When opening an orthodontist office, your main concern should be your patients.  Making your office environment friendly and welcoming is a must.  Patients who feel comfortable will have a more enjoyable experience and be more likely to return as well as to recommend you to their friends and associates.  In many areas of your patients’ lives today they will find ready entertainment.  For instance, satellite TV for restaurants, Wi-Fi ready hotspots, hand held smart phones that allow them to take entertainment with them, as well as other waiting time entertainment options.

When starting your practice, of course, the priority at your office should be showing that you have the knowledge, skill, and training to take proper care of their orthodontic health.  Once you have established your training and skill as a provider; patients also want to feel that you care about them, and more importantly about their time.

Showing your patients that you care about their time can be done in several ways:

• Hiring an office staff members who are friendly and courteous
• Understanding the value of their time by meeting set appointments on schedule
• Providing an enjoyable experience while in the waiting area

Your office staff will be the first impression of your office.  From the person answering the phone and scheduling the appointment to that first friendly face they see as they walk through the door.  If you have a staff of knowledgeable and friendly people your patients will feel more confident in your practice.  A friendly greeting as a patient enters the door to the office goes a long way in helping them feel reassured and comfortable.

Once you have that caring friendly staff, your priority needs to be creating an enjoyable waiting experience.  The waiting experience is almost as important as the orthodontic care your patient will receive.  We all know that no one enjoys waiting.  You should first of all run your practice in such a way as to minimize wait times.  If a patient enters your office and has a minimal wait time, they are sure to return and to spread the good word.

Though you have minimized the wait, some time spent in the waiting room may be inevitiable.  That is why it is important to provide ample entertainment options for your patients when they do have to wait.  A few suggestions are:

• Magazines – Subscribe to magazines and/or newspapers from various genres so as to offer variety.  By providing different options you are enabling your patients access to items that will interest them.
• Television – There are options such as videos, or TV from DISH Network as an option for your waiting rooms as well as in your individual patient rooms.  Dish Network provides programming options to meet individual preferences.
• Wi-Fi – Many patients will have their own smart phones that are Wi-Fi ready and allow them access to their own applications and programs.  Make their wait enjoyable by providing this option for them.

Making your patients’ experience in your office a pleasant one will bring you repeat and referral business.

The price of good teeth

Your dentist may be telling you that you are in need of an orthodontist and this may leave your mind blank or might bring up vague images of wire braces from friends in your teenage years. The simple answer is that orthodontia is the specialty in dental medicine that deals with the straightening and correcting of the misalignments of the teeth. This can include crooked teeth, crowded teeth, teeth that have too much space between them or irregular bites (such as an over bite or under bite). While orthodontic care is more common in the adolescent years there are many adults that find themselves in need either because their concerns with not caught in the past or because the recent events have caused changes to the alignment of teeth, such as the crowding possible due to impacted wisdom teeth or external trauma to the mouth.

Wire dental brace are still the most common form of braces used in the orthodontic field. Over the years these braces have been vastly improved and while there is an increased measure of care involved with them they are not the hassle that they may have been twenty or even ten years ago. These braces offer a wide range of colors and are still considered to be the best and most accurate way to correct the misalignment of teeth. Other options include Invasalign, which is a clear plastic aligner that is fitted for the specific abnormalities of your mouth. New aligners a created with minor adjustments to gently direct the correction of abnormalities. While these aligners can be effective they do require more care and have proven to be unsuitable for a number of patients. Another dental treatment in this field is known as Suresmile and is 3-D imaging services that includes the aid of a robot and is said to significant shorten the time required for straightening teeth.

An orthodontic professional can also recommend the use of additional removable straightening and corrective appliances such as expansion appliances, headgear and a wide range of other corrective devices. One of the most common of these continued aligning appliances is that of the retainer, a device that is fitted to your specific palate and then used, generally at night, to either continue alignment or to keep previous orthodontic alignments in place. Retainers are common amongst those that have worn braces in the past.

