As some of you know, I’ve been suffering a case of acute sciatica in my left leg for a couple of weeks now.
And when you are a fit and healthy person like I am, sciatica is an extremely unfair and frustrating ailment.
I pride myself on my fitness.
I watch what I eat, I watch my weight, and I spend 90-100 minutes each day walking 10km each day to keep moving.
Because I believe that you have to use it or lose it.
So when I was “struck down” with this left side sciatica it literally bowled me over.
Because I just wanted to be instantly made better and get back to normal.
And one of the frustrating things about having sciatica is having to undergo the necessary scans and imaging and diagnostics and collecting all of the appropriate and necessary data so that an accurate diagnosis can be reached, and from that diagnosis, then the course of best treatment can be chosen.
Which led me to think about the comparisons between my back situation, and a dental diagnostic situation…
Would my medical doctor say this…
Once my diagnostics were in, would my doctor say these things to me?
“I’m going to give you some options, so you can make the decision on your course of treatment.”
“Here are your options…”
“You can do nothing, and maybe the pain you are experiencing will go away and the problem that is causing your pain will resolve itself?
“We can treat the pain with medication, so you don’t feel the pain.”
“The bulging disc that is causing your pain can sometimes shrink back to a manageable size and because of this shrinkage your pain will subside and disappear. During that time we can manage the pain with medication.”
“Some of the medication can be addictive. Some of the medication can be hallucinatory. Long term use of some of the medication can be harmful to your kidneys and liver….”
“We can try a cortisone injection into your spine beside the bulging disc. This can give you short term relief and may aid the shrinkage of the bulging disc.”
“We can refer you to a neurosurgeon to see what het think and whether you need surgery on your disc or your vertebrae.”
That’s a lot of choices!
So, I’m thinking this:
Long term medication and do nothing is not a serious option.
And me being given the option to do nothing [without medication] is really not a realistic option at all.
The important thing here is that as a consumer, I need to be guided by my doctor’s recommendations, because I am not a doctor.
Because I am not a doctor, there really is no point in me having a part in the decision process as I have zero knowledge to contribute to the discussion about the best path for my ongoing treatment.
And it is the same in dentistry…
So many times I hear under-committed dentists saying that they have given their patients all the treatment options and the patient is going to make a decision, when in reality, the patient has no knowledge of what is really going on and what is best for them.
It’s the ultimate buck pass.
Allowing an uneducated patient [without a dental degree and without a history of experience of what works and what does not] to choose their own course of treatment is kind of like allowing the inmates to run the asylum..
As a patient once said to me in the dental office so many years ago…
He said:
“Hey Doc. What’s with all these options? You’re the guy in the white coat. Tell me what’s best and I’ll do that. That’s why I’m here.”
And that’s why the public go to doctors and dentists.
To receive best treatment.
Not to spin a chocolate wheel…
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
One of the dumbest “customs” in business is to give staff a pay rise to celebrate an anniversary of service to the business.
Staff should not be rewarded in this way “just for turning up”.
There are many great ways of rewarding staff, and a pay rise on their employment anniversary is not one of those ways.
This is because this form of pay rise has nothing to do with performance.
In dentistry…
In dentistry, the salaries of staff usually amount to a certain percentage of revenue generated by the dental practice.
In my practice staff wages amounted to 20% of practice production.
And so to keep it simple, every time we adjusted the fees in line with global inflationary pressures and measures, the staff salaries were also adjusted by an equal and same amount each time.
It seemed fair.
And the staff never complained.
And interestingly, the staff never sought extra pay rises.
But that might have been because…
One of the reasons my staff never sought extra pay rises was because we had a number of bonus systems in place in the practice that we paid to our staff, when certain goals and targets were achieved.
Some of those goals and targets that the practice set were monetary targets.
Other goals and targets were also performance based and were determined by certain Key Performance Indicators [KPIs] that different team members were performing anyways.
We simply wanted these team members to be conscious of what constituted certain “levels” of performance, ranging from unacceptable to acceptable, to good and to very good, and to outstanding.
Having goals and rewards creates consistency and encourages improvement.
“What gets measured gets improved upon.”
It’s very difficult to hit a goal you do not have.
And it’s also impossible to exceed a goal you’ve never made.
Setting performance based goals in your dental practice, and paying bonuses on achieving those goals creates a team unity within your organisation as team members attempt to make sure that all goals are achieved and surpassed.
Performance based pay incentives make much more sense than financially rewarding team members on their years of service.
Sure, take the team out to dinner to celebrate each team member’s employment anniversary.
Give them a trophy to acknowledge their increasing level of commitment to your business.
But stay away from the rabbit hole of giving pay rises to people jut because they’ve “stuck it out” with your business.
That’s just illogical.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
A good friend of mine Dr Scott Peterson told me that his father used to say this:
“If you’re not fifteen minutes early, you’re late.”
And his father was absolutely correct.
Punctuality is so very important
Being punctual is a sign of your respect.
Being punctual is not an accident.
Your ability to be punctual is a LEARNABLE BEHAVIOUR that people choose to do or choose not to do.
Punctuality is not something we are born with or without.
