Dental Consultant Tip: Weak Links

A dental practice is too small of a business to afford any weak links. If you want to produce at a high level of production and efficiency, you cannot afford any weak links.

Poor organization is also at the heart of patient complaints. Organization of a practice is, in essence, composed of ensuring you and your staff know how to efficiently and effectively process: 

a. New Patients

b. Returning Patients

c. Emergency Patients

Another action we take early on with new clients is to evaluate where the weak links are in handling new, returning and emergency patients and then systematically strengthen each of the weak links through training. 

The following functions are examples of where weak links are often discovered:

a. New Patient phone calls

b. Processing new patients

c. Financial arrangements

d. Patient retention

e. Scheduling

Another key is to ensure that specific functions are assigned to specific staff so there is accountability which also eliminates overlapping functions.