As a top 1% Elite Provider of Invisalign, who still does all her own “clinchecks”, there is a point where you need to set up a system for managing your “clinchecks.” Through trial and error, I have figured out a few ways to manage this important aspect of our patient care.
My goal here is to give you a few strategies that you can immediately implement to help you get through your workload and still have time to play with your children, see your patients and have a life!
First strategy is to carve out 30-60 minutes in the course of your daily practice to sit unerupted and evaluate your clinchecks. Generally for most offices, the 10-12 am times slots can be the toughest to fill. This would be a great time to have your staff schedule you out of the clinic for 30-60 minutes and give you unerupted time to do your clinchecks.
You will find that as you do more and more Invisalign, your schedule may change. For example, because we have much fewer patients with braces and therefore less full bondings and debondings, our morning ( long appointments) became less needed. Now most of the week, we start seeing patients at 1 pm and work until 6 pm. This now gives me time in the morning to manage my clinchecks.
Second strategy goes along with the first, and that would be once you sit down to review your cases, set a timer for x amount of minutes. Furthermore, set goals for yourself to finish so many cases in the time you have carved out. This alone is one of the best things I have done to not get “buried” in a clincheck.
The third and final strategy is to stop obsessing over your clincheck.
I see so many doctors who are so focused on the last .25mm of movement in their first clincheck that they modify the case over and over again. This frustrates them because the case is taking longer than they planned to finalize.
They begin to wonder if all this extra time in front of the computer is worth it!
Let me ask you a few questions. How many of you are placing brackets on teeth with .25mm precision?
How many of you are placing your brackets with such perfection that you never have to reposition a bracket?
After 31 years of direct bonding, repositioning is alive and well in our practice. The bottomline is repositioning is an expected part of the process.
Do I get upset with my bonding skills because I have to reposition?
Of course not. I would prefer to get it right the first time, but that just does not happen the majority of the time.
So look at your clinchecks the same way. You do not need to get 100% of all the movements perfected in this first order of aligners. My goal is to get 80-90% of the objectives reached and I know that during the refinement stage I can gain the final 10-20%.
It is so much easier and more efficient to manage the remaining movements in refinement than to try to solve all the patient’s orthodontic problems in that first order.
When you have a large inbox of cases to set-up and manage, focusing on the more important or pressing issues first will allow you to work through your case load more efficiently and get to the approval button sooner.
So stop obsessing! Get the clincheck set-up effectively and efficiently and work within a fixed time frame to manage your schedule.
Follow these strategies and they will make your time in front of your computer more enjoyable and productive and help you manage your clinchecks with minimal stress and maximum efficiency.
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