anyone know if this is done? I "heard" some of the faculty at my school were set up for IV sedation in their private GP offices. I'll be doin an AEGD next year (even OS is where I want to be) and they train you in IV sedation (it's an air force AEGD). I want to know if there really is an "advantage" to being a general practitioner that is IV certified? Seems to me like it'd be vast over training for what you'd really be doing.
Like a lot of things you can do as a general dentist, it can be an enormous benefit to your practice if you utilize it effectively, or it can be a waste of the time and money you spent training. Employing IV sedation in your office will allow you to:
1) Increase production directly: IV sedation is billed in addition to procedure fees, and while initial capital purchases can be more expensive, the operational overhead for IV sedation is very, very low. Plus, since IVS is almost always purely elective, you can require full payment in advance with much less resistance than you might encounter with other procedures.
2) Increase production indirectly: "Ma'am, I can tell you were pretty nervous about coming back to the dentist for the first time in several years, but you've done a great job today and I have good news regarding your treatment plan; while I've identified several procedures I'll need to perform in order to help get your oral health back to optimal, what I can do for you is provide you some medication, through an IV we'll start, that will let me take the time I need to complete these procedures, while you sleep comfortably through the entire appointment. You won't feel anything during your appointment, and in all likelihood you'll remember absolutely nothing afterward. Does that sound like something you'd be interested in?"
In other words, it gives you the ability to condense big treatment plans into just a few high-production appointment, because these patients want to get their treatment out of the way so they don't have to worry about coming back. Not every patient is this way by a long shot, but there are more than you realize, and increasing your case acceptance rate with this demographic can make a big bump in your bottom line--especially as word begins trickling out. Word-of-mouth has always been the best referral, and that goes for these folks too.
Now, for you non-IVS trained guys who are ready to bare your teeth and pounce at what you think I'm implying, chill out a little. I'm not saying you have to IV patients and drug them in order to be successful. There are a ton of dentists who do just fine with behavioral methods and the occasional Halcion. Like anything else in practice, this is just what works best in my hands (actually the back of my patients' hands, most of the time).
OP, hope this sheds a little light. Good luck to you
