What’s your goal in orthodontics? The gold standard of treatment
Patient satisfaction plays a critical role in determining the standard or quality of services you are offering to your dedicated batch of patients. Nonetheless, for most dental professionals, including you perhaps, there is little of higher importance to quality and patient satisfaction than your orthodontic treatment management. The first step is to defind the gold standard of treatment by which you calibrate your clinic’s success and profit.
An egregious decision most dental professionals are willing to make is to compromise their standard of treatment to match the amateurish and unrealistic wishes presented by the patients. Meeting patient demands should be an accomplishment, so why is this very noble practice mercilessly bashed here?
Transparency is the key
When you consider lowering your quality of work for your patient, it can not only harm them but will also lead to uncertainty and mistrust when this patient obtains a second opinion. What you may consider a generous feat may put your business at stake.
To combat this irksome problem, it is crucial for you to inform your patients about all the possibilities to a dental ailment that exists – including the non-execution of the treatment. It doesn’t matter if you do not see it being suitable, favorable, or complementary to your patient, as long as you keep the options completely transparent.
A simple method of implementing this in my case planning “ABCD system” whereby you list a number of suitable treatment plans and calculate the probabilities for the success of each.
Set a treatment goal
Now that you have laid all the cards on the table, it is time to dictate which treatment goal is to be achieved. These can perfectly correspond to the guidelines set by certifying boards, such as the American Board of Orthodontics (ABO), the European Board of Orthodontics, or comparable organizations in individual countries. Or Lawrence Andrews Six Keys of Occlusion. There are many other different indices.
However, a much simpler and faster lean variant is the “Baxmann Keys of Occlusion”. These come in handy during the planning process as well as during treatment control and the evaluation of intermediate stages of treatment, whether we are treating with fixed, removable, or with aligners.
The gold standard of treatment can actually be a transition from patient satisfaction to employee satisfaction to ultimately your satisfaction. This is because everyone in a practice has at least one thing in common: the desire to achieve the best possible outcome for their patients.