Strategy

Are you looking to grow your dental implant practice?
Have you had patients who did not accept your implant treatment recommendations?
Have you tried various strategies to grow your implant practice and been disappointed in the results?

Surprisingly, the strategies for growing an implant practice are quite simple and easily implementable in any office. But it requires a commitment to a structured system. Many successful dental practices routinely offer dental implants as the primary tooth replacement option for their patients. Whether you are an established clinician or a dentist just getting started, you too can take your implant practice to new heights.

Our step-by-step program

Dr. Kazemi has designed a step-by-step program to help build your dream implant practice. He will provide you with the necessary training, educational tools, and communication strategies to increase your case acceptance and number of implant patients. This in-depth program covers the many dimensions required to build a thriving implant practice:

Office set-up
Team training and knowledge
Diagnosis and planning
Surgical techniques and staging
Prosthetic-guided implant planning
Prosthetic techniques
CT-guided implant dentistry
Team approach with your surgeon and laboratory
Implant case acceptance
Patient communication
Effective educational tools
Marketing that works

Practice Set-Up

Your office must be properly set-up to support a growing implant practice.
The key components to best setting up your office are as follows.

Overall goals, vision, and strategies

Establish the goals of the practice
Create your vision and mission
Define your purpose
Write clear strategies
Hire the right people
Write action plans and a well-defined map to help your team achieve the goals
Establish proper metrics and measure your progress every week

Build on your strength

Define your area of expertise and what you can do better than anyone else in the world: surgery or prosthetics?
Successful clinicians place all of their focus on a given discipline and specific set of skills.
Doctors with growing implant practices have chosen their path and focus all of their resources on realizing their defined goals with maximum potential.

Facility, materials, and tools

Have proper screw drivers, torque wrenches, abutment holders, etc.
Use proper impression and indexing materials.
Set up your treatment rooms properly with all the necessary materials in order.

Clear treatment goals

Have well designed and clear treatment plans
For each patient, discuss your plan in detail with the surgeon and laboratory
Educate your team so they can help you achieve the goals in your plan

Effective Patient Referrals

To grow your implant practice, it is essential to collaborate with a team of specialists who can help you achieve your goals. The referral stage is an integral part of this collaboration and requires certain communication skills. This section will provide you with key principles for effectively referring your patient to the specialist.

A Five-Step Process for Effective Patient Referrals

Know your areas of “pain”

Decide what you need from a specialist and identify what hinders the referral process.
Focus on challenges you are facing and how your specialist can help you resolve them.
Create solutions to make the process easy.

Know your specialist

Know the specialist to whom you are referring; know their team members and their office.
Understand what type of surgical results and quality of work you should expect.
Ask about their service protocols, emergency management, financial protocols, payment options, and communication process.
Pay attention to whether the specialist is also seeking to understand you and how you work.

Know your patient

Ask appropriate questions to discover your patients’ needs and desires (follow the “SPIN” Strategy by asking Situational questions, Problem questions, Implication questions, and Need-Payoff Questions).
The right questions can reveal a patient’s true challenge or obstacle (e.g., financial, anxiety, time, value for dentistry, or a combination).
Know their personality type and follow the platinum rule.

Educate

Know the benefits/risks of recommended procedures.
Review what they might lose by not following your planned treatment.
Relate the planned procedure to the specific needs of your patient.

Recommend and refer

Make only one recommendation to an intended specialist.
Demonstrate capability.
Convey value and key benefits about the specialist you recommend.
Emphasize the importance of your relationship with the specialist and the team approach in overall success.

Treatment Planning

Collaborative treatment planning

Diagnosis and treatment planning is a collaborative effort between you and your team surgeon. However, it all starts with you. You must have both prosthetic and relevant surgical knowledge to make an initial diagnosis on occlusion, supporting bone structures, and patient’s needs that will help you design an appropriate treatment plan. You must be able to provide the patient with an overall treatment plan before consultation with your team specialists.

Patient education at your office

The key is to have patients understand and accept your proposed treatment prior to consultation with your team surgeon or other specialists. You must have great knowledge and skills in restoring implants. Prosthetic knowledge is your foundation. However, you should also be able to educate your patients about the following surgical principles:

Type of bone deficiencies
Bone grafting options
How many implants would be appropriate
Why implants would be the preferred option
Healing times and treatment order
Prosthetic needs during surgical phase
Implant positioning
Laboratory stages
Tissue management strategies
Immediate vs. delayed implants
And many others…

Any remaining questions about diagnosis and treatment options can certainly be discussed following consultation with the oral surgeon.

Collaborative Consultations

Implant dentistry is a multi-disciplinary field. To achieve predictable success, you must organize a highly skilled and knowledgeable team that communicates well. Good planning requires a collaborative discussion and effective communication to deliver treatment that is organized, logical, efficient, and, ultimately, successful.

