this is an excerpt of a webinar by garrison dental thank you to garrison dental for allowing
us to post this excerpt to see the full-length version please contact www.garrisondental.com
all opinions are those of straight smile solutions
we are an orthodontic consultancy company that helps general and pediatric dentists with their
ortho cases and education for help with a case please visit www.straightsmilesolutions.com
now enjoy the show
so what is the why behind it we kind of told you the why behind why ortho why is this orthodontist
okay with gp ortho i know it's weird right um i'm not very popular in the ortho community
to be really honest just because i am all about helping gps why well number one is access to care
um i want to make sure that people can afford quality ortho and good ortho and a lot of the
programs that are out there right now are either really expensive and not affordable you know for
the average dentist um or they're teaching like backwards orthodontics and i like forwards and
airway friendly orthodontics so i kind of made up my mantra to put a bunch of free information
that's why i put my entire all my educational material free on youtube so all you guys can
take advantage of it whether you're a new grad or you're a team member i want the information to be
free for you so you can learn good high quality unbranded ortho that means i'm not affiliated in
any way with any system a liner company i'm not a koal for invisalign never have been never will be
um i like their products i like lots of products so i try to be as agnostic as i can because the
goal for most general dentists they usually have a few reasons why they want to get into ortho one
might be profits and yeah that's cool two might be access to care number three maybe they don't have
a orthodontist in the area or an orthodontist at all or maybe the orthodontist is doing
backwards extraction orthodontics and not forwards interceptive orthodontics
airway friendly orthodontics so for whatever your reason orthodontics is nice also orthodox is fun
and one of our great conversations that we have around the dinner table
is that you know my husband's a little older than me actually a lot older than me if he's on sorry
um so you know he doesn't want to hurt his back you know like a lot of people with neck problems
and he wants to retire doing easy dentistry that doesn't hurt him and make him miserable so he
wanted to get more into specialty work that would be fun and doesn't requires more his brain unless
his hands and his neck and his back so that's why we started coming up with a program that was easy
for general dennis to explain so hopefully i'm going to do a good job explaining to you and
hopefully you'll fall in love with ortho as much as i do my energy hopefully will seep through the
computer today so anyways for him i know he tells me part of the reason why he wants to do ortho
is that he does a lot of implants and cosmetic work and a lot of times when he referred before
patience to orthodontist and i'm not anti-ortho at all like i will get to that they would come back
with these two-year treatment plans that would take forever and he's like whoa wait you know i
want to place this implant like in a few months i don't want to place this implant in two years
you know patient's gonna get bored so sometimes he's like you know forget this i gotta start
doing my own ortho this is ridiculous and we call this almost interdisciplinary ortho it's ortho
not just because you want in a great smile but it's ortho to achieve an objective or a goal that
is the goal of it it can be for a lot of general dentists and that's great right and also you can
bundle the cost of the orthodontics together with the cost of the restorative dentistry and that's
a great idea so maybe you're not trying to do the ortho to make a ton of profit you're just trying
to do the ortho so you can have better dentistry and i love that so let's talk about the three main
pain points of orthodontics what and i i've been teaching gps for goodness i mean officially for
nine years but unofficially for my whole career basically you know my husband his friends
answering questions looking at cases giving advice so i hear a lot about the pain points so i want to
address them because every dentist that's kind of stalling on ortho is usually falls into one
of these pain point categories the first one i kind of already addressed that the classes are
either really boring or they're really expensive or they're directly affiliated with a particular
system in order to learn it it's always funneling you towards the system but it's maybe not the
right thing for the patient that makes me upset um in addition you shouldn't have to buy any real
equipment for orthodontics you should already have it in your practice why invest i mean yeah
if you're gonna do braces you're gonna have about i've gotten the list down to about fifteen hundred
dollars minimum investment to do braces but that's not that much and it'll last you for about a year
so i told you i was gonna have giveaways so if you would like that list of supplies and
equipment i'll be glad to send it to you again just simplified not directly affiliated with any
company that's out there um email me i will send it to you okay number two you don't want to upset
your neighborhood orthodontist or your friend who's an orthodontist and hey i get that but the
funny thing is is in my experience the orthodox the general dentists who've done ortho have
actually referred way more cases out to ortho why because they understand ortho they understand the
value of it they understand they can explain the why to that referral a little bit more they can
qualify that referral and unless you understand ortho you can't explain to the patient why little
susie who's seven needs to go to the orthodontist they're gonna say well why do i need to go
oh because the ao says everyone should go by age seven that's the wrong answer you need to explain
what you see what your concerns are even if you're not offering interceptive services
you need to strongly explain what's gonna happen if little susie doesn't get started at age seven
or eight and waits until age twelve there's a lot of things that can happen so i can pretty much
guarantee you if you get started and scale it that your neighborhood orthodontist will not be upset
um and perfect you should tell them that you're doing it you know they'll probably be excited
few people might be upset but most won't um the third one would be that you've tried it and
it's just not working for you um you have too many refinements revisions you're wasting time patients
are getting upset well that just means you're just not doing something right ortho's actually
really simple and it's really fun so that's so easy to fix and that's kind of my specialty
as a matter of fact when i was practicing um one of my side hustles i had is i worked for
a dsl in california and i was the fixer that was my quote they would fly me fly
me because you know california's a big state so all these randoms they had like hundreds
of offices i'm not going to say which one it is to basically clean up messes so i got
