Dental Sleep Medicine Insider March 2015 | Page 12

KEEP CALM AND SCREEN ON By Cindy Herbert One of the most common questions I field from DSM practitioners is “How can I get new sleep patients?” This is typically followed by a slew of questions about billboards, radio ads, PPC ads, paying an expensive fee to be featured on websites that supposedly generate new patients & many more. Some of the aforementioned methods can be successful; and others wildly unsuccessful. Fortunately, practitioner’s answer to my next question usually generates further discussion and alleviates some of the concern of finding new patients. This is what I usually ask: “Have you been screening your patients of record?” Most of the time, the answer is “No”. In a practice with 2,000 active adult patients of record, prevalence stats forecast that 400 of those patients will likely have some form of Sleep Disordered Breathing. If you have 400 OAT candidates already coming for a prophy, why would you commit your funds to a pricey marketing campaign when there are patients in your practice that may need your help and trust you? Even when those marketing campaigns are effective, and some of them certainly can be, there is still a significant portion of your existing patient base that could potentially benefit from your life-improving dental device. Also, let’s be honest here, there’s a great deal of production you could add. If you’re not screening your patients, it’s unlikely that they will broach the topic of their decibel-defying snoring or excessive daytime sleepiness with you. By screening all of these patients with the DS3 Screener, you are opening the door to an imperative discussion. This can serve as your first step towards dramatically improving their quality of life, while adding additional revenue to your practice. We suggest placing a couple inexpensive tablets (here’s an Amazon link to some for about $100) in your waiting room with the DS3 Screener pre-loaded onto th