Business – Page 2

April 18, 2016 By Dr. Susan Wood Leave a Comment

What Sets Our Endodontic Office Apart?

The entire team at Phoenix Endodontic Group has a keen awareness that we are here to provide gentle and individualized care to all patients entrusted to us by our referring doctors or that have sought us out on their own. There are many endodontic specialists in the Valley, and we realize that we must always “be at our best” relative to patient care.

Understanding what patients are seeking when they come to our office helps us be able to define what sets us apart from other endodontic specialists.

Patients want to be treated with the state of the art equipment – Phoenix Endodontic Group consistently makes investments in technology and training to be able to deliver the best in modern endodontic therapy to our patients.
Patients want their endodontist to listen to their concerns and fully answer their questions relative to treatment options – Phoenix Endodontic Group is the only endodontic practice in the Phoenix/Paradise Valley area with all-female practitioners. Dr. Jacqueline Allen and I have many years of experience and training treating patients with endodontic pain. We take our time with consultations and develop a treatment plan with the patients best interests in mind.
Patients need access to care when they are experiencing pain and discomfort. No one can predict when the need for a root canal will arise. Phoenix Endodontic Group has two conveniently located offices that are open Monday – Friday from 7:00am – 5:00pm on most days.

At Phoenix Endodontic Group we live by a simple rule – Treat our patients the way we wish to be treated when we receive care. Living by this rule has help to make us one of the top endodontic specialty offices in the Phoenix/Paradise Valley area.

July 21, 2014 By Dr. Jacqueline S. Allen Leave a Comment

How To Marketing For The Speciality Dental Office In The Summer

Over the years, marketing strategies for a dental office have changed. There are some many different variables which affect the type of marketing, how much you spend, how you target patients, etc. The focus of this article will be on marketing for dental specialists (Perio, Endo, Oral Surgery, Pedo & Ortho). Because we are now in the throes of another hot summer in Central Arizona, we will focus on what marketing efforts to focus on in the summer months.

Phoenix Endodontic Group like many other dental specialists receive a significant portion of their patients from direct referrals from other dental offices and therefore the strategy all year round is to recognize which offices are sending you patients and which offices have the potential to do so. Staff should be aware and trained that every interaction with a referring office is an “opportunity” or “touch point.”

Some touch points are small, i.e a simple phone call to set up an appointment for the patient to go back to see the general dentist once treatment is completed. Some touch points are planned out as a Thank You to the office and a delivery of fresh baked goods for the staff to know how much their referrals mean to the specialist. These are marketing activities that should take place all year long, to keep all referring offices on the “radar screen” of the dental specialist.

In general terms, the flow of patients slows down in the Arizona summer. The snowbirds fly back to Minnesota, Iowa and the like and dentists with young families schedule summer activities with their families. Phoenix Endodontic Group has always found the 3^rd quarter (summer) to be slower than the rest of the year. A good time to catch your breath, relax and slow down, right? Wrong! This should be the time of year when you go at the marketing as hard as you can.

If the third quarter is slower than others in a specialty dental office that means you will have staff with less tasks to do than normal. We say put them to work reaching out to your referral base. Everyone has different interpersonal skills. Send staff to meet and greet staff at your referral offices, that is a good way to spend any down time. Staff can also help produce marketing pieces and information to email to referring offices with something as simple as your summer hours or other important information.

We advocate using the summer to solidify your current relationships with offices that you might be taking for granted but are being wooed constantly by other specialty offices. Don’t let your office be a victim of “out of sight, out of mind.” A personal visit from your office to your top 20 referring offices during the summer months is a must.

April 14, 2014 By Dr. Jacqueline S. Allen Leave a Comment

Phoenix Endodontic Group Benefits Big with a Simple Secure VDI Environment

The premier dental practice instated thin clients to create a secure VDI environment protecting patient files at an affordable cost for their small healthcare service. In the healthcare industry protecting patient data is the key and setting up a secure VDI environment with thin clients was the best, yet affordable solution.

Customer Overview

The Phoenix Endodontics Group is a premier endodontic specialty dental practice started in 2001. It is a relatively small practice consisting of three endodontists and is located in Phoenix and the Paradise Valley areas in Arizona. The practice has approximately 15 employees.

Challenge:

The Phoenix Endodontic Group had a mixed environment of Dell thin clients and traditional desktops. The devices connected to Citrix VDI environment with Windows 7 operating capabilities. The practice found that their current Dell thin clients were not properly redirecting USB image sensors to the patients’ dental electronic medical records and needed a solution.