paid really handsomely for it too but i would come in for a week or two they'd put me up they'd pay
for my travel um and i'd clean up their messes basically and fix everything that was screwed
up with the cases so i feel like i have a really good perspective on how to do that
okay let's talk about the different buckets of orthodontics and what your options are
and i'm assuming those of you who are on this webinar are probably pretty familiar with bucket
number three which is the liners that's cool i love aligners um but there are two other buckets
there's phase one or interceptive appliances fixed or removable i love removables but i also do fixed
and there's braces maybe you'll decide to do all three i know a lot of gps do all three and i know
some gps who are just as good as orthodontics like the quality of the work is amazing and outstanding
like second to none you know they might as well be an orthodontist and some aren't that good but
you know um if you are looking at diversifying i mean obviously you want to take a look at what
community you're in and decide which one's next i love phase one functional appliances because
i love working with littles you know you're two age two to age ten and i did say two by the way
because habit appliances are functional appliances um and the cool thing about starting with littles
is that you might have one kid and you might be seeing them for three different phases of ortho
and yes i said three not two i know you know about phase one and phase two but i actually
have a third phase and that is what i've entitled pre pre-phase one therapy and actually quite a lot
of people use this term now which is basically habits and stuff like that airway disorders that
can happen at two three four five six things that we need to do to prep the patient to get ready for
phase one and then once you have a phase one eighty or ninety percent of the time you're
gonna have a phase two but phase two is crazy easy so you're taking something that's crazy difficult
and you're breaking it and chopping it up into little bitty bite-sized easy challenges that a
you know a pediatric dentist or a gp can definitely handle and i think it's such a
pity that so many orthodontists don't do this they don't do phase one appliances
they don't do pre orthotherapy they just kind of wait until it gets really messy and hard
and then they spend two years when the patient is 13 or 14 and the patient doesn't want to be there
there is i have a 13 year old there's no 13 year old that wants braces nobody does they may want it
for one minute as soon as they get it they hate him it is not fun and it's a terrible age to be
putting braces on i mean i had them in high school it was traumatic i'm still traumatized um i would
never do that to my kids to be really honest and i'll be honest my daughter had the hardest case
um and we were able to chop it up and not make it so hard you know impacted canines all kind
of stuff it was a hot mess it was so bad when i first saw her pano at age seven thank goodness
i said i started crying because it was even hard for me so um but it's been fine so anyways
that is my little just inspirational thing think about the other options that are out there
and again giveaways freebies um if you would like my entire playlist on phase one
appliances or braces straight wire everything you basically need to know and if you have a typodont
you could basically learn this all at home very easy for free okay comprehensive versus sto i
want to address an elephant in the room before it pops up in the chat because someone's gonna blow
me up in about five seconds so full disclosure i did have a stint in the sto world especially
the direct consumer aligner industry i'm actually kind of proud of it a lot of people won't don't
like me for this but i did help start the company smile direct club i'm sorry if you don't like that
i was the doctor that helped to start it back in 2014 i was only with them for two years they went
a different direction i didn't want to go along with i left so don't really talk to them anymore
they're really smart people that's the way i leave it so anyways yes if you don't like that company
apologies i did a good job so in that it's a very profitable company now and that's all i got to say
but yes i know a lot about sto so and i'm okay with it so i'm gonna give you my opinion let's
define sto because you need to know the difference between sto and comprehensive ortho two totally
different worlds i do both so let's talk about that most of the streetwire programs that are out
there that are directed towards general dennis are o that means short term ortho i'm not gonna
mention who they are because when i mention their names first of all if i don't say something that's
super awesome they come after me and they send me nasty letters so you probably know who they are um
nothing wrong with that but the problem is not every patient is an seo patient and if you're
going to do sto on a patient and that's all you do you must explain to every single patient that
this is an alternative plan this is not ideal this is not perfect this is not comprehensive
if they want perfect they need to either see you for another type of treatment or they need to see
an orthodontist if you do not explain that with every single patient you are putting yourself up
for liability okay and only reason why i'm going to put that out there is because i don't feel like
these companies say that okay um and i've been on the expert witness on the other end of it
where i've seen a lot of people get in big trouble for this so and like i said i'm a
fixer so i know what can happen so i do do some one-on-one consulting with the cases and stuff
like that with doctors and that's something if you've worked with me you know i'm like no you
know it's okay to do that but you have to do it the right way you need to explain the why if you
don't explain the risk benefits and alternatives to your patient then you have no business doing it
the other thing that's really really important is that remember if you're doing sto it affects your
insurance billing and i'm not an insurance wizard and if you really want to know more about worth
insurance i have someone i consult with i pay with to help me with that and i gladly refer you to her
um but i do have a really good insurance document that has all the main codes for ortho i am glad
and easy explanations i am glad to share that with you again another thing i will give you
for free um just contact me by tomorrow night at midnight um but yeah i just want to get that
elephant out of the room i'm fine with sto but make sure you're explaining it and if you are not
capable of explaining the why what a comprehensive treatment plan would be for that patient if you're
only offering seo that's fine you need to tell the patient if you want to learn about this you
really should because i really can't treat you until you understand the other options
you should go to an orthodontist first before i can treat you get the written
treatment plan we're good let the orthodontist explain it and then i'm fine with it okay