Marcos White & Cat Edney
Dr. Marcos White qualified from Leeds Dental Institute in 2000. Marcos is an international lecturer for iTero and Invisalign products which is a massive reflection on his experience in Invisalign clear aligners and digital scanning technologies. He runs courses for other dentists to see how to best utilise iTero and Invisalign clear aligners in their practices.
Cat Edney qualified from King’s College Dental Hospital in 2008 in the dual qualification of Dental Hygiene and Dental Therapy. She now has over ten years’ experience working in specialist private practice. With her focus on providing personalised care for patients, Cat takes a holistic approach to dental disease prevention and treatment. She lectures nationally and runs hands-on Therapist courses focusing on providing gold standard training and ongoing support.
The benefits of patient communication using latest technology
Dr. Marcos white and dental therapist Cat Edney discussed the benefits of patient communication using latest technology at a recent educational webinar of the Digital Excellence Series, a series of presentations from dental experts and practitioners created by Align Education.
Dr. Marcos White from Huddersfield and dental therapist Cat Edney from London shared their experience with digital dentistry and how they have been able to use digital tools to enhance the treatment experience of every patient, whether they are new to, or a long-time patient of a practice.
Central to this is making full-use of technology – particularly the iTero™ intraoral scanner, to create focused patient journeys, educate patients, and empower practice teams.
“Imagine finding out you can better care for patients, have better record keeping and deliver more predictable results, all with skills you already have and a tool you already own” said Dr. Marcos White. “For over 200 years, dentists have seen teeth one at a time in the reflection of a very tiny little dental mirror on a stick, and patients haven’t been able to see anything that we were seeing. Now we both can see the whole dentition. The iTero scanner’s touchscreen allows us to demonstrate our observations to the patient in a way they understand. For the first time, they see their own problems on screen in colour. It gives them a new perspective.”
Dr White’s practice now uses six scanners, and he describes that the very first iTero scanner immediately made a significant difference. “We saw 33% growth over 12 months with the first iTero scanner we ever bought. The reason it worked was because it prompted greater case acceptance – more people said yes to larger treatment plans. Digital tools impress patients, they create stories. The sheer act of showing patients their problems and the solutions on-screen blows their mind and builds their confidence in you,” he told delegates.
He used a recent example of a patient who arrived at his practice wanting new veneers, but more seriously, the patient didn’t have any back teeth. The iTero scan revealed periodontal problems, and showed that the patient needed back teeth, but didn’t want false teeth, so Dr. White and his team were able to treat her with dental implants. “As in this case, what we’ve discovered time and again through this process is that there’s a co-discovery going on and that the best idea in the world is always the patient’s idea…as they ask questions and come up with the solutions, they end up with something that they wanted, not something we told them they needed. And that is massive.”
“Scans equal history and that equals loyalty. We’ve now got circa five years of scans for some of our patients. It creates a bond with your patient they won’t want to lose”
A teamwork approach
Vital to successfully boosting efficiency is the involvement of the wider practice team to scale practice operations. Treatment coordinators (TCOs) and hygiene therapists in particular, have a wider role to play, explained Dr White, as they can also help to build patient relationship through conversation.
Dental therapist Cat Edney, of Greenwich Dental Health in London echoed this analysis: for her, building patient loyalty is based on holistic understanding and use of technology. She explained that holistic care includes understanding general patient health, their personal situation, and any major life changes, is the key to unlocking hidden patient value.
When Ms. Edney started using the iTero ElementTM 5D imaging system, she began having more in-depth conversations with her patients. She noticed that they were looking at their mouth and self-diagnosing, feeling there was something wrong, and the scanner gave her the opportunity to show them and demonstrate the changes that were happening.
Now, she and the team she works on use the iTero scanner to build comprehensive profiles of all patients to help to unlock oral health conversations – and create loyalty. This includes understanding what is happening in their lives, such as if they’re having a baby, changing jobs, or getting married. “The way we do that is just to build a basic profile that outlines who they are and their social history. It’s a very small document that’s easily accessible by the whole team and it all relates back to their oral health and their dental care.”
Ms. Edney was keen to stress in the webinar that treatment coordinators (TCOs), hygienists and therapists are well placed to build patient trust and fosters loyalty to the practice.
“When you take your patient out of the dentist’s chair and put them into somebody else’s chair within your team, whether it’s a TCO, a dental hygienist or a therapist, the conversation often changes. Patients act and speak differently when they’re speaking to a different member of the team, because our conversations often centre around improving or maintaining their health. We’re not just talking about their mouth. Team members are well placed to build patients profiles: assess, explain, and communicate with them and maximise their awareness of their dental needs thanks to digital tools. With the iTero scanner we can take screenshots of the treatment, annotate those screenshots so the whole team can see what discussions there have been. This is a key feature that facilitates the communication, so it’s easier for the rest of the team to answer questions from patients if they know what is planned for them.”
Dr. Marcos White concludes that this new way of working also has other benefits. Creating time for a digital scan enables automated diagnostics and builds a bank of data per patient as well. “Scans equal history and that equals loyalty. We’ve now got circa five years of scans for some of our patients. It creates a bond with your patient that they won’t want to lose.”