Are your hygiene hours staying the same or going down?

10.30.08

Let’s do some basic math.

Let's say you’re getting 30 new patients a month. That’s 360 new patients in a year which means a possible 720 hygiene appointments.

So are you adding new hygiene days to your schedule?

If you’re not then there are big, gapping holes in your recare system that a city bus could fall through. The whole office helps to dig these holes. It could be a number of things and usually is. But it all falls under the category of “lack of control.”

Speaking of lack of control…

Dentists are always looking at the problem of generating more income. But what they should be doing is exerting more control over their practice. The better control you have over your practice the higher the income will be.

Our job is to find out where the lack of control exists and fix it. And when this happens income goes up, dentists get big smiles on their faces (for awhile anyway) and staff are suddenly happier.

Maybe we can help dig you out of your hole. Grab a shovel here

Are you the “The Dental Devil Incarnate”?

09.21.08

Disagreements amongst staff members and the dentist is one of the most common situations I run into when working with a new client. A good example is a recent new client who I personally found him to be very congenial so I had a hard time believing this guy was “The Dental Devil Incarnate” as described by the majority of his staff.

I began by asking each of the staff the same question: "Do you know of any staff member that has been treated unjustly?” All fingers pointed to one person - we'll call her Sally for simplicity - though that is not her real name. Sally apparently had been going around telling other staff members about how the doctor was mean to her, how the doctor mislead her about her pay, about how the doctor was mistreating her or not appreciating all she was doing, etc.

Needless to say Sally's co-workers were appalled and a distrust of the doctor began brewing.

A bit of further investigation found that Sally was embezzling, had been looking for another job and was planning on just not showing up one day.

Sally had been with the doctor for about three years, but he had noticed that it was about a year ago that Sally's demeanor changed. He saw her texting in staff meetings. She’d roll her eyes when he asked her to do even the simplest tasks. But he never corrected her because she’d been with him for a while and, as far as he knew, she was doing a good job; and he wanted to be a “nice guy”.

Now I wasn't a fly on the wall this whole time but the embezzlements were small, and as far as we could tell, a fairly recent activity. What I imagined happened, is that Sally's misdeeds began as a minor thing and gradually built up into something far more serious. But because the doctor didn't sit down and have a face-to-face talk with her he essentially enabled her.

Doctors must take up issues with staff before they get too big. It's a vital action in running any business. And this should not be done in front of other staff. Do it at a time when you bring as little attention to calling the offending staff member “onto the carpet.” The purpose here is not to embarrass.

Dentists generally don't like dealing with these situations. But it’s vital you do so for the health of your practice. Correcting staff doesn't have to be an emotional and unpleasant activity. Don't mistake "being a nice guy" with allowing your staff to walk all over you. However yelling and getting mad at them is just as big of an error.

The good news is that there are simple procedures you can learn so you become skilled at dealing with these situations. We’ll teach you how and your staff member will thank you. In fact in consulting dentists for over 25 years it often happens that the staff member the dentist thought was the “worst” becomes the dentist’s most productive, loyal employee after I’ve worked with the dentist to be an effective manager. For a free “I’m not the Dental Devil Incarnate” Management Analysis go here.

Clash of the Dental Titans

09.11.08

I just returned from a new client’s practice where an epic conflict between the back and front had laid siege to the office. The doctor thought this Clash of the Titans would quickly blow over. Instead it blew up.

And what was this battle over?

Chart colors.

Did you say, “Chart colors?”

I’m afraid so.

You see, one of the back office staff had “issues” with one of the front desk staff. This turned into a joust over what color the charts should be. So from that point on, when the back office person took a patient up front, guess what happened? Nothing. She simply left the patient with his chart at the front desk and left. It makes sense when you think about it. Who wants to talk to the person you’re engaged in mortal combat with? And these two staff members thought that the patients didn’t notice. Yeah, right. So like in most wars it’s the civilian population that suffers the most.

Tell me, have you ever walked into an organization and noticed two staff members that didn’t get along? How did it make you feel? When you saw those two people argue, what was your impression of the organization itself? Oh yeah, I bet you said, “This is fun I've gotta come back to this place!”

OK, back to my new client. He was beside himself and didn’t know what to do with this problem. I told him he didn’t need to anything with that problem.

He barked, “Are you kidding? I’m pulling my hair out here! What do you think I hired you for?”

I took a deep breath and told him, “I understand, but there’s a much bigger problem in the practice.”

“What could be a bigger problem than this???” he growled.

I took an even bigger breath and told him, “The bigger problem is you.”

