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Embrace Progress: AAO 2016 Recap by Daniel Grob, DDS, MS, Editorial Director

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Embrace Progress Header: Organizing the Digital Office

It's that time of year again—
school activities are winding down, NBA teams have headed into the championships and businesses are gearing up for the summer.

No wonder the powers that be decided years ago to schedule the American Association of Orthodontists Annual Session during late spring, which gives us time to let the book fill up and return to an invigorated staff, a clean office, and patients ready to initiate treatment before school starts in fall. While I waited for the bus in front of the Orange County Convention Center, I thought I'd pen some thoughts on the most recent meeting before heading home to the desert and gaining three hours of time in my schedule (not to mention some dry heat!).

In my 30-something-year career in orthodontics, I've attended almost every annual session—many times solo, often with my wife, sometimes the kids and even once in a while with my entire staff. This conclave allows everyone a chance to catch up, brag, complain or generally just socialize with those who share our profession, interests and experiences. For the past several years, the bulk of the meeting has been held over the weekend, giving more people a chance to attend without losing production at the office.

Potentially disruptive orthodontic technologies such as clear aligner therapy, TADs and even advertising have been accepted and integrated into our routines. It's always good to take the pulse of the profession, and I'll summarize my thoughts according to the 3Ms of the profession—marketing, mechanics and management.

Marketing
It all starts here, and many familiar faces in the speaker roster re-emphasized the importance of customer service and exceptional patient relationships—or put another way, getting patients in the door.
  • Gabe Peralta described a patient's digital journey—his or her view of you and your practice from the first impression on the web. The steps involved in getting a patient digitally connected involve: discovering you, exploring the website, captivating with content, and converting into an exam.
  • Nancy Hyman explained a way to get the entire team involved in the marketing process (a concept that, I can speak from experience, is much more difficult that it should be).
  • Roger Levin has been a familiar name in orthodontics for at least the past 30 years, and offered to put a new face on your marketing approach. Levin emphasized that in addition to offering quality, the business model of today demands quantity—you need to get patients from a multitude of referral sources. Even if general dentists have reduced the number of patients they refer from their practices, family dentists still remain a primary and important source of referrals. Levin stressed the importance of the relationship between any referral source and the orthodontic practice.

Orthotown booth at 2016's AAO Showcase The Orthotown booth was front and not-quite-center at this year's AAO Showcase in the exhibitors area of the Orange County Convention Center. (Did you stop by and sample the freshly made doughnuts?)



Mechanics
Our specialty started with mechanics, and most of our time is still spent "putting plaster on the table." At this meeting, many common and sometimes unpleasant topics were addressed.
  • Hugo Travesi reintroduced a topic I encountered by accident, and through experimentation had good success. Those of us familiar with the second-molar debates of the '80s, popularized by John Witzig, are aware of the negative connotations of this controversial extraction protocol. However, with a thorough evaluation and plan, this idea has merit in select cases. Travesi described some amazing results.
  • failure of eruption (PFE). Anyone who works in the profession for a while will certainly come into contact with this unpleasant patient complication. Unfortunately, it appears from research and personal experience that only after orthodontic forces are applied can one make the certain diagnosis of ankyloses or PFE, which of course means informed consent is ever more important.
  • Early treatment has always been a hot topic, with many clinicians either embracing it wholeheartedly or avoiding the subject entirely. In my opinion, early treatment has been replaced with airway and sleep apnea identification in youngsters. These require early evaluation to justify, in some cases, early orthodontic intervention.
  • The number of adults seeking orthodontic care continues to increase, but these patients don't want their lifestyles adversely affected … especially since most of them have already undergone treatment. Accelerated treatment was reviewed by Krishnaswamy Nathamuni, who validated the concept and outlined the various types of surgical interventions and their effects on treatment.
  • Jae Park, the program director at our own orthodontic residency program in Arizona, displayed some amazing results with TADs, yielding unbelievable skeletal correction.
  • Self-ligating appliances were everywhere on the convention floor. Correct me if I'm wrong, but now that the big players have lessened their marketing approach, is it possible that more players are getting into the game? From the sales floor to the discussions in the hallways, it seems the rush to self-ligating seems to have subsided a bit.
Management
Successful management involves working with other professionals and team members.
  • Ken Alexander, a long-standing advocate for the profession, spoke about doctor schedules. In this busy world, the importance of getting patients in and out of the office efficiently cannot be stressed enough. If done properly, scheduling can enable the doctor to move from chair to chair with nary a wasted minute or unattended patient.
  • Andrea Cook addressed the group with a topic lifted from the title of the best-selling self-help book, Good to Great. Cook emphasized the importance of customer service and drawing on all available resources, including sales reps, colleagues, consultants and study groups. She focused on systematizing the office with lists, procedures and scripts, and breaking down tasks into time segments such as daily, weekly and monthly. Certainly great advice for those still operating in "crisis mode."
  • Rosemary Bray stressed the importance of teamwork, using the backdrop of the Disney experience to emphasize hiring, working with and respecting all team members involved in patient care.
  • And finally, you know that I've preached and reminded readers that starting an orthodontic practice with the end in mind is as important as having the best business plan. Four well-known consultants—Roger Hill, Scott McDonald, Eric Ploumis and (again!) Ken Alexander—spelled out their particular themes for realizing the dream by allowing a smooth transition to the next-generation orthodontist.
These were just a few of the speakers and topics addressed at this year's annual session. The good news is that if you weren't able to attend all the meetings, the AAO has made them available online and on DVD. (We at Orthotown also regularly feature many of these speakers in our monthly print and digital magazines, and we encourage you to look for them in the future.)

Excuse me, what did you say? The bus only runs in the morning and the evening? I'll have to talk to the AAO meeting planners about that!



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