By: Jenn Janicki, CMS Executive Director

You’ve done all the hard work, deepened your technical and management knowledge through Clinical Mastery CE curriculum, read dozens of complex articles, and even invested in top-notch materials, but still, patients aren’t saying yes to treatment. What else is there when it comes to dental treatment planning?

Like anything, case acceptance is a skill, one that requires strategy and foresight. Every dentist helps their patients on the road to more complete dental care and better oral health in different ways.

Here, I’ll present two aspects of a convincing case acceptance strategy. Go forth and do big, comprehensive dentistry!

Two Compelling Strategies of Dental Treatment Planning Case Acceptance

1. Use Visual Treatment Plans

Patients do not have access to the vast depths of dental terminology and learning you have stored in your mind over years of training and experience. This may seem obvious, but it’s easy to forget. Bridging this gap in communication is made much easier through the use of visuals. If there’s one thing we all understand naturally, it’s esthetics.

Related: Join Drs. Nosti, Smith, and Farmer as they host dentistry’s most exciting dental, advanced treatment planning workshop!

Don’t think of your job as that of convincing patients to overcome objections. Guide your patient to a great decision by presenting them with consideration and a high-quality visual treatment plan. You can start with a customizable template that uses images to highlight concerns.

2. Come From Abundance, Avoid Scarcity

The psychological truth is that many people make decisions not from their bank account, but from the allure of what they are buying. It’s inaccurate to assume every patient who doesn’t say yes to treatment is doing so because it’s too expensive. People make room for what they highly value.

If you find a patient’s why, they will figure out how to make treatment possible. Changing your own mentality about what you offer patients – improved health, gifted clinical skills – can go a long way in building trust.

What are your favorite case acceptance strategies? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!