Admit it, you love new patients. There's just something about seeing a new face and looking into a mouth for the first time that gets your attention. Every new patient represents unknown possibilities and that is refreshing and kind of exciting.

But there is another reason to love new patients: they are instrumental in helping you implement progressive change in the practice.

The hardest part of change is trying to unhook yourself from the past, which you can't fix anymore, and focus on the future, which you can prepare for. And it's hard to break old habits with your existing patients because you have developed habits together – good and bad – and the momentum from those habits carries forward.

But new patients come with a clean new slate. They may have some expectations about dentistry but they don't walk in the door with a mindset about you specifically, so you're free to reinvent yourself as a dentist.

It doesn't matter if in the past you had a habit of presenting with insurance limitations in mind, or allowing patients to leave without payment or without appointing their next visit. They don't know that. There is no reason to perpetuate the habits of the past. You can create new habits.

And the great thing is, after awhile, when you have instituted the new way of doing things with enough new patients, the old way will start to feel wrong.

That's when real transformation occurs, because you now have figured out ways to communicate these ideals to your existing patients. That's how better habits become gradually ingrained and the new momentum – launched with those new patients – creates a whole new practice.


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