Additionally, the Phoenix Endodontic Group found inconsistencies and technical problems similar to the issues they were facing with their Dell thin client devices with their traditional desktop units located in their front desk and administrative areas. These errors often occurred with USB based devices, scanners, and cameras.

Solution:

Facing the challenges above, the Phoenix Endodontic Group contacted a Devon IT integration partner in the Phoenix area, Phoenix PC Networking, who specializes in IT solutions for small and medium size companies.

Through Phoenix PC Networking, they purchased 10 Acer Veriton N2010G units running with DeTOS a Linux based thin client OS. They also re-imaged four of their Dell PC’s using Devon IT’s VDI Blaster software. The purchase of the 10 thin clients was used to solve the USB redirect challenge, and to allow the practice’s USB image sensors to communicate wirelessly with electronic patient medical records. This communication enabled the staff to pull patient images, send snapshots of images in real time, and maintain the records.

The purchase of Devon IT’s VDI Blaster software was then used to re-image four Dell PC’s located in the front desk area and in other administrative locations. This would allow for more efficient and reliable use of the daily USB devices used by the staff, increase over all security when dealing with confidential patient records, and create a user friendly environment for all current and future incoming staff.

Results and Benefits

Initial Results.

The 10 new Acer Veriton thin clients and re-imaged Dell PCs with VDI Blaster proved to be a perfect and cost effective solution for this small-sized medical-service provider. The Acer Veriton N 2010G with DeTOS eliminated the issue of USB redirect of patient information to their respective electronic medical records. The practitioners and other dental staff were able to successfully and wirelessly transmit patient information securely from medical devices to the patients’ electronic medical records.

Additionally, the Phoenix Endodontic Group found that the original inconsistencies and technical problems with the four Dell desktop units were also eliminated thanks to re-imaging with Devon IT’s VDI Blaster. The front desk and other administrative staff were able to use all USB devices with ease and securely handle sensitive patient documents with no additional training required.

The staff at Phoenix Endodontics benefited greatly from the simple VDI environment of the Acer thin clients that mirrors traditional PCs, which resulted in 0 time-lost due to staff training on the new devices.

Conclusion

The Phoenix Endodontic Group offered a perfect opportunity to highlight the benefits of alternative desktop computing for a small medical service provider in the healthcare industry.

“The healthcare industry can be a tedious place for technology with all of the privacy regulations and continued demand for increase security of patient documents,” said James T. Snodgrass, Phoenix PC Networking’s assigned integrator for the Phoenix Endodontic Group transition. “The Acer Veriton N2010G units and VDI Blaster repurposed PC’s gave our client the required technology updates that were sought when Phoenix Endodontics contacted us, and it also provided them with the increased security that is demanded in this industry.”

February 3, 2014 By Dr. Jacqueline S. Allen Leave a Comment

Social Media and Your Dental Marketing Plan

Back in the day, doctors and dentists were taught to believe that any form of advertising was bad, it seemed unethical to “chase” clients. If a dentist had a marketing plan, it was “building a referral base”. But word of mouth is one of the hardest plans to control, and word of mouth takes time–it is never a fast process and the results are difficult to measure.

What is necessary for a successful marketing plan? “Social media is absolutely necessary in today’s market,” says Dr. Jacqueline Allen, whose endodontic practice started small and has grown as he acquired a total of 3 practices over the last 12 years.

Print isn’t really the medium of choice anymore. Once upon a time, a listing in the phone book was the first advertising medium a dental practice purchased. Today, web-based media is vital: Google, Google +, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In and consumer-driven sites like Yelp. Social media is the common denominator among patients seeking medical providers. In today’s market, using social media is a matter of survival. Even the well-respected Mayo Clinic has a social media discussion page.

How do you know what to say on social networks? “Look at your audience,” says Dr. Allen. “If your patients are largely older people, the comfort of your patient reception are is important. Our elderly patients often will have a friend or spouse drive them to their appointment, the driver waits in our office until the procedure is done. Uncomfortable chairs spells unhappy patients, and that can mean a reluctance to show up,” she adds.

Letting your potential patients know your office is comfortable can be achieved by putting photos on your website, but it’s a lot more effective to put those same photos on a Facebook page, which is seen by a wider audience. A Facebook page also gives you a chance to say something about the comfort and why you chose the chairs. Explaining the choice of chairs moves the idea from feature (a characteristic of your office) to a benefit (something that makes your patients feel cared for). Showing your potential patients that their comfort is important to you says a lot about your philosophy of caring and will creative a positive opinion about you as a dentist.

