faces today.
I'm assuming they're smiling.
They should be smiling, right?
It's a wonderful day so today we're going to talk
about why you don't want your teeth cleaned.
And you're probably going man I know that was click bait.
I clicked on it, and you're a dentist.
And you're telling me why you don't want my teeth cleaned.
That can't be true, and you're right.
You should get your teeth cleaned, but I want to explain
why I titled it why you don't want your teeth cleaned.
'Cause the number one question we get or at least one
of the main questions we get.
First off when you're a new patient and it's understandable,
but we get this question is I like to get my teeth cleaned.
And they want to have that done at the first visit obviously
for efficiency sake.
I get it.
Everybody wants to not waste any time.
Doesn't want to go to the dental office
more than they need to.
And so they ask our front office.
Say hey, can I get in and get a cleaning?
And while that makes sense, truly it doesn't really take
into one of the biggest considerations that I feel
like a private practice or any dental office
should be offering their patient.
And that's truly a tailored and personalized care.
And so, you're a person.
You're not a number at Innovative Dental.
And so first off and foremost,
we want to personalize our care.
We can't do that if we promise and do cleanings
at the first visit cause we haven't even met yet.
So first thing that we want to do is meet you,
get to know you, know what you're about,
know what your family who your family is, see what is fun
for you in your life.
Find out, believe it or not, what kind of beverage
you might like 'cause we make beverages here
for our patients 'cause we love our patients.
So since you're not a number here at Innovative Dental,
we want to obviously treat you as a person
who has individual concerns for,
maybe you have certain goals for your smile.
Maybe you wanna see your teeth straighter.
Maybe you want to see them whiter.
Maybe you've got some missing teeth,
and you're wanting to see what are the options
to help replace and repair those missing teeth.
That's something that we got to learn and gather all
that information.
It's really hard to do all of that over the phone.
We have an amazing team, and they do a wonderful job
gathering a ton of information before you ever come see us.
And we send you a questionnaire and a survey that kind
of helps us get to know you prior to coming in.
But it's still not enough to really make that a tailored,
personalized treatment.
So I hope I hit that strong enough, and you understand
that our heart behind it is to not be inefficient.
Heck, we make more money if we can do a cleaning
in the first visit, an exam in the first visit,
and x-rays in the first visit.
Every practice that does that in that short,
maybe hour typically, it's more profitable or more revenue
that you can generate.
But it honestly doesn't match our mission.
And our mission is to create brighter smiles
through innovation.
And it's really hard to do that if we don't know
who we're creating a smile on, why we're creating for them,
and what makes them tick.
So hopefully that helps you understand that we want
to personalize first the care that we give you,
and we're going to get to know you first.
How about that?
Our second reason is that, honestly, we don't know
what you need as far as a cleaning.
So it's understandable that if you're not a dentist
and you're not familiar with dental care
and all the different type of cleanings,
you don't have maybe a hygienist in your family.
You may not realize that there are actually
many different types of cleanings.
One being a prophy which is we,
that's a short for prophylaxis.
That's your basic cleaning.
It means you don't have any gum infection or bone loss
that is severe, that's gonna require us to do a deep
cleaning or tartar build up and bleeding, things like that.
It also means that maybe the tartar's not so significant.
We're not gonna have to spend a lot of time removing it.
Those patients that typically are within a six month cycle
or a yearly cycle of getting their teeth cleaned,
hopefully six months.
But you know, there's no really no science behind that.
That's a whole different topic.
But, you know, if you're keeping the tartar
off of your teeth and keeping them fairly clean,
then typically a prophy is all that's necessary.
If you haven't seen a dental professional
or hygienist in awhile, that's not likely.
You're probably gonna need full mouth debridement
which that's called FMD.
So that's a second type of cleaning that we give.
It takes more time.
And to do it correctly, it's our hygiene.
We have the best hygienist you're ever gonna find,
I really feel, but that just takes more time
to really clean those teeth even doing it very quickly.
And then the last type of cleaning which is really important
because it goes undiagnosed all the time
because we get too quick to just clean teeth.
So the third type is scaling and root planning.
And scaling and root planning is short SRP
is what we in the field call it.
But it's essentially a deep clean.
We go below the gums.
