New Patient Group Podcast

Digitalizing, Immersing & Transforming Exam Rooms for Increased Conversions, Starts & Revenue

• Brian Wright • Season 8 • Episode 119

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Digitalizing, Immersing & Transforming your Exam Room for Increased Conversions, Starts & Revenue! Welcome to another edition of the New Patient Group Podcast with our Founder & CEO, Brian Wright. The go to voice for the biggest names in Dentistry, Orthodontics and beyond for practices wanting to dominate the new economy. 

This podcast episode explores the critical importance of creating immersive patient experiences in healthcare settings. By rethinking the aesthetics and functionality of exam rooms and viewing expenditures as investments, practices can significantly enhance patient engagement and conversion rates.

• The significance of an immersive experience in healthcare
• Outdated exam room setups reduce patient engagement
• Viewing expenses as investments rather than costs
• Modern furniture and technology enhance patient interactions
• Staff training on presentation skills can improve conversions
• The value of mastermind groups for collaborative improvement
• Aligning healthcare practices with hospitality principles

New Patient Group - The Employee & Patient Experience Co. Learn Advanced and Cutting Edge Skill Sets Used by the Finest People Businesses in the World, such as the Ritz Carlton and more. We are experts in the following areas and found a niche in orthodontics, dentistry and other healthcare professions years ago. We teach this expertise to enhance every interaction your team has with people you want to become patients or those who already are patients. 

- Leadership
- Sales 
- Hospitality
- Consumer Psychology
- Verbiage
- Presentation
- Communication
- Much More 

The result of the above mentioned skill-sets is a much improved culture, new patients, treatment conversion, efficiency, profitability, treatment starts, revenue, patient referrals, patient compliance and more. 

Job Descriptions that will Benefit from this On-Site Workshop:

- Clinical Assistants 
- Concierges
- Doctors 
- Front Desk
- Receptionists
- Treatment Coordinators
- And More!

This episode emphasizes the critical need for denta practices, orthodontic practices and more to invest in creating immersive and modern patient environments that enhance engagement and conversion rates. We discuss ways to align aesthetics with technology, transforming outdated spaces into welcoming, inviting areas that foster trust and excitement around treatment options.

• Exploring the disconnect between waiting rooms and exam rooms
• The importance of aligning aesthetics with patient experience
• Rethinking costs as investments for better practice outcomes
• The role of modern technology in engaging patients
• Strategies for improving the overall patient journey
• Encouraging a shift towards a hospitality-focused mindset
• Actionable recommendations for practice design improvements
• The impact of examining furniture choices on patient comfort
• Discussing the shortcomings of traditional scheduling templates
• Urging participation in the mastermind group for ongoing growth

Speaker 1:

Could somebody please tell me why you would have a massive, giant, 4k, beautiful flat-screen TV in the one place? You should be striving to do everything in your power to never have anyone be your waiting room. And then you go into the exam room. You're bread and butter, pride and joy. You're bread and butter, pride and joy.

Speaker 1:

And you see these cabinets from the 1980s nothing's been updated boring paint and these itsy-bitsy little computer screens that you're trying to get somebody engaged with treatment. You're trying to give the upper hand to your TC to close the deal at the highest level and, as people are shopping around, that doesn't make you unique. Why would you ever spend money on a big screen TV in the waiting room and have these itsy bitsy screens inside your exam room? It makes no sense, and we're going to talk about that on this episode of the New Patient Group Podcast, as well as some things that you can do to bring that immersive experience into the exam room, to give your practice the upper hand for that treatment conversion and make sure people buy from you rather than somebody else. And it's going to all be talked about today on another episode of the New Patient Group Podcast.

Speaker 2:

The time for real change is now, when tough times test us, we overcome. When hardship hits us, we persevere, we innovate, we transform, we transform. If you're ready to achieve something special, buckle up and get ready for the ride of your life. Welcome to Season 8 of the New Patient Group Audio Experience, A podcast dedicated to revolutionizing lives, careers and business. So you, your team and your practice forever flourish in the new economy. And now your host. He's a husband, father of two, a founder and CEO of New Patient Group and Right Chat faculty for Align Technology, and a trusted speaker for Invisalign and OrthoFi. And a trusted speaker for Invisalign and.

Speaker 1:

OrthoFi, brian Wright. Hey, new Patient Group and Wright Chat Nation. Welcome inside the broadcast booth, brian Wright, here, and welcome in to another edition of a New Patient Group podcast. Hope you're doing great out there and, as you've listened in the intro, hopefully for any of you that may have that scenario, hopefully you've already changed your mindset and go geez, what am I doing?

