How’s your summer schedule been? Up and down? Do you start off the week looking good only for it to bomb as the days go by? I’m guessing you still have a full team to pay. You still have your mortgage or rent. You still have your utilities. And if you’re like many of the practices I meet to coach, your bank account needs more.
I’m not going to go into all the reasons this is happening in your practice. I’m betting you have a decent feel for what those issues are. What I am going to do today is give you one strategic focus that you can implement tomorrow and one goal that will dramatically transform your practice as food for thought.
Today’s focus: Make same-day dentistry a habit rather than an exception.
Step 1: Target your same-day patients in your huddle
Yes, you absolutely need a morning huddle. It does not need to take more than 10 minutes, so please don’t think you don’t have time. If you want to know more about running an impactful huddle—one that your team wants to participate in and one that delivers major ROI—send us a message and we’ll be happy to share more.
This two-minute component to your huddle involves both the doctor and hygiene schedules.
- Assess patients on either of your schedules who have unscheduled treatment.
- Look for times that potentially cross over and plan your conversations, as well as your strategies to move your patients from the hygiene to doctor schedule and vice versa.
- Stop overthinking. Your patients want to stay! It’s a major convenience for them to have to come in for multiple visits, and over 80% of them will be excited when you give them the opportunity for same-day dentistry.
Step 2: Shift your mindset and develop your team
This isn’t a one-time training. This is development over time. I share this because it’s easy for us as busy dentists to want to train and explain, and then when it doesn’t immediately work … to quit and complain. Ask me how I know! Here are some key pieces. Reach out to us if you have questions.
- Address the elephant in the room. Your team is going to feel afraid initially to approach patients because they worry patients will perceive your practice schedule is empty and that you’re desperate for business. Talk to your team about the data and explain that one of your patients’ top desires is convenience. This is just you making things more convenient for them.
- Work on the verbal skills that engage patients. Here’s one easy example your hygienists can use: “Mrs. X, I know how important staying healthy is to you. I see you still have _____ untreated. If I can talk to the doctor and we can make that happen for you while you’re here, and it’s convenient, would that help you?”
- Work on when to ask the patient if it helps them to stay. Honest question. If I’m your patient and in your hygiene schedule today, and I happen to need a buildup and crown on no. 30—and the doctor is free—doesn’t it make more sense to make that buildup and crown happen today and complete my prophy on insert? Or does it make more sense to do my prophy and send me home?
Think about how you can best move your patient from one chair to another today. And if that isn’t possible, think about what care is the most ideal care to deliver today.
Step 3: Maximize technology
This is not a pitch for you to go out and buy new tech. Do that after you’ve consistently generated more production from habitual, same-day dentistry.
What’s important is to use what you have to its highest capability. Here are a few tech items that I’d take a look at if I were you. Focus on the ones you have.
- Your website: Can your patients schedule appointments online? If not, this is a must-do ASAP! When is your next available online appointment?
- Your practice management system: Are you using it to the best of its ability to schedule and follow up? How you do that matters.
- Scanners: Healthy scans on every patient are the tip of the iceberg. Are you doing this on every patient in your practice?
- 3D printers: These are relatively inexpensive. Is your clinical team producing with patients, or are you losing time in the lab?
- Milling machines: This is an all-or-none tech. If you have it, are you using it all day, every day?
One goal to dramatically transform your practice is block scheduling.
Step 4: Block schedule—work on workflow
Full transparency, I put this last to show you we’re all in on getting better. And, if you’ve never done block scheduling, you can get help here.
If you have experience with block scheduling but aren’t implementing it, here’s the recipe.
- Go six months out to avoid stress. Yes, that makes this a mid- to long-term solution. It’ll be the best scheduling move you ever make.
- Create daily high-production blocks for the doctor. Don’t worry about what kind of dentistry it is. That is too restrictive and is often a fail point for those who try block scheduling and say it doesn’t work.
- Shift all new patients to the doctor’s schedule. In today’s unpredictable world, this is superior to losing hygiene time. Let hygiene focus on their most productive procedures and help you as you shift patients for same-day dentistry.
- Doing the above means you need to assess your new-patient process. How much of it is team time reviewing histories and getting records versus needing you/doctor time. This is critical to block scheduling!
Friends, there’s a lot here. Spend time with it. Build your strategy for success from it. As they say, we don’t plan to fail, we fail to plan.