Collaboration may take place at any stage during the treatment…

Before referring your patient to a surgeon:

At this stage, you can contact the surgeon to give them a “heads-up” and discuss the following:

Unique patient needs or previous experiences that may affect the treatment
Issues regarding medical management
What records are available and necessary
Surgical topics to help you be more effective during your work-up

After patient consultation with the surgeon:

At this stage, you should collaborate with the surgeon in order to:

Review findings
Discuss treatment options, both ideal and alternative
Discuss patient desires and financial issues
Review the order and timing of the treatment stages
Develop a comprehensive treatment letter
Identify the need for consultation with other specialists

Team collaboration with patient:

Sometimes, it is necessary to have a meeting together with the patient, dentist, and surgeon. For example,

A final meeting with a patient undergoing complex treatments
To discuss possibilities and limitations from both surgical and prosthetic points of view
To answer all questions thoroughly

Collaboration during treatment:

Throughout the patient’s treatment, collaboration between surgeon and dentist is important to:

Discuss patient progress
Discuss unexpected events or need for treatment modifications
Coordinate schedules
Offer support for necessary materials, components, etc.

Your Team Surgeon

The importance of communication between you, your surgeon, and the laboratory has been emphasized in implant dentistry for a long time. It is critical to discuss patient needs, desires, personality, diagnosis, treatment options, and scenarios with all of the team members including any other specialists who may be involved.

Choosing the right team surgeon

Choosing the right oral surgeon is critical to achieving the desired results, building patient loyalty, and establishing a stress-free implant practice. You must form a close collaboration and working relationship with an oral surgeon who understands your needs and your patient’s goals. There must be open and continued dialogue to prevent misunderstandings, surprises, and inappropriate treatments and to achieve the predictable results that your patients expect. A surgeon’s role is not only to perform surgery for your patients, but also to guide you through the process, provide support when needed, help you design a practical treatment plan, and provide long-term support for the service he or she provides.

Here are some important factors to consider when choosing a team surgeon:

Surgical techniques and skills
Results
Type of implants
Use of surgical guides
Protocols for immediate implants and loading
Availability and accessibility
Mode of communication for treatment planning
Payment options
Follow-up protocol

Choosing the right lab

The laboratory also plays a crucial role in overall implant success. The lab must be aligned with your vision on every case and be able to deliver high quality work that meets the necessary functional and aesthetic demands.

Treatment Acceptance

Achieving high implant acceptance rates is no accident. You must understand the value of the acceptance scale, an objective tool that determines the patient’s likelihood of accepting your treatment plan. A patient’s position on this scale is determined by personal beliefs, explicit needs, financial capabilities, team dentists, and presentation.

You must be able to distinguish between simple and explicit patients needs, understand “buying” behavior of large purchases (i.e dentistry), understand the four types of patients, and learn about probing questions that reveal your patient’s deeper needs and concerns.

Treatment acceptance also requires minimizing objections and having appropriate responses when objections do occur.

You must be able to make a great treatment plan presentation that is relevant to the patient and addresses their concerns and goals; a presentation is most effective when given in a way that it is heard and understood by the patient. Their personality, goals, objectives, and obstacles must be considered. Various educational tools may be used to improve communication and treatment acceptance.

Knowledge and Skills

To grow your implant practice, you must have superb knowledge and skills in implant prosthetics and restorations. Also, you must understand current surgical principles, techniques, and materials.

Prosthetic techniques

You must understand and perform basic impression techniques, provisionalization, prosthetic-assisted tissue design strategies, and site-specific final restorations. In addition, you must learn the principles of CT-guided implant dentistry and when and how it is used to enhance results. You must also have a thorough knowledge of occlusion, modification methods, and the effects of different types of implant-supported prosthetics.

Proper wax-up during the diagnostic phase, fabrication of appropriate surgical guides, and provisionalization techniques must also be mastered. You must understand the differences between immediate, early, or delayed loading approaches and when each is considered appropriate.

Surgical techniques and staging

You must have an in-depth knowledge of the surgical aspects of dental implants, bone grafting options, extraction and site preservation principles, and surgical innovations to realize the final intended outcome. You must have a complete understanding of the following:

Bone and soft tissue architecture and classification
Bone grafting options, various materials, their success, and healing time
Extraction and site preservation approach in implant site preparation
Various dental implants, surface characteristics, and platform design
Surgical staging and integration with prosthetic interventions when appropriate
Anesthesia options
Patient healing and overall experience

4825 Bethesda Ave., Suite 310
Bethesda, MD 20814

Bethesda, (301) 654-7070

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