Speaker 1:

It is amazing, over the years, how many practices that I've been into and this is exactly what you see. You see so much effort and energy put into the place that you should be putting all of your effort and energy into ensuring they never have to sit there. Way, that's the waiting room, right. Why would you want to invest $5,000 in a massive flat screen TV that goes in your waiting room and then walk into your exam room and it looked like it's built in the eighties. This is also what drives me nuts about so many of you out there that think the problems can be solved by dumping $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 a month into pay-per-click or muffin drops or you know, billboard and radio, and then you call your practice and nobody answers during regular business hours, or they show up to your practice and these are the kinds of things they see, you know, with a practice that looks like yesterday's news and not, given the proper tech forward, you know, showcase that you should and then wonder why your conversions down and therefore your solution is just dump more money in advertising, right, I mean, it all comes full circle and so much of you out there could reduce your advertising, hopefully to the point where you don't have to, if you just rethink the way the things are inside your doors.

Speaker 1:

You know, I have, I think all of you should have, and we're going to kind of walk through this immersive, this immersive experience journey, if you will. You know, one of your goals, all of you out there should always be how can I create an immersive experience, meaning, how can I make this not feel healthcare? How can I take people out of their realm, kind of a moment of virtual reality? How can I do that? From the aesthetics of the outside of my building to when you walk through the door, to all the different ways I can not have a front desk, have a concierge stand there, all these different ways that you can be different than the rest of the opinions, and you've got to be in a mindset place where you're constantly going. Okay, at this given moment in time.

Speaker 1:

If somebody went to Practice A, practice B and then they came to me practice C, at this given moment in time, am I unique? Am I different? Am I forward thinking? Do I come across as the innovator, the tech forward practice? And you should be doing that and mapping that out, because that's what we do, it's what we teach the consumer journey. It's never about one thing, just like today is never about just what I'm talking about today. But this is an easy fix. All of you out there should have beautiful smart board monitors that you can draw on, that you can take screenshots and send things home with people, that you can engage people with things home with people that you can engage people with. And that is one of among many other ways is that you increase conversion at a higher price.

Speaker 1:

You have to have showcase tools and if you're trying to get people, regardless of the doctor you are out there. If you're trying to get people to see value in your treatment plan, if you're trying to get people to see more value in you in your treatment plan, if you are trying to get people to see more value in you, then what could be the same treatment plan as the other two doctors, the other two opinions. These are the type things that you have to be thinking about. And when you walk into a practice with a waiting room that looked like it came out of the 90s and then you have this massive flat screen TV, yet then, when you look in your exam room, you've got these cupboards from the 1980s, 1990s, these old school desks, these computers that look like you're back in the 1990s, these little tiny presentation screens. You're screwing yourself, everybody and for many of you, the mindset especially if this is the first podcast you've ever listened to.

Speaker 1:

You may be going well, yeah, dude, easy for you to say, but those things are like you know, a used one is a thousand two thousand one dollars and then the new one is four, five, six, seven thousand dollars. And I say to you is that, and this is the same, the same thing that we teach? Is that that that is why you have to separate costs from investment, because if something is $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 as a cost, it's just going to help you stay open today. That's expensive. If you look at something that is going to produce a return, just like a stock would, and it's going to produce a return on more starts through a better experience, representing your brand, as all those things I said tech, forward, innovative, forward thinker because all of those things we'd have to understand is is, as those images are being built in people's mind, they are going to assume you're the better clinician, you're more up to date, you're more hip, you're more innovative those kinds of things. Right, if you're building the image in people's mind that way about your business, they are going to assume that your practice is that way too.

Speaker 1:

Hey everybody, brian, right here, let's step away from today's podcast. Hope you're enjoying it, and I want to throw an actionable item at you, as I want you to make 2025 the year you really implemented this immersive change. I want you to become a part of our mastermind group and I'm gonna give you a 30% discount for your first year. We do not do discounts. I teach you all not to do discounts, but there are certain times that I feel the timing is right and I want all of you out there that you listen to the podcast. You follow us, you follow our ideas. I want you to take action and become part of the most forward thinking group out there, and I want you to. I want you to come aboard and we've got amazing on-demand courses that you'll get access to. You'll get access to our live boot camps with coach eric and myself, where we really coach you through a lot of these. Our wednesday a second wednesday of every month zoom sessions with our doctors, our in-person event that we have every single year. You'll have special invites to our MPG Iconic event and a lot more, and I wanna welcome you into our MPG Mastermind. Make this year real change for your practice, your business and yourself, and we look forward to it. Just scan the code that we have on the screen on our YouTube station. I'll also put the link in the description below Become part of the new patient group mastermind in 2025.

