Dr. Katie To describes her two-hour new-patient exam, which checks posture, spine alignment, bite patterns, saliva, airway, and tongue-tie alongside traditional dental work. Patients get homework like nasal rinsing and mouth taping, with built-in accountability to track results.
So it sounds like you have a lot of different diagnostic tools and screening tools, and your new patient process must be quite comprehensive. Can you tell me a little bit about that? I'm very proud of our new patient process because our new patient process for sure is comprehensive, but it's also, I would say, very efficient. Our patients will be in office for 2 hours visit, but then we'll be able to get to know them, give them an office talk about all the health and wellness features we have for them in the practice. And then we start looking at the patients from, I would say, the whole body aspect. We look at the posture, we look at how the bite related to the neck from C1 to C7, and then we're also looking at the saliva under the microscope. So actually they can see visually what's going on in their mouth. And we also look at the bite, we're looking at their gum tissues, their chewing ability. We call it the 4D Dentistry, where everyone chews differently. Some people chewing more on one side than the other. Some people hear some cracking noise in their jaw when they chew. And then also we look at the tongue evaluation. Do you have tongue tie? Do you have any issues with the airway? We evaluate all that. And on top of it, we give them homework. And it is a partnership. So if the patient feel like we are the one to do all the work and they don't have to do anything. They don't see the long-lasting result. But when we partner up with them, we're doing our part when the patient is here and show them what to do when they get home. We can see huge improvement and long-lasting improvement. So patient go home with homework. Patient also go home with new life skill. For example, nasal rinsing, mouth taping,. And a lot of the things that they can do that doesn't cost a lot of money, but they will feel the difference in progress in their life and they will be very grateful for that. And they all come back and say it's working great for them. So the appointment is just not to— we get to know them, they get to know us, but they walk away with a very clear plan. And I would say homework for them to do with accountability. So we know that they are doing what they're supposed to do and they can see the progress.
