For the first time in a few years, I'm starting to see some growth in my practice. I always thought that if I just did the things I do well, my practice would grow. The strengths of my practice are my staff and their amazing personalities, my ability to talk to my patients as people and not as patients, and my hunger to always be better at my job by taking lots of CE every year. All that being said, my practice has been a bit stagnant and maybe even dipped at times.

I decided at the end of 2010 to use a service to communicate better to my patients for their appointments, post op call reminders, events we have going on in our office, future recall appointments, birthday wishes and other great things that brought our office even closer with our patients. I personally use Lighthouse 360 and love them. Here is a link if you'd like more info: http://www.LPMG360.com/rr. There are many excellent options out there and I would recommend checking out which one rings best for your practice. I have seen consistent growth during this past quarter for the first time in a few years and the only thing that I'm really doing very differently has been the addition of this service to my practice.

What I enjoy the most about this service is the electronic patient surveys that are automatically e-mailed to patients as their appointments are completed. Asking your patients how you are doing as an office is a pretty powerful tool. They are asked a series of questions such as:

- Were you seen on time?
- Were you greeted in a friendly and timely manner?
- Did you wait long?
- Was the office was clean and up to date?
- When the appointment was over, did you have a good understanding of your dental situation?
- Was the staff was friendly and courteous?
- Would you gladly refer others to the practice?

And so on.

The patient can answer from strongly agree to strongly disagree. They can also leave a personal comment at the end if they choose to. There are separate surveys for doctor visits, hygiene visits and new patient visits so the questions vary depending on the type of appointment the patient had.

I have to say that getting anything less than a strongly agree feels like a failure to me. The one thing that it does do is to keep our office on our toes. Since each facet of the office gets reviewed, you know the areas that are constantly strong and the areas that need work. We, as a staff, look at these. We take pride when we get a great survey back and discuss what we can do as a team to improve if we get a survey that we feel is substandard for us.

I have to say that I'm very happy with what I usually read, but every day is not a perfect survey, and sometimes our profession throws us a curve on a day and things just don't go our way. The survey will show that. It's okay. Just understand that you did and do your best to not let it happen again. If you consistently see remarks that do no suit your liking, maybe it is time to step out of yourself and look at you practice from entrance to exit and see what you like and don't like.

These surveys will tell us a lot about how we are doing. It is either a nice pat on the back or a swift kick in the pants. One thing is for sure, it will keep everyone more focused on a daily basis to strive to always give their best effort. I highly recommend a service like Lighthouse 360 or similar services. It has done a great job for both our practice numbers and office self esteem!