Speaker 1:

And now let's get back to today's episode. So, yeah, is it cheap? No, but when it produces a higher conversion rate because you're engaging people and you're increasing sales through experience, then it's not that expensive. Right, it's going to pay for itself. And these presentation tools in your exam room, I mean, think about it. Everybody. Think how crazy it is that you and if, especially this is you're going to be going. Oh, my God, you're right. If you're a practice that is set up this way, how crazy is it for you to have a 60, 70, 80 inch flat screen TV in your waiting room and then you go into an outdated exam room that's got an itsy bitsy little computer screen that you're trying to get engagement on. It's asinine, everybody, that this is how and, like I said, it's never about one thing. But if you're asking yourself, why is my conversion down, why are my referrals down, why aren't my numbers up, these are the things that go into it.

Speaker 1:

Like you can't want to be an immersive experience practice and that's what we teach, right, everything is supposed to represent you as a people business, as a famous hospitality business that happens to offer orthodontics. It's not the other way around. Like you can't jam that into a packed orthodontic, dentistry, plastic surgery, et cetera. You can't jam experience into a packed busy schedule, right, you've got to jam the orthodontics you know as an example, into the experience, right, and that's why and I've got plenty of podcasts in the future. But it's why scheduling templates are a joke, because the scheduling templates do they ever take into account the hospitality, people's side of your business? Of course they don't. Right, and that's what they all should take into account as numero uno right Is when patients walk through the door is the schedule designed to ensure they're greeted right when they walk through the door and never have to sit right. That's one example of a hundred I could give right. But that's not how most of your scheduling templates work and that's one of many reasons. Scheduling templates are a thing of the past. You know, if you're doing remote monitoring and high share to chair, clear liners, et cetera, et cetera, you don't need scheduling templates. It's a way of the past.

Speaker 1:

But back to this. Like you can think about and make this as an easy switch, go out and invest and make sure that your exam room has the immersive feel Like if you look at your furniture, so many of you I go in there and you've got this outdated clinic chair. Go get a modern looking chair that's three-fourths laid back. That's nice and comfortable that somebody could sit in. You can do your exam there. It's better to scan when people are about three-fourths back. You're going to get a more true bite, so it actually gives you a better eye tarot scan right.

Speaker 1:

Your mandibular changes when you lay completely flat, but that's how most people scan. You want to sit that person either totally upright or a little bit lean back, like I said, so you can get, you know, a love seat. You know, have a nice little, you know sectional couch in there with a modern chair and you know beautiful coffee table, a big whiteboard, flat screens, you know 60, 70, 80 inch. On the wall your TC can be working off a simple little laptop, it doesn't. You know. Gut out your desk in there, everybody and all your cupboards and everything. Put some floating shelves in there, you know, for your tooth models and you know for for your tooth models and, and you know, your scan box, you know demo that you're going to talk about in the exam room on there.

Speaker 1:

Please, everybody, change the way your exam room looks, make it more of an immersive feel, and part of this immersive feel has got to be get your itsy bitsy little outdated monitors out of there and let's bring in your 80 inch in the waiting room. Go, rip that off the wall and come put it into your exam room. But even better, get a beautiful smart board monitor. Right. These are the things that are true advertising, that really represent your brand, that will increase your conversion, it will bring that immersive feel and it's all about being that people, business first, all right. So these are things you got to pay attention to because, believe me, the consumer pays attention to everything, everything. Right, you got a little crooked picture on the wall in the waiting room. If you have an engineer sitting in there that brought their kid in, the engineer is going to be thinking well, they can't get the picture straight. How can I trust them to straighten my kid's teeth?

Speaker 1:

People think about everything. It's really amazing how many practices I've been into and you can tell that they don't think about everything. You go into the exam room and this so much goes into this immersive experience, or lack thereof, and whether or not somebody's going to buy from you. Going back to getting into the head of who you're trying to get to buy from you and how they are thinking about everything. I have seen so many exam rooms where you know the doctor is presenting and their you know their back is to the family or you know they're turning their body, depending on who they want to talk to.

Speaker 1:

It's just the setup of the room doesn't make sense. You know it's like one of the most, one of the hardest things to do. You know most of you out there know I love cooking and one of the most difficult things to do is to cook at a high level in somebody else's kitchen. It's like you're going on the road and playing in a brand new sports stadium for the very first time, the first time you face that crowd and the loudness you can't appreciate until you do. And then the locker room's different and everything Cooking in somebody else's kitchen is really hard because most people, especially those that don't cook or cook at a high level their kitchen is just all over the place. It doesn't make sense and it makes it really difficult to cook a meal at a really high level if that's how you're used to doing it, and I see this and this could be a podcast for other things about just the way things are set up in general.

Speaker 1:

But just obviously, back to the exam room. These are things you have to think about when you scan with the iTero machine. This is an actual podcast that I want to do and it's in the notes. But when you scan you have to make sure that the parent is part of that scan and they can see the scan happening and the TC is engaging the parent with a wand in the kid's mouth. You can't have the scan. You know. You can't have a parent sitting behind the scan to where they can't see what's happening, right? That is part of the immersive experience that the other practices likely are not going to offer.