Marketing yourself and your office is both a science and an art, and every dental marketing plan should include social media.

January 21, 2014 By Dr. Jacqueline S. Allen Leave a Comment

Creating a Dental Marketing Plan

dental_marketing_plan Do you have a marketing plan for your dental office? A dental marketing plan, a guide for the next year, is vital to your success. If your plan is not in place, now is a good time to start.

“Start with clear goals,” says Dr. Jacqueline Allen, from her Phoenix endodontic practice. “I like the SMART goal idea goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely,” she says. “A vague marketing plan, one that isn’t targeted to your specific skills and patients is one that can’t be realized,” Dr. Allen adds.

Specific means short and clear. Not “I want more patients,” but “I want to attract 20 new patients in the next three months.”

Measurable means you can figure out a simple, clear way to see if you are meeting your goals. A good method is one that measures change over time in quantitative (rather than qualitative) ways. There is nothing wrong with thinking, “I want to be a better dentist,” but if you don’t have a way to measure it, you don’t know if you are succeeding.

Achievable means you know you can reach your goal, even if you are not sure how you will do it just yet. Achievable also means the goal is right for your practice and achievable within a realistic time frame.

Relevant means the goal contributes to the overall well-being of your office and life. You might always have wanted to have a 100-gallon salt-water aquarium, but that doesn’t mean it will be a satisfying addition to the bottom line of your office.

Timely means setting a deadline, and taking action to meet it. All parts of your plan are focused on meeting that deadline.

Choosing goals means letting go of some ideas and focusing on others. The right ones will make the difference to your dental marketing plan and your future.

January 10, 2014 By Dr. Jacqueline S. Allen Leave a Comment

Welcome to 2014

We would like to take a moment and wish all of our patients and referring doctors a Happy New Year. It is our wish that all of you are prosperous and successful in 2014. 2013 was a very eventful for the Allen Endodontic Group, we saw our practice grow and develop in many positive ways.

The continued success of our practice, along with changes in way patients today communicate and search for their healthcare provider have brought our practice to a “fork in the road.” Over the next few months, you will gradually see our brand (market) name change from “Allen Endodontic Group” to “Phoenix Endodontic Group“.

As mentioned, the evolution to the new brand name better aligns our practice with the needs and demands of the patients and referring doctors we serve. Our two locations in Phoenix and Paradise Valley, AZ give us a unique approach to serving these needs and we want to make it easier for people who are seeking the finest endodontic care available to find us.

Phoenix_endodontist

Please be assured that NOTHING else about our practice has changed. Allen Endodontic Group was founded by Jacqueline S. Allen, D.D.S., M.S. in 2001, she remains the sole owner and primary endodontist in the practice. Since the beginning, Dr. Allen has focused on providing the finest quality treatment for patients and referring doctors alike. This focus will continue and will be stronger than ever.
Recent changes to the healthcare industry in the United States make it more obvious than ever that the need for high quality, patient focused providers will be greater than ever. While consumers are braced to accept a more “clinic” and impersonal approach to their healthcare needs, Allen Endodontic Group is determined to not fall into that trap and always be a cut above when it comes to the care we provide.

Please accept our thanks for all that you have contributed to our past success and join us as we will be known as Phoenix Endodontic Group.

Dr. Jacqueline S. Allen

September 13, 2012 By Dr. Jacqueline S. Allen Leave a Comment

Business Survival 101

Don’t just survive, THRIVE!

Stocks are falling, gas prices are rising and small businesses are closing. It’s a grim outlook on the current state of the economy with an election looming and uncertainty lingering in the air. Don’t become a statistic. Discover how you can ensure your small business will survive the economic recession.

[Read more…]

What Sets Our Endodontic Office Apart?

How To Marketing For The Speciality Dental Office In The Summer

Phoenix Endodontic Group Benefits Big with a Simple Secure VDI Environment

Customer Overview

Creating a Dental Marketing Plan

Welcome to 2014

Business Survival 101

Don’t just survive, THRIVE!

Connect on Facebook

Instagram Feed

phxendo

Recent Blog Posts

Partner/Links

Customer Overview

Don’t just survive, THRIVE!

Welcome to our Blog

Connect on Facebook

Instagram Feed

phxendo

Recent Blog Posts

Partner/Links