Consider the following questions to determine if your hygiene department is meeting or exceeding the current standards of care:
- Do your patients value the hygiene visit or do they view it as “just a cleaning?
- Does the entire dental team understand how oral health fits into overall wellness?
- Is the practice performing documented comprehensive oral evaluations with measurements of the clinical attachment level?
- Do the adult patients of record have a documented annual periodontal exam every year?
- Does the hygiene department have clear diagnostic distinctions between health, disease and maintenance oral health status?
- If a patient has active disease, are we clear on their case type of Gingivitis, early, moderate and advanced periodontal disease?
- Is the hygiene team communicating with every patient the status of their supporting structures of bone and gums that hold their teeth in place?
- Does the practice perform root planning, scaling and home care guidelines for patients with active disease?
- What patient education tools, technology and visuals are being used to make sure the patient understands their status and frequency.
- Do patients understand they need the periodontal care and frequency regardless of how many units they have covered or what insurance pays?
- Are patients with disease returning for their revaluation to assess their healing and success of gum therapy?
- Does the practice offer home care aids such as power brushes, interproximal aids, toothpaste etc. in the practice for purchase at a lower professional cost than retail outlets?
- Does the hygienist use the intraoral camera on all patients prior to dentist examination?
- Does the practice have a standard for each patient to order radiographs
- Is the hygienist billing the accurate units of time the patient is in the chair?
- Does the hygienist pre schedule the patient clinically before they leave?
- Does the Dr. and RDH have a professional process of prompting the doctor in recall exams?
- Are hygiene exams generating restorative dentistry that contributes to 80% of the future dentist schedule?
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