Generic Dental Referral: Fill & Download for Free

I am not sure where you are, but I would hate to be in a place where you have to resort to heavy advertising or even consider the question of how do I separate myself from the competition.Short of changing your name to Dr. Aardvark or Zzzz Sleep Dentistry, what do you do?I have always found that word of mouth is the best advertising. Do right by your patients and when they trust you, they will do right by you in referring people to you. This only comes when you spend quality time with them.Ask yourself who do your patients come to see? What keeps them coming? In most cases it is the dental hygienist because you barely spend any time with them on recall.Invest the time with them to do a full recall exam. If you are doing a complete exam, actually do one as opposed to the half-assed one that a lot of dentists do.Let me also give you a bit of advice on referral.There are some that believe you cannot let a patient leave the practice even for specialist care and that it is better to have someone in the practice who can do all endo, all third molars, implants etc.Bullshit. If you link a patient with the best care in a timely manner they will thank you for being the quarterback of their care. In most cases that is not you, it is a specialist. By developing relationships with specialists, that can gain you referrals from them when people ask for a GP referral.As for advertising:There is nothing worse than seeing billboards or bus adverts for someone's dental clinic.I suppose you could be like some on Quora who pretend to answer questions by dropping in generic boilerplate advice followed by links to their website or providing their addresses and phone numbers.But let me be the first to say: don’t do this because it looks bush league and is unprofessional.I am old school in this respect. Don’t get me wrong I fully understand the benefit of using websites and social media to engage patients. But that is to keep your existing patients engaged.Patients will rate you. Check out Rate my MD and the dentist reviews. If you piss them off, they will post it. If you are good to them, they will post that too. But be careful of what you wish for from the internet and social media.Treat each patient like the world stops and they are the only and most important thing to you for whatever time you have booked with them.

Several of my friends who live in Washington and Oregon routinely brought their elderly parents here to get their prescription drugs. Even after taking into account the doctor’s visit, gas, hotel and meals for a few days, they saved a bundle, and that was back when the US and Canadian dollars were roughly equivalent. Now, of course, it’d be an even better deal.If I lived in the US within a few hours of the border, I’d definitely come to Canada for all of my uninsured, non-emergency medical and dental needs. I don’t have stats on how many USans do this, but probably not a great many, if only because few USans are aware that they can. A USan friend living about half an hour south of the border was thoroughly convinced that it would be illegal before I set her straight!If anyone reading this is thinking of coming to Canada for medical or dental care, here are some pointers:Bring any relevant medical records! You don’t want to pay for diagnostic tests you don’t need in order to get the prescription you do, and no doc here is going to prescribe you, say, insulin, without establishing that you actually need it. Once you’ve got a file, your USan doc can copy your Canadian doc on anything relevant.You can’t just ring up a specialist and make an appointment - you must be referred by a GP (or another specialist). If you don’t see your specialist for more than six months, you need a new referral.Go to a walk-in clinic, preferably one near a university - they’re most accustomed to handling out-of-pocket payments. Walk-in clinics are not inferior to solo practices; they are typically owned by one or several doctors who practice there, and you can choose whom to see. I’ve been going to a walk-in clinic, and seeing the same GP there, for over 20 years. It’s a little annoying that I can’t make an appointment after all this time, but it’s not a big deal.If you’re coming for prescription drugs, be sure you know what and how much you can take back to the States. Also, always ask the prescribing doctor for generic equivalents, if they’re available; many more are available in Canada than in the US, and they are far less expensive than name brands.If anyone has questions of a general nature, I’m happy to answer to the best of my ability, but I’m not a doctor, so won’t be able to answer anything super specific.

I seem to be in the minority but, as a European in the US, I love the US system. In the UK we have the NHS, which everyone holds dearly because it’s free, but there are a few caveats:My insurance in the US is cheaper than the deductions that are there to keep the NHS ‘free’For $20 I can see a doctor in the same hour, whereas it would take 10–14 days to see a doctor in the UKI can see a specialist when I want to in the US. The UK system involves a series of referrals. An eye condition I have usually meant around 5 weeks to be seen by a specialist in the UK, now it’s the same dayPrescriptions are cheaper with most generics being anywhere from free–$4, and the lack of restriction where NHS doctors are forced to dish out heavy painkillers rather than something to tackle an issueDental and vision costs tend to be cheaper in the US unless you require surgeryPreventative care doesn’t exist in the UK, care is reactionary and not quick enough. Survival rates of heart disease (10%) and cancer (15%) are lower in the UK as a resultThe American system is also ‘better safe than sorry’. They’d rather run every test and be certain, that just take a stab in the dark and hope for the best - I lost my father to the latter approach when a doctor assumed a lung tumor was asthma and chose not to order any lab work before it spreadThe US uses advanced care nurses and physician’s assistants at the appropriate times, where the UK holds nurses back (and criminally underpays them while doing so), leaving more strain on doctorsMental health care is virtually nonexistent in the UK