(800) 560-6066When you have the tools to perform your dental work efficiently, your team can do more work in one-sitting in the same amount of time. In this piece, we’ll explain how Isolite® provides clinicians with the opportunity to gain more revenue when doing sealants.
Watch this video to learn how the Isolite System helps you:
- Dual-quadrant access allows you to work in multiple quadrants at once.
- Keep your patients feeling relaxed and comfortable.
- Simplify your procedures. No more cotton rolls and dry angles.
Transcription:
Rolando Mia: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Dr. Tom’s Tips, Case of the Week. My name is Rolando and this is Zyris.
This week we have a cool procedure. We’ve been asked a bunch of times about how to utilize Isolite® more effectively in hygiene. This week Dr. Hirsch is going to take us through how he does his sealants.
Dr. Tom Hirsch, DDS: Good morning, everybody out there.
Today, we’re going to talk about what one of my favorite procedures. It’s probably one of the most profitable procedures I can do in all of dentistry is this simplest procedure: dental sealants.
I’m going to show you how we utilize the Isolite in dental sealants, and how it just becomes an incredibly wonderful profit source for the practice.
So, this was a 14-year-old patient. All the first molars all have sticky occlusal pits on these and whether you elect to do preventative resin restorations or air breathe the grooves or however you want to do it. You know, that’s up to you this one, I think we did not do any air abrasion on this. We just cleaned out the pits.
So, you can see the running clock that’s going on down there. What I’m doing is I’m doing all the posterior molars today. I’m matching maxillary and mandibular posterior molars all at the same time.
We’re maybe, a minute into the procedure right now and you can see what we’ve got going there. What you don’t see in the mouth is that there are no cotton rolls, no anesthetic, no other evacuation, and the mouth is dry. That’s the key to doing sealants is keeping their mouth dry.
So, we’ve got the edge on there, my assistant took it totally hands free. I’m counting down the time. Now, we wash it off and you can just see how everything gets evacuated right up, all the acid is off, they’re not on the cheek.
We dry them and once again, the key to successful sealants is drying them. You can see right where we’re at on the clock. Two minutes and five seconds. We clean those things for 10 seconds each, we put the shields on top. You can’t see it. It The Delta that I found just it lasts, I mean I have sealants are coming back 10,15, 20 years later, and they’re still in place because they’re stained right now.
One of the key factors when you’re doing this is when you change sides, make sure you tell the patient don’t close because the sealant material tastes really awful. So I tell them, “Make sure they stay open.” That way they don’t have to close down and swish out and rinse your mouth out at all.
Here we are on to the left-hand side. These profit centers can be at the end of your hygiene appointment. My hygienists do a lot of sealants, I just happened to do this in this particular video.
At the end of the hygiene procedure, look at the clock, four minutes, and we’re on to the other side at the end of the hygiene procedure. You know, the hygienist says identify some sticky spots in the teeth and you’ve gone in and diagnose that they need some sealants. Have your treatment coordinator go out and talk to them and say, “Look, we’ve got a few more minutes and we can do, we can do one sealant, two sealants, three sealants, four sealants whatever it happens to be right now while you wait and that way you don’t have to bring your child back.” No parent really wants to bring their kid back for another appointment. It takes them a lot of time out of the schedule to do that.
So now, let’s say at an average of $50 a sealant maybe higher in some areas lower in some areas. Let’s say you just went in and you did one sealant at the end of a hygiene procedure. You take that hygiene procedure maybe as $100 cleaning for the kid and now you just made it $150. I mean, you’ve just got an increase the $50 value.
Yes, stop that one right there. So, you’ve just increased your value and your profit center by 50% on that one day. I mean I can go on and on the economics of this. However, what I want to do right here is I just wanted to show you the difference between doing a sealant or sealants with Isolite or without the Isolite.
So, running them side by side, you can see how without system my assistant has to be in there evacuating the tongue is in the way, I’ve got cotton rolls, I got a mouth here, and I’ve got a high-speed evacuator. I just don’t have enough hands to do everything. Now, I’m worried about the tongue getting on top of that thing.
Of course, we had the same patient so we did go in there and do it again a second time, but we just kind of simulated how it would be. It’s just easier with Isolite I mean, it’s just so much easier and less frustrating. Time savings and sealants alone probably 50%-time savings just in doing them.
Rolando Mia: And I noticed the mirror is clean.
Dr. Tom Hirsch, DDS: Oh, yeah. No fog. There’s no fog on my mirror. Thanks for pointing that out. No fog on my mirror, no extra hands, makes life easy.
Rolando Mia: That is awesome.
You mentioned, during your procedures, sometimes at the end of your procedures when you’re doing a restorative case, sealants. What was the context around that, Dr. Tom?
Dr. Tom Hirsch, DDS: Well, the context around that was, if you have in hygiene, most of us treat kids, but you have a child in hygiene, and I think my fee for hygiene cleaning for a child is about $100 in my area here. My fee for a sealant is higher. $75 for a sealant in my area. So, let’s say the child comes in, gets their teeth cleaned and let’s say they’re doing cleaning and some bitewing x-rays. So, now we’ve got the cleaning in the bitewings. Let’s say that’s a $200 procedure for cleanings and bitewings different prices in different areas. Okay, that’s what my hygienist made that in that appointment and a half an hour, 45 minutes for the kid.
Now, let’s say that we got four sealants that can be done at the same time. And let’s say the sealants just averaged out at $50 a sealant, now you’ve done 4 teeth, you just doubled your fee from $200 to $400, in the same amount of time is an add on benefit. If you did that once a week, you could do the math.
If you did the $200 increase value once a week and hygiene 200 times 52 that’s $10,000 more a year that for just one procedure on one patient, I mean, the economic benefit is just huge. And the cost is so minimal. Maybe a sealant cost you 25 cents to do 50 cents of materials, maybe a buck, it’s just nothing. It’s nothing at all, it’s probably one of the most highly profitable procedures in your entire practice.
So, if you gave me one procedure that I was going to do the rest of my life, no muss, no fuss, I’d be a sealant king.
Rolando Mia: You also mentioned before that when you’re doing a restorative case with your some of your adult patients, because you’re already there, you’ll just go ahead and throw it in, right?
Dr. Tom Hirsch, DDS: Not so much there, Rolando. But oftentimes, you know, sometimes you’re doing two sealants or four sealants, or and you’re looking at the bicuspids and they’re kind of borderline, but they can be done also. Do the bicuspids, too. Do it at no additional cost. That way you go out and tell the mom that the parents say, look, you know, “I’m gonna throw some sealants in for free here and just because your kid was so good, and I value you as a patient so much, I just really want to do this.” It’s great goodwill. I mean, I’ll let you decide what you want to do and how you want to do it but the goodwill generator, giving something at no additional charge, it’s not for free.
Rolando Mia: Awesome. Thank you so much Dr. Hirsh.
