Day 16 - Telephone Interviews

I had a bit of a role reversal this morning. Instead of working with the dentists in the back office or standing over their shoulders observing, I was in the patient chair.

I have two dental implants that have been in my mouth for about 4 years. Not only do they look and feel like real teeth, but there are many advantages associared with them such as being easy to keep clean and allowing me to bite down on ice cream with my two front teeth. Yesterday, I noticed that there was a gap between one of the implants and the front tooth adjacent to it. This was concerning to me because it could have meant that the crown had become loose or, even worse, the implant post was no longer in place.

Dr. Wilkinson, the prosthodontist in the clinic, agreed to look at my tooth this morning. Fortunately, it appears as if my problem is due to me biting too hard on my front teeth which has caused them to shift a bit - nothing a night retainer can't fix! My "diagnosis" lead to an interesting conversation in the office about the use of braces and retainers at such an early age. Studies seem to show that the lower jaw grows until adults reach the age of 20-23 which essentially will cancel out any orthodontic work done when you were 13 or 15. Interesting debate.

Later in the morning I finally began to administer my telephone survey. Initially I ran into some trouble because many of the phone numbers I was using to call patients were out of service or wrong numbers. After about a half an hour of frustration I began to change my approach. On Eaglesoft, the scheduling software, there is a number that is listed on the patient's appointment block that is the number the patient called in on to schedule an appointment or that the front office used to call the patient to confirm the appointment. This number often does not match up with the number that is listed for the patient if you simply search for their general chart. As a result, I discovered a disconnect between the information in the patient chart and the information listed on each individual appointment block. Dr. Hort and I discussed this problem and we are going to propose that SEARHC start to give dentists chair-side access to edit Eaglesoft so that they can ask patients for their most up to date information and change home, cell, or work numbers in the general patient chart. This will make phone numbers easier to access for all.

After this discovery, it was very easy to get a hold of the missed appointment patients. I was surprised at how many people actually agreed to take the survey. The survey lasts about 5 minutes, but many patients took the time to react after each question and leave lots of comments (both positive and negative) at the end. Some patients spent almost 15 minutes with me on the phone discussing their jobs, their families, and how dentistry is often an afterthought.

I left work a little early because I had to take the Ray family to the airport. After I dropped them off I drove to Fred Meyer to do some grocery shopping. It was great going down the aisles knowing that there were things I could now buy because I had a fully stocked kitchen with lots of things to cook with. I came home and made some pasta (I forgot that Lean Cuisine pasta wasn't so good after all!) and spent some time with the dog. Sky woke me up at about 6:30 this morning so I am about to head off to bed so I get can a good night of rest (that is, I am anticipating another 6:30 wakeup call).

I'll reflect more on the survey tomorrow and hopefully be able to add some actual comments from some of the patients. That should add a really interesting perspective.

Until tomorrow...