My new client was jolted backwards as if a thunderbolt from Zeus had hit him between the eyes. He stared at me blankly. Then it began to sink in. He was the one who had allowed a skirmish to turn into all out warfare, all because he wanted to be a nice guy.

Dealing with staff issues is not fun. In fact I think it’s what dentists like the least about owning a dental practice. But there are correct procedures you can learn that will get the warriors in your office working as a team instead of battling each other. Before you find yourself calling upon Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, to help sort out your next Trojan War, do yourself a favor and take our free practice management analysis here.

Hiring Tips

09.04.2008

Most employees at my favorite local restaurant have been there for years. The service is always heads and shoulders above other establishments in the area. Recently I complimented the manager and asked what her secret was. I got a very quick reply:

"Drug testing” she said with a wink.

Check your local and state laws and drug test if you can.

***

A dentist who bought our training manuals last year told me he now uses the manuals as part of his hiring procedure. He has the applicants go home with the Cambridge General Policy manual and read it. Then if the applicant actually comes back and passes an open book test, he hires them. I thought that was a creative way to determine if an applicant has initiative and can understand written policy.

***

Ask applicants about their past accomplishments. What this does is highlight the go-getters, those who take initiative and get things done. Of course, we also recommend that you verify those accomplishments because you can run across some pretty good liars. Also watch out for the people who just give you a job title - there are plenty of people who run around looking very busy but get nothing accomplished.

A Dental Consultant’s Excellent Aquarium Adventure

08.28.2008

This week I decided to do some volunteer work and became a new member of the volunteer force at a local aquarium that rescues, rehabilitates and releases injured sea turtles and marine mammals.

On my first day I was instructed to shadow another volunteer and I was put with an intern who was on her last day. For the first two hours of this “training”, the only thing I learned was that the members of the staff didn’t really get along. Ooh, that gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. The rest of her information was bits and pieces of data thrown at me in lightning fire fashion that didn’t actually have much relevance to what I would be doing, whatever that would be.

I saw the writing on the wall so I attached myself to two other volunteers working in a team. They seemed unsure of what their jobs were themselves so this didn’t exactly leave me with a lot of confidence.

So I moved on to another intern who proved to be extremely useful. She proceeded to show me how and when things are done but I noticed she was telling me about a lot of protocols that should be written as policy to be studied. I also noted that many of her sentences started with: “This should be done but we haven’t been doing it lately so you don’t have to do it this way if you don’t want to….” Why was she saying that? Because that’s how she was trained.
Although I was relieved to finally be with someone who knew her job well, I couldn’t help but wonder how much policy is being relayed incorrectly, how much of this unwritten policy would I be able to retain, and worse, how much policy is not being relayed at all. It’s no wonder that the staff members are arguing with each other – no one is doing anything right. There’s no agreement amongst them on what IS right.

Here’s a situation that because of the lack of written policy, correct procedures gradually drop out with every new person that comes along. Sound familiar? I could have been put with the best of the best interns, but due to human error I will never be trained correctly. This type of training is called, “Learn by being yelled at when it’s done wrong” and it’s the type of training that’s going to produce a high turnover in your staff.

If you have no or little written policy in your practice don worry, you’re in luck. We’ve done it for you. Check out our Google and Yahoo No. 1 ranked dental office manuals here.

Who’s The Batting Coach in Your Office?

08.21.2008

Who's responsible for the overall batting average of a baseball team? The answer, of course, is the team’s manager and batting coach.

Using this as an analogy, what’s the “batting average” of your practice?

Here’s one way to find out: Divide your monthly collections by the number of staff you have. For example if you collected $80,000.00 and have 4 staff the figure is $20,000.00.

Make sense? OK, now go back and do this for the past 12 months.

If your practice’s “batting average” is going down you need to ask yourself a hard question: Who’s responsible? The answer: You. That’s because you’re more than likely both the “manager” and “batting coach” of your practice, even if you don’t want to be. (More on that in a moment.)

And don’t let the fact that you added an additional employee be an excuse. If you added an employee then production and collections should go up.

Even if you lose a valuable employee you should be able to train and apprentice the replacement within a reasonable amount of time so that production and collections don’t fall off for long if at all.

Now what if you hired a batting coach and the team’s batting average went up? Wouldn't that be a smart investment? 

But most dental practices don’t have or can’t afford a “batting coach”. And from my observation most dentists don’t want the job. Typically the dentist wants to come in, do dentistry and go home. They want as little to do with the management of the practice as possible. Sound familiar?

