Are you taking on new patients?

We agreed, early on in lockdown, that people would remember the things you said and the things you did.

That reckoning has materialised over the last two weeks as team members and clinicians have identified themselves as being "on" or "off" the bus.

The next tribe to manifest their response will be patients.

Today's conversation in many practices is around dealing with the reservoir of unmet needs and the queues of existing patients who want urgent care, to catch up with their dental plan entitlement and want elective treatments to be completed or commence.

The practices who have communicated well with patients will be busy coping with that demand.

Even so, keep an eye out for the disaffected patients from other practices who had little or no communication during lockdown and are now looking for a new provider.

There are more than you might think.

So it's important that your website, your social media channels, your blog/newsletter and your virtual comms with existing patients include reference to the fact that you are still welcoming new patients, even though it may take longer than usual to onboard them.

Lockdown didn't mean the end of marketing. Plenty of my clients carried on with virtual consults.

The return to work doesn't mean that marketing is on hold.

You don't dig a well in a drought, you dig when it's raining.

There is going to be a rich harvest of new patients over the rest of the summer and autumn, so be ready for the low-hanging fruit.