Why pre appoint dental hygiene appointments?

In the last 5 years or so, we have tried harder to get patients to book their next hygiene appointment immediately after they have their teeth cleaned. I believe that when a patient schedules their next appointment in advance they are more likely to be seen in the office in the interval that we have agreed to. Although most patients agree to return to the office for  their regular hygiene appointments many choose not to schedule these appointments months in advance.

Instead they opt to have Ida, my charming office manager, call to remind them that it is time to schedule an appointment.  This is the way that our office traditionally has handled our recall system. It is a nice curtsey that we offer, but it is an extremely inefficient system. Increasingly patients do not answer their phone, but instead screen their voicemails. Ida will leave a message or two, but after a couple of messages, she feels that it is rude to keep leaving messages .  It is my belief that our reminders can be ignored because our patient is just not ready to schedule an appointment. Unfortunately, after a time, they are not called as frequently and some effectively fall out of our active re care system.

Eventually, most of our  AWOL patients do often end up calling on their own for an an appointment (when something is bothering them). When they do come in, we are happy to see them ( I try to bite my tongue and not chastise them too strongly), but it saddens me that their reluctance to schedule their preventive cleaning appointments can result in us discovering problems "when the horse is out of the barn" and result in less optimal outcomes.

About the author: Lawrence Spindel DDS is a dentist who has maintained  a general and cosmetic dental practice in New York City, for over thirty years .