Yet the training, drilling and correcting of your staff is what will make your staff more efficient and productive, and thereby increase your profitability, decrease your stress and reduce how much “management” you need to do.

Sounds like a Catch-22, doesn’t it?

And that’s where Cambridge comes in. We act as your practice’s batting coach until you can afford to have your own coach. And by the time you can afford to have one, you just might not need one because your staff may be so well trained they manage themselves. Then you can pull your baseball cap down over your eyes and relax in the dugout when you’re not with a patient.

Step up to the plate and take the first step to increasing your team’s batting average here.

So what happened with that patient?

08.14.2008

So you’ve done all you can to educate the patient, you’ve used models, x-rays, analogies, drawings, etc. The patient is now fully educated and understands what will happen if he or she ignores the problem. You’ve even received a statement from the patient that he or she is ready to move ahead and you merrily send the patient up to your front desk and…it all falls apart.

So what happened with that patient?

I commonly find two things that may have been the cause for this: First, your front desk person has money problems of their own so when the patient makes a statement about how expensive it is, the front desk goes into immediate agreement with how much it costs and abbreviates the treatment plan.

More commonly your front desk person just doesn’t listen to the patient and so doesn’t handle the patient’s objection correctly.

Example: Patient says, “Gee that’s a lot of money.” But what the front desk person hears is, “I can’t afford it.” Ahh, but that’s not what the patient said! So your front desk person (especially one who is suffering from their own financial problems) gets emotionally caught up in that objection and doesn’t handle it appropriately.

Another example: Patient says, “I have to think about it.” A front desk person who isn’t really listening won’t handle this objection and so tries to schedule the patient anyway. What your front desk person should have said is, “What is it that you want to think about?”

And guess what? The patient won’t know. All they know is that they “need to think about it”. And now we’re back to case presentation. You see sometimes patients simply nod their head all the way through your treatment presentation so you’re fooled into thinking they understand the importance of the treatment. But more than often they don’t. So they nod their heads as they don’t want to ask a “stupid” question, appear rude or whatever.

So before you ask a patient if they’re committed to doing the treatment you might ask them first to explain back to you, in their own words, what you’ve gone over with them. If they can’t, then roll up your sleeves and start over.

Once you have the skill to educate a patient so the patient can explain back the treatment to you, your case acceptance will skyrocket provided your front desk knows how to recognize the all too common objections, all of which are easily handled by a well trained front desk person.

Is case acceptance less than 70% in your practice? If so, you are hemorrhaging money. Perhaps we can help. To find out how start here.

That Most Dirty Word

08.07.2008

Disclaimer: The word I am about to define is not for the faint of heart. Macho men have been known to turn into quivering bowls of Jello when even uttering this word.

Definitions:

1) Income received for goods and services over some given period of time.

2) An act of completion of a commercial activity.

3) Operating revenues earned by a company.

OK, now for the ugly part. You still have time to stop reading. I’ll give those of you who want to leave the room a few seconds before I continue.

For those of you brave enough to continue, here it goes:

The above definitions are for the word “sales”.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! You should have warned us!!!!!”

Okay, maybe I’m over doing it just a little, but you have to admit, most dentists and their staff would rather hear fingernails scratching a chalkboard than utter the words “selling dentistry”. This is so true that in dentistry we call it “treatment presentation” or “case acceptance”.

Why has it become so taboo to even mention the word “selling” in the dental industry? Mainly because the word “sales” has been associated with doing anything and everything to unjustly separate a man from his hard earned wages.

But, if your true intentions are to help patients overcome their fears and objections to get the treatment you know they absolutely need, then you’re on the right track. The simple fact is that you ARE going to have to get those patients through their fears, worries and objections somehow.

“Sales” is a vital part to any business – including yours.

So here’s another pointer to increase your closing rate (oops, I mean case acceptance.) It’s going to make you a bit squeamish though. After you’ve presented the treatment to the patient, ask them a closing question (oops, I mean a case presentation empowerment inquiry.) Did you faint? Are you still with me? Okay. It’s easier than you think.

Just ask the patient, “Are you committed to fixing this problem?” The patient’s answer will tell you immediately if they didn’t understand what needs to be done or what will happen to their dental health if they don’t do it.

If you’ve done a good job in presenting the treatment that needs to be done, your patient will say, “yes.” If you don’t ask this question, you’re leaving it to your Financial Arranger to explain the treatment. Trust me when I tell you that you are more qualified than your Financial Arranger to sell (oops, I mean present and educate) the patient on the treatment.

To find out what else you can do to close (oops, I mean increase case acceptance) go here.

Archives:

July 2008

June 2008

May 2008