Unfortunately, many dental insurance plans consider the more common aspects of orthodontia, such as braces, to be cosmetic concerns and may only offer partial to no coverage for orthodontic visits and procedures. The exception to this rule includes teeth that are so crooked or misaligned as to cause health concerns such as jutting teeth that cause contusions or severe cutting to the lips or the inside of the mouth or orthodontic measures required after severe trauma to the mouth or jaw after such events as car accidents or physical assaults. Often dental insurance agencies will require written consent of such needs from a medical professional.

Luckily, most orthodontic offices are more than willing to work with you outside of your dental insurance coverage by offering discounts and reasonable payment plans. While aligning teeth may still be considered a cosmetic dental measure the truth is that many have felt the need to have their teeth corrected and it is not a vain or unnecessary step as far as thousands of people are concerned. Your smile is a big part of how you are seen by those around you and it makes complete sense that those with severe misalignments seek to have them corrected. It is important to get recommendations from friends and to research potential orthodontic practices thoroughly before devoting any money to one. A proper orthodontist will be willing to go through your specific needs step by step and will not recommend unnecessary procedures just to pad his or her own bank account. A reputable office will offer reasonable discounts and payment plans. Beware of offices that offer too good to be true prices as they will normally have some way of taking advantage of you hiding in the fine print. Overall, pay attention to your own intuition. You should be able to tell when you are being “sold” instead of assisted.

Getting braces can feel a bit overwhelming at first, especially when you’re not sure what you can and can’t eat. Will you have to live on baby food and soup for two years? Of course not, but there are some general rules and guidelines that you will need to follow in order to prevent damage to your braces and to keep your teeth healthy.

It doesn’t take much force to remove or “break” the braces off your teeth. The cement used to fasten the brackets to your teeth is designed to come off easily. You wouldn’t want the orthodontist to have to use a jackhammer to get your braces off! But that means that any heavy force can cause damage to your braces, which can in turn extend the treatment time.

Hard, crunchy foods can easily break off brackets; sticky foods can loosen brackets and bend or distort wires, as well as stay on your teeth and braces for a long time, increasing risk of decay. Use good judgment—avoid anything hard or sticky.

Here is a partial list of “NO” foods:

Hard Foods

• Ice (not exactly a food but absolutely destructive to your braces and your teeth)
• Popcorn
• Nuts, peanut brittle
• Hard candy
• Hard or extra crunchy chips
• Candied apples (which are also sticky!)
• Hard breads (pizza crust, bagels, hard pretzels)

Sticky Foods

• Gum
• Fruit Roll-ups
• Gummy bears
• Taffy and Caramels
• Starburst
• Bit-O-Honeys
• Skittles
• Milk Duds

Hmmm… notice that all the sticky foods are candy? All candy can pretty much be classified as hard or sticky, if not BOTH! Do your teeth a favor and step away from the candy!

Use Caution

• Fruits and Vegetables: Whole, raw fruits and vegetables such as apples, celery and carrots should be sliced and eaten carefully. Corn on the cob should be sliced off.
• Grains: Hard crusty breads should be broken and eaten in small pieces; avoid small seeds and unground whole grains.
• Meats: Be careful with stringy or tough cuts of meat; do not eat meat right off the bone (ribs, chicken wings); cut meat into small, bite-sized pieces.

When your teeth hurt, or when you just can’t think of anything that isn’t forbidden to eat, here are some nice safe choices for you:

• Yogurt
• Soft cheeses, such as brie, cottage cheese, or thinly sliced Swiss, cheddar, etc.
• Milk or chocolate milk
• Custard or pudding
• Soft, smooth-textured bread
• Muffins without nuts or chunks
• Corn bread, corn muffins
• Tortillas
• Pancakes
• Couscous
• Pasta
• Soft-cooked rice, risotto
• Polenta
• Grits
• Meatloaf or meatballs
• Chicken salad
• Thinly sliced lunch meats
• Tofu
• Soft-cooked fish
• Tuna salad
• Soups
• Soft-cooked carrots, squash
• Mashed potatoes
• Fresh spinach, chard, kale, or other greens, cooked or steamed until very soft
• Avocados, guacamole
• Salsa (non-chunky)
• Beans (mashed it necessary)
• Hummus
• Bananas and other soft, ripe fruit
• Applesauce
• Ice cream, frozen yogurt, sorbet, sherbet
• Milkshakes and smoothies