What should your voice mail message contain?  You or your dental receptionist should introduce yourself and then clearly state: a. Your dental practice's hours. b. Instructions for your dental patients in case of an emergency  i.e. call your cell, 911 or a covering dentist. c. Let the patient know when they can expect a return call.  d. What information the patient should leave i.e. the reason for the call, their name and a good time to call back. The message should be clear, quite friendly and professional. Example: Hello. You’ve reached the dental practice of Dr. Smith. Our regular hours are 9:00am...

Opening your dental practice on nights or on a weekend can be quite productive however considering evening or weekend scheduling is typically a solution to some problem in the practice that can be fixed by upgrading the management of your dental practice. Here are some points to consider: 1. Only do so if your lifestyle can handle it as you may discover ten years later you never had a life outside of dentistry. 2. Expect more problem patients. It seems the more you accommodate people the ruder and more demanding they are. 3. Demand for weeknights or Saturdays is regional. For...

The two main reasons why most dental practices underproduce are: a. Staff non-compliance b. Double work  It is the small things that add up to consuming vast amounts of time and we all know time is money. Too often dental staff look busy but are in fact simply handling unnecessary work they needlessly generate caused by inefficiencies and lack of training. Examples: A lab case is not in the office and the patient arrives for their appointment.Incomplete information in patient charts.Incomplete dental insurance submission.Insurance not verified.Patient leaves the office without an appointment.Phone numbers for patient are not correct. Can’t confirm appointment.Delivering...

Until a dental practice has at least a half dozen staff or more there is no real need for designating any employee as the office manager as what a real OM does is hire, train, apprentice, correct and manage the other staff. A real OM is not answering the phone, scheduling, doing financial arrangements, etc. However an OM should be able to do all these jobs better than anyone else otherwise how can she properly train, correct and manage the other staff? A vital skill for of an OM is having the expertise to train other staff. The truth is when you...