We remove the tartar, and you've probably heard of tartar.
We call it calculus.
That's below the gumline.
We remove that because it holds bacteria
that's affecting the gums and causing patients,
many patients to get bone loss.
And so, that's a whole different topic
of how periodontal disease
is a big problem in our population.
But what if you needed SRP
and you came in and you've been promised a cleaning,
and you get a regular cleaning?
And you really needed scaling and root planning.
There's definitely a big problem there
because long term you might end up losing more bone,
essentially losing bone and gums
might lead to tooth loss, infection around your teeth,
so these are kind of serous missteps
if we treat everybody the same.
So, that is why we wanna take proper diagnosis
to see that, plus let's say you've got
lots of other conditions.
Missing teeth, you've got decay,
you might needs some crowns
or some old fillings are breaking and wearing down,
we're definitely gonna wanna take x-rays and photos
and proper records so we can see what's going on
and then sit there and be able to help discuss
and co-diagnose with you at what are some of the options
you might have to help remedy these problems.
So, those discussions, I know myself and Dr. Megan
and our team, we spend a long time with
especially our new patients,
to make sure that we are thorough
and don't just rush through that appointment
just because we're trying to get a cleaning done.
After we've gotten to know you,
we've taken proper x-rays and records
and diagnosed the proper cleaning that's necessary
to give you the best health and long term success
with your smile, the last thing we wanna do
is we wanna honor the fact that you work hard
for your money and it takes effort, right?
I mean, we work hard.
So, we don't wanna just throw it away
or not have a clue what we're really spending it for
or not budget things so they're stressful.
We've all been there where we've maybe
committed to something that we didn't really realize
was the commitment,
and that happens all the time in dentistry,
so we sit down in this special room
actually that I'm in right now.
We call it the Innovative Financial Room,
and it's just essentially a time that we take
concern and effort to help make certain
that we clearly communicate the options
for financial arrangements,
understanding what things are going to cost,
and the investment that's necessary
to remedy the problems,
working with our patients on ways that
don't put their families in harm's way,
and still let's them achieve oral health,
and so, that's the importance
of that financial consultation.
There's absolutely no way we can do that
if we're doing a get to meet you,
clean your teeth for 45 minutes,
and then try to rush through an explanation
of what you need and then maybe get
to the financial discussion,
and so you can see how an hour just doesn't cut it,
if you're trying to clean teeth.
Now, we typically spend about an hour
to get to know you, take the records,
for the doctor to talk to you.
Sometimes it runs over a little bit on an hour,
and then we have about, oh, 20 to 30 minutes
where our patients will have a discussion
with our financial coordinators,
and obviously, sometimes it's much shorter than that.
Our treatment coordinators, financial coordinators,
they kind of are synonymous in our office,
but they may have a conversation for 10 minutes
if you don't need much,
but if you need a lot of work
and maybe you need to finance some things,
we go through all of that at that appointment as well.
So, you know this was kind of a long,
drawn out way to get around to the fact
that I think a lot of people get dental cleanings
or expect them from their new office,
and they may not understand
that if they're going to a place
that is really going that direction
of hey, we're gonna clean your teeth first visit,
and doesn't have any sort of way to help customize
and tailor care for you,
I'd be concerned about the level of service
and the level of care and really,
if from the very beginning,
you're being treated just like another patient
or another number, then you know,
you're not gonna get the best,
and so we've committed to that.
It's definitely not the most profitable
for that first visit to do that for people,
but it's the best way to create a relationship
that allows us to give our patients
the best smile and you know,
obviously we make these videos for people locally to see,
but this is gonna be on YouTube and Facebook,
and I'm sure there's lots of people
can't come to Innovative Dental,
or it would just be too much of a stretch
to make that trip.
I hope everybody finds this helpful
and useful if you're searching,
and if you're in a different state
or area and you're going, hey,
I watched this video, I hope you would click subscribe,
I'm into just education as many people as we can,
and so subscribe to the channel
and we'll be posting more video
that are hopefully helpful and educational,
fairly entertaining at some points, hopefully.
I don't know, I'm not really that funny,
but that's kind of the goal behind it.
So hit like, comment below, subscribe,
and I look forward to seeing you in the next video,
and you keep smiling.