Groups of people who work together for any purpose require guidelines. The same is true for the management of your dental practice. The purpose of these guidelines is to improve staff relationships and to enhance production. They are to be enforced in a constructive manner. It is important to clearly define and make these guidelines available in writing to all your staff as part of your dental employee handbook. That way your staff become familiar with what is expected. Disciplinary action then becomes predictable and not based on opinion or bias. Violation of acceptable conduct may result in one or more...

AVOIDING INEFFECTIVE MEETINGS A very poor way to run an office is for you and your staff to have meetings infrequently and only when there has been a problem.  Staff meetings should be something that are useful and routine, not something that are called as emergencies because you’re upset or there have been problems or somebody has made a mistake.   You can make the mistake of calling a meeting when only one individual needs to be corrected and that individual is talked about in the meeting as if it’s “everybody.”  That will do two things very poorly.  First, this is a way of chastising...

Can you imagine baseball without any rules? Or, driving in rush hour traffic with no laws or guidelines governing what to do when the lights turn green or red? The obvious result would be confusion and chaos. This same logic applies to every organization.  If there are no guidelines and rules for employees to follow they will not know what is expected of them. Frustration, confusion and unnecessary disagreements then happen.  For these reasons, it is vital that you have both a general policy manual as well as individual manuals for each position in your dental practice. In addition to achieving your...

A dental receptionist (or any staff member for that matter) should never try to wing it when it comes to answering patient’s dental questions. Your receptionist should only answer those questions she knows the answer to without diagnosing or giving out medical advice.   If the receptionist does not know the answer or it is beyond her scope of responsibility she should simply say something to the effect of, “Mr. Jones, that is something I will have to check with the doctor on (or office manager or whoever). I will get back to you by the end of the day or first...