[This article, originally published 11/29/12, is one of our most widely read on practice growth.]

Your dental practice is a lot like a public school. The public school system can handle a lot of students quite efficiently. But "efficiently" is not the same as "optimally." A student who has special learning needs or who is unusually gifted often comes up against severe limitations, because it is a system designed to serve the majority.

Dental practices are also, by necessity, built around systems that are designed to serve the majority. You have systems for recare, systems for confirming appointments, systems for how much time to budget for each patient, even systems for devoting the right time to maintaining the systems. This is where having an excellent team matters. They have to keep track of and babysit a thousand or more patients and keep them moving forward. A smooth-running practice depends on efficient systems.

That's why you notice the exceptions. The no-show, the patient with an overdue account, these are the patients who force us to step outside the system and deal with them one-on-one.

But there is another kind of exception, and they are easy to miss because they often are not forced on you. You have to look for them. The exception is the patient with exceptional care possibilities.

Just as an exceptional student can get lost in the school system, an exceptional patient can get lost in the practice. Just as every student has the potential to be an exceptional student at some time in their school lives, every patient has the potential to be an exceptional patient at some point in their dental journey.

Just as a great teacher can "bring out" the best in a student who has exceptional possibilities, a great dentist can motivate patients to embrace their possibilities.

It all starts with you. If you are exceptional to them, patients have a way of being exceptional for you. It may take awhile – it can take 10 years or more – but one day something in their life will change. It can be a change in marital status, a new job with a social focus, or maybe just the "disturbance" you have created in them over the years.

The question is, when the exceptional patient presents him or herself, will you notice? Or will that patient get lost in the urgency of serving the majority? I'm willing to bet that if you choose to be prepared for the exceptional exception, you will "discover" new special patients all the time.


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