Data allows for action

Data is all around your office and it is constantly changing. In order for you and your team to keep your office moving forward it is important for your team to analyze the data. By taking a look at the numbers it will allow you and your team to know where they are headed and what they need to do in order to make positive financial decisions for the office. It will also help the team determine if they need to complete more re-care calls, or focus on new patients.

For example, you might decide at the beginning of every month you need to work twenty days. While, your hygienist will need to work twenty-three days.  Your front office will need to collect eighty percent or more of the patient portion and you will need to seat at least four crowns, and fifteen root canals. This amount will allow you to pay your bills plus put some aside in case of a bad month. Now, you and your team have a goal to reach. Each of your team members knows what must be done in order to meet the monthly goal. 




You should have your team meet often in order to figure out where your numbers are at and to problem solve when your office is not close to meeting the goal and celebrate when your team is on track. No team should head down a dark path. You cannot hit a goal or a target if you do not know what the goal is. 

Do not wait till the last minute to find out you did not bring in the intended monthly amount. By then it is too late for the team to do anything. You want to give time to course correct if it is needed. The end of the month should be the time in which you and your team celebrate your success not bask in failure.

  

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

Be knowledgeable in your field

Monday we spoke about the importance of having procedures in place that improve your office. Today, we are going to take that one step forward and discuss the importance of being knowledgeable in your field. Your procedures will change based on the new x-ray machine or the improved way to accept insurance. However, in order for you to improve on these items you have to constantly improve your own knowledge and your team's knowledge in the field. 


Things change, new technologies improve the way you complete something in your office. The more research you do and the more your staff stays up-to-date the better off your entire office will run. Once individuals are hired in a position it is easy to become complacent. However, you want to make sure your team is given opportunities to improve on their skills and their knowledge.


For example, allow and encourage your staff to attend conferences, events and other opportunities with other dental offices. The more they can reach out in the dental community, the more diversified knowledge your dental office will have.


Take the time to let your team know that continued learning is an important part of your office. Value new information that is shared with you, even if the idea doesn’t fit the direction you are currently going. Learning should never stop because forward progress should never cease.

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

The leaders before you-Maintaining order

Dentist offices are only as strong as the procedures they have in place. In order for your office to thrive in today's society it is important for you and your team to have procedures in place that help your office run more efficiently. 

It isn't necessary to create procedures from scratch on how the front office handles a new patient phone call or how your assistant sets up for a root canal. These are procedures that have been done for years that either you already have a great way that works or you can complete a little research to find out a new way if your way is not working.



However, no matter where you are at in the process it is important to make sure that there are procedures that help keep your office organized and moving forward. For example, if your front office does not run efficient this will impact your schedule, insurance, patient interactions. If your back office does not have effective procedures then your patients will wait longer, or items could be lost.

In order to begin working on this analyze each procedure you have in place from the front all the way to the back. Find out where procedures are breaking down or where they are not working well. Ask staff what they want to improve on and start there.

Which ever route you go, make sure that there are strong procedures in place that help make your office run efficiently.  

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

Go Big or Go Home: Prioritize your day

So how do you effectively prioritize into a day the treatment follow-up, recall and marketing?

Early each day confirmation should be accomplished so it is clearly understood how much time needs to be filled to achieve goal. A certain number of hours and/or a certain number of calls can reflect the priority of recare or treatment follow-up. Remember, an office is never finished with handling recall. No one should ever hear, “We’ve called everyone. There is no one else to call.” Recall is something that is never completed. There should always be someone who can be called. Calling too much is not the problem when patients report feeling harassed, it is generally because leaving messages is the problem. So if you have team members who report they are being told, or are feeling like they are harassing patients, advise them to not leave a message.

Calling patients for follow-up treatment or recall means calling every number available unless a patient has asked us to do otherwise.  Do not assume because a patient has not been seen for a year or two they are no longer interested in coming to your office. More often than not, patients think they’ve just seen you and are surprised to learn it’s been so long.

Marketing for new patients is another task that too often is considered a project. I have yet to meet anyone from any practice anywhere in the country where they tell me, “We have too many new patients. We don’t want anymore. We can’t see them all.“ That means marketing should be a priority in everyone’s day. Again, every member of the team must do something for marketing before they leave for the day.

There are two types of marketing, internal and external. Internal marketing is marketing to existing patients. This is easy. All those patients coming in to see you can be asked to send in their friends and family. “I smile every time I see your name on my schedule. I wish all of my patients were as wonderful as you. If you have any friends or family who are looking for a dentist, please send them our way. We find that wonderful people tend to have wonderful friends too.”

With social media a source of information and, more importantly, referrals, it can also be beneficial to ask for reviews from those best patients. If you are really interested in increasing your number of new patients, there is no better way than increasing your exposure on-line through the use of great testimonials. Make it easy for your patients to review you. Set your practice up to where patients receive automatic requests for reviews and comments or direct them to the reviewing sites you use: google, yelp, etc. Even though you may have an automated system you still should remind and ask patients to comment on your office.

Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter. When considering what to say or do on social networking sites; for Facebook think pictures, for LinkedIn think articles, for Twitter think links and for YouTube think short testimonials and informational pieces. How often should these sites be accessed? Facebook twice a day, LinkedIn twice a week, Twitter more frequently and YouTube whenever you have an interesting video to share.

Remember to also work on your external marketing daily. Whether you are a general dentist or a specialist, it is in your best interest to connect with the offices you refer to and who can refer to you. Build relationships with the other teams. The doctor can do this by choosing one mutual patient a week to discuss with another office via telephone. The front office can do this by providing information on a patient recently seen, or a patient the office has not been able to get back into the office. Referral slips can be mailed. Calls can be made to determine if a general dentist is seeking a relationship with a specialist, specialists can be contacted to provide them with business cards. Visiting business, day cares, schools, medical offices and other places where information can be provided can assist you in getting your name out to those who are seeking your care. 

Staying focused and being consistent in creating priorities that reflect the outcome you desire will allow you to achieve the experience you most want. Go Big!

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

Go Big or Go Home: Create your Experience

 If you are still not obtaining your desired goals, perhaps it is because a better understanding of priorities is needed.

I often hear doctors say they would like to be more productive. See more patients each day. Have more new patients visit each month. They inform me that if only they could figure out how to have that, they would be doing well.

Many of us have challenges prioritizing our days. We have so much to do and so little time to do it in. In the end, we accomplish less of what is most important. When discussing the tasks that must be finished in any dental practice it is best to group them into the following categories: People, Priorities and Projects.

People come first because people are most important. No matter what type of business we are talking about, this is true, but it is particularly true of the business of dentistry. People tasks should ALWAYS come first. People based tasks include greeting, checking patients in and out, answering the telephone and providing dental care. With people as our primary focus, we must strive to do all we can to ensure they know we respect and value them.

Priorities are tasks that must be completed before each team member and/or the doctor leaves for the day. Priorities include things such as charting, sterilization, day sheets, and confirmation.

Projects are items that need to be done, no doubt, but they are tasks that can be completed at any time and are not necessarily time critical to today. They are things like insurance follow-up, ordering and finding someone to replace a ceiling tile. Important, yes, but maybe not so important that it can’t wait until tomorrow.

In a group setting, I will often go to each team member and have them list the main things they do for the practice, placing each task in the appropriate category based on how they view it. Many times I find the following items in the project category: treatment follow-up, recall and marketing. Remember, projects are things to be completed only after people and priorities if there is additional time at the end of the day. If your true desire is more patients in your schedule, more new patients coming in, then shouldn’t the efforts of your entire team reflect this?

A doctor walked into her office and stated it was time to clean the carpets. Later that day she had a number of bids on her desk to clean the carpet. That is great, except her schedule also had five hours open for the next few days and no one had been working on it. It is a great example of what happens when the line between people, priorities and projects is blurred.

To see more of your existing patients or to have more new patients come into your practice, the tasks that directly lead to that outcome should be a priority and, aside from people activities, take precedence.

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

Hiring with diversity

Your office needs a new front desk. You may be tempted to stick to a certain type of person. Bubbly, educated a certain way, bilingual. Or you may only higher from one type of dental school. However, I want you to stop and think about the benefits of making a different choice. The more diverse of an office you have the more types of patients you may find want to visit your office.

But the other benefit is you are able to find individuals who come from such diverse backgrounds that they will be able to benefit the office in a variety of ways outside of the traditional front office or back office responsibilities.

Humans tend to stick close to people that come from the same background or whom they have something in common with. But sometimes it is a bigger benefit to higher individuals that are opposite you.  Then when you need to have a diverse and unique look on how to improve on front office procedures you have a variety of individuals with a variety of opinions.  

Although, relationships don’t always happen naturally you as the leader have a responsibility to support the relationships and opportunities for everyone in the office no matter what background they come from.

Think about the next time you are hiring for a position, which individual is going to challenge the status quo in your office and bring about a stronger team with a variety of expertise and experience.

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.

Diversity

Stop and think about what this word means to you. Depending on your own experiences it could lead to a mixture of emotions however, when building a team, diversity is the key.

However, you can’t just hire a group of diverse individuals plop them in a room together and hope that they make their own connections. Team building with individuals who you do not believe you have a lot in common can be tricky and it may take time. For example, you as the leader of the organization or as a staff member may need to commit to some extra steps to build positive relationships with everyone that works for your office.

Some of the activities you could do to help build your diverse teams are to have an office lunch, commit to a vision and work as a team towards that goal. Or attend conferences together and have monthly meetings to discuss information.

Events for the team do not have to always be formal activities. You can also provide informal opportunities for team members to work together. Have a new member train with all the team members in your office. Or have your front office help in the back office or with the hygienist for a day in order for them to have different learning opportunities. 

Although, you cannot force relationships you can facilitate learning around the office to appreciate the differences among your team members while building a team that trusts each other. 

Great teams take effort. Take time to work on your practice regularly to build quality communication and strengthen your results. For more information and to read other articles, please visit us at www.saltdpm.com.