It is critical that potential patients walking into your orthodontic practice become starts. The treatment coordinator (TC) must be completely focused on those prospective patients and parents. These patients have to be carefully handled when their parents call, when they enter the office, and finally, when treatment is accepted. The growth of your practice depends on it.

The TC must be the best friend of new patients or parents as soon as they arrive. He or she should be totally focused and uninterrupted, with nothing to do but concentrate on that patient. In essence, the TC becomes the patients’ personal advisor while in the practice. The TC gets to know them, builds a relationship, fosters patient education and motivation, explains to the orthodontist who these patients are, and details what each patient might need.

The TC has to be the best communicator in the orthodontic practice—even better than the orthodontist. With an excellent TC in place, practices will have impressive numbers of starts and new patients, independent of the doctor’s communication skill level.

How do they do it? With a TC who looks and sounds incredibly positive, can talk to any kind of patient or parent, can relate to different kinds of people, and can work effectively with the whole staff. The best TCs are happy, love life, and enjoy getting to know patients in the practice.

The TC is the center of the orthodontic practice. This individual has to be able to work easily with everyone to increase the number of new patient starts while maintaining efficiency and lowing stress. The right person can help an orthodontic practice to grow exponentially.

—Roger P. Levin, DDS