Working at a practice involves numerous challenges, from communicating with your team to providing high-quality care. Finding and retaining new patients, however, may be the most pressing challenge today.
Whether the practice is new or has been in the business for many years, one of the most powerful ways to attract and retain patients is by providing them with value beyond the doors of your practice. And equipping your patients with an at-home oral care plan for when they’re not in the dental office can achieve just that!
That’s why we’re sharing the ultimate guide to providing an effective oral care plan. Patients rely on you to be dental experts, and our tips can help you educate and inspire your patients to take proper care of their mouth health throughout the year.
An effective oral care establishes why preventative care is so important. Oral disease is the #1 disease in the world. It’s also the most common chronic disease in children, causing everything from dental caries and bleeding gums to more severe health problems.
However, one too many families delay and avoid preventative treatment because of the initial cost, only to pay so much more down the road to correct a problem that is far harder to treat.
Take orthodontics as an example. Sometimes parents opt for the cheapest possible treatment, not realizing there are many extra costs or that the treatment is far less likely to be effective.
This is why making sure families understand the benefits of preventative care is so important. Taking care of your mouth not only contributes to your overall health but also saves money down the road.
Given that oral care is so important, it’s crucial to establish healthy habits from the minute kids are born so it ensures their healthy growth and development. However, not all parents know that dentist checkups are so important in the early years, or that kids should see a dentist the moment their baby teeth start to pop up, and no later than their first birthday!
Unfortunately, that’s just not the way things are going. Only 16% of children see a dentist by their first birthday, and 20% of them don’t see a dentist until they are five or older.
Developing mouths are easily influenced, which is why missing dentist appointments in the early years is a lot more serious than one might think. If bad habits like thumb-sucking, pacifier use, or an underutilized jaw carry on for too long, they can do long-term damage to the mouth and potentially lead to other problems like crooked teeth, under and overbites, or sleep apnea.
This is why it’s so important for practices like yours to intervene by providing patients with an effective oral care plan. At the very least, make sure parents know the 1, 4, 7 rule, which is especially helpful for families who don’t have access to a group dental practice. This rule provides standard guidelines for timing for dental care in kids:
1 — Take your child to a pediatric dentist no later than age one.
4 — Work with your child’s dentist to end any poor oral habits (like thumb-sucking) no later than age four.
7 — Bring your child in for a checkup with an orthodontist no later than age seven.
These guidelines are the outer limits of when children should be seen, and parents should always seek advice or treatment if any issues occur earlier. This timing is so important because it will allow parents to address any emergent problems with the most efficient, effective, and least expensive interventions.
When was the last time you jumped for joy at the thought of taking care of brushing your teeth or flossing? Yeah, probably never.
Let’s be honest, many of us practice good oral care begrudgingly, which is tragic when you think about how much your oral care affects your overall health. If we can get excited about a fun workout class, why can’t those similar methods apply to our oral health? If anyone figures out how to turn a runner’s high into a brusher’s high, let us know!
That’s why it’s so important to provide patients with a FUN oral care plan. Many of your patients’ psychological associations, whether good or bad, with oral care form in childhood. Most people’s fear of the dentist is rooted in a scary childhood experience. If it’s not a negative experience at the dentist though, it’s a snooze cruise issue. Many kids, who eventually turn into adults, find brushing and flossing boring, and who wants to do something they don’t enjoy, especially when they could be playing instead?
Research has shown a 73% increase in brushing time using musical toothbrushes, but why stop there?
SuperMouth’s custom mouth care systems provide an entire universe of superheroes, villains, comic books, augmented reality experiences, movies, music, toys, and most importantly, stories that will appeal to kids, getting them invested in their oral health. Our goal is to build positive emotional connections to oral care, getting kids excited and invested in their health.
Kids have different oral care needs as their mouths develop, which is why our mouth care systems are customized based on age, risk for cavities, and personal preference. These kits cover more than just flossing and brushing - we're about caring for the whole mouth and have developed mouthpastes, mouthwashes, mouthsprays, mouthfloss, and more!
SuperMouth provides a turn-key program that delivers our dentist-invented mouth care systems to your patients and an incremental revenue stream to your practice. A family of four can receive our SuperMouth program for a daily price that's less than the average cup of coffee!*
Interested? Schedule a consultation today.
*SuperMouth Membership rate of up to $0.99 per person, per day, for our comprehensive system for a family of four is less than the Wall Street Journal's 2022 published average cup of coffee price in the U.S. of $4.90.