Speaker 1:

If you're going to use the scanner inside the exam room, you've got to have it in a position where everybody can see it. If that's going to be your presentation tool, ideally you screencast it or you log into your doctor's site and it's up on your big smart board monitor that we're talking about, or TV monitor, and there's so many cool features that the iTero machine has that, for whatever reason, even Invisalign doesn't teach it. You know we're going to have a podcast. I don't know what it's going to be. I hope it's this season. It has not been shot, but it's how to turn your iTero machine into a smart board whiteboard monitor and there's a way to do it and it's really really cool. It's an amazing education tool way to do it and it's really really cool. It's an amazing education tool. It's an amazing way to get people to focus, because one of all of your goals out there should be to learn ways to keep people focused on the education that you're providing.

Speaker 1:

Now, again, all this goes into it. It's the immersive feel. It's the look and feel it's like what I'm talking about right now, like you can't have a monitor up and have it be behind where somebody's sitting. Or again, these outdated clinic chairs that take up, you know, 10 feet of unnecessary space, when you could just get a really beautiful back to the furniture in there. These are the things that you have to be thinking about. You have to be thinking about it everyone. It just goes back.

Speaker 1:

I said it earlier, if you've got outdated cabinets, you know you think that the exam room is all about showing people the tooth models and discussing their need instead of their want. And again, it's not that you don't discuss the need, but you know, until people, until people are bought in to why you're the place to buy what they want, they don't give a damn about what they need. That's just the art of sales. And that is why even your doctor exam, everybody, the majority of what you're doing is sales. It's education, it's presentation. It has nothing to do with dentistry, orthodontics, et cetera, et cetera, at all or little at all.

Speaker 1:

It has everything to do with your presentation skills, your communication skills, your hospitality skills, your sales skills, like, et cetera, et cetera, because even the part that is heavy orthodontics, dentistry, whatever you know, when you are talking that clinical need and functionality and those type things, how you're speaking about those things and how you're educating those things, that is a communication, verbiage, presentation skill set right. You could know everything about the clinical world. You could be and you hear me teach this all the time on here you could be the smartest clinician of all time, but if you don't know how to communicate it in a way that's going to keep people focused, if you don't know how to educate in a way that's going to engage people to see the value right, you are going to lose again to that clinician that may not be as good as you, may not be as smart as you, doesn't do as good a work as you, but if they are experts at that sales, presentation, hospitality, communication all the things we are experts in that we teach all over the world and just happen to have a niche in orthodontics and beyond dentistry and beyond if you are not an expert in those things, you will lose. You will absolutely lose and that's why you know, of course a lot of your exam is dentistry, is orthodontics, of course it is, but when you speak the words, that part of it doesn't have anything to do with dentistry or orthodontics, right, of course you have to have the knowledge, but the key is how you are articulating this stuff, and that's a big part of the exam too. Not the topic today, but just again to plant the seed in your mind and how important these things are, but you've going back to just this.

Speaker 1:

Last point is that you've just got to think about everything. Does it flow right? Can the family sit there and see the TV, see the iTero scan? Are you truly digitalizing the experience? You know if you do have and you shouldn't, but if you do have the parent in another room while you're scanning the kid, are you screencasting that scan up to a big smart board monitor? Where, in the exam room where you left the parent?

Speaker 1:

There's so many things that you can do to just immersify this whole exam room experience to be unique and better and, as a result, you will see an increase in conversion. You've got to have that room, like I said, like earlier, the furniture and the TV monitors, all that stuff, yes, but you've also, you've just got to think about everything in there. Where are people going to sit and how's their experience and what they're viewing? Where are you going to stand or where are you going to sit, wherever it is, it's all got to be mapped out and if it is, you're going to stop screwing yourself everybody. You're going to see the conversions go up and at a higher price. Yes, even in a down economy You're going to see these things go up if you have all these in place.

Speaker 1:

But you must, must, think about all these intangibles and think experience first. And if you do, all these cool ideas what you're listening to today, but also all these other cool ideas are going to pop into your mind about what we can do to enhance the experience of our customer, our patient, or those that we want to be our customers and our patient, and it's going to do great things for you. Make sure that journey is immersive. Switch out your computer screen for a massive flat screen on your wall, ideally a smart board monitor. Rip out your outdated clinic chair. Get some immersive modern furniture in there, make it look like a modern living room and really separate yourself from the other opinions, because you're thinking people, business, hospitality and experience first, and it's going to transform your starts. Hope everybody enjoyed this one. As always, give us a nice thumbs up on YouTube. Share this with your colleagues, doctors. Share this with at least one colleague of yours. Reps out there. Please share this with your doctors and until next time. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see everybody soon.