It is a division of respectful behaviour towards people, and towards organisations.
It is a trait that you either choose to develop, or you choose not to.
Where is punctuality learned?
Trains, planes and buses run to a timetable. If you turn up late to the bus stop, to the airport and to the train station, the probability is that you will have missed your ride.
These means of transport do not wait for errant stragglers.
They each have a strict timetable to run to.
If you’re invited to dinner at a friend’s home…
If a friend invites you over for dinner to their place, chances are that your friend has gone and bought the food for the evening meal and that they’ve prepared some of that food and they may well have started cooking some of that food…. the evening would have been planned around a timed agenda so that guests weren’t left starving into the later hours of the night…
It just makes sense.
If you arrive late for the theatre…
If you arrive late for the theatre, the musical or play will have started on time and you will not be permitted to enter until a scheduled break in the performance.
Arriving and being seated before the performance begins is an action of courtesy and respect that patrons show to each other and to the cast and crew of the performance.
What about at your dental practice?
Some patients are chronic late arrives.
For whatever reason, some patients never seem to be able to arrive at their dental appointment prior to their appointment time, and arrive after the appointment time has passed.
And this is despite the fact that the appointment time really is the time when the needle goes in, and not the time when the patient walks through your front office door, or is called to walk down to the treatment room.
That’s like thinking that the passengers flying on an aeroplane believe that they don’t need to be at the airport until their departure time, which in fact, is the time that the plane accelerates down the runway and into the sky with its wheels up.
Imagine if the pilot thought that’s when they are meant to be arriving at the airport…
Some dentists and dental staff operate under the same illusion.
For some reason, these staff and dentists believe that if the first patient is scheduled at 9:00am, that’s when they [the dental team] should be arriving.
No dentist should ever be arriving for work after their first patient has already arrived and been sitting there waiting for them.
And the same goes for returning from lunch breaks.
It’s imperative that staff and dentists are on the premises before a patient arrives for their appointment.
It’s simply poor form for the dental team not to be time conscious.
When you allow one late arriving patient to still have treatment…
When you weaken and surrender to a late arriving patient, and allow them to still have treatment despite being late for their appointment, you can then run behind time and run late for EVERY REMAINING PATIENT for that day.
And then you become known as the dentist who always runs late.
I’ve been a patient at two medical practices where the doctors consistently ran behind time, so much so that patients were advised to phone in advance to see how late the doctor was running, each time they had an appointment.
And I know that in medical and in dental service provision it can be difficult to predict and anticipate emergency appointment lengths, but to run late so habitually that your patients become conditioned to it, well, there has to be a better way…
One thing is for sure and certain..
For sure and certain, no matter how nice a person you are, no matter how good a patient you are, no matter how good a doctor or dentist you are, no matter how good a friend you are, your lack of respect for other peoples’ time will inevitably get to the point of upsetting someone who will then choose to end their relationship with you.
It will happen.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
I meet some dentists and I wonder what they were ever thinking in becoming dental practice owners.
Yes, really.
Because the way these dentists run their dental practices, there are no winners.
Their patients do not win.
Their staff and employees do not win.
Their practice owners and shareholders [including themselves] do not win.
In these practices, in most cases…
In most cases, the patients of these dental practices do not have their oral health treated with respect.
The patients’ mouths are under-diagnosed.
The patients don’t have comprehensive treatment presented to them.
The patients do not experience and receive total care and total oral health.
In most cases, these patients receive treatment for symptomatic reasons only.
A lot of their diagnosed treatment is “watched” into the future, or the patient is told: “we’ll see how it is next time”.
In most cases…
Staff are considered an expense rather than an investment for these dental practices.
Staff are often followers and reactors, and are rarely delegated roles of support and leadership.
Team are rarely incentivised nor rewarded on practice performances and results. And yet in these practices, results are expected to simply just “naturally occur”?
In most cases…
In most cases, these dental businesses simply trundle along in second gear.
In most cases, the results these businesses achieve are discussed retrospectively. At the end of the financial year. After each quarter. At the end of each week, and each month.
In most cases, profit is minimal, and is not maximised.
In most cases, the owners receive a financial benefit of only slightly more than a paid job, and not nearly as much as they could be, and should be receiving.
It seems pointless…
It seems pointless to be the owner of an underutilised and underperforming facility for the sake of only a few dollars more return than having a job, that has no risks, no headaches, and shorter hours than are involved in owning a dental practice.
It’s like owning a Mustang, but only ever driving it at 30kph to the corner shop three times a week. [A bicycle would be far less expensive to own]
A well run dental practice should…
A well run dental practice should allow the patients of that practice to have and enjoy a truly 100% healthy dental environment.
A well run dental practice should be a breeding ground for team members to develop a love for a career in dentistry, and all of the options and pathways that a career in dentistry has to offer.
A well run dental practice should be a solid investment providing a healthy return to the owners for their capital investment, and for the investment of their time and toil into their facility.
And they all have the ability to do so…
All that dental business owners simply need to have is a helping hand as guidance to truly get the best out of the asset that they have right there in palm of their hand.
Because when these owners fail to truly realise that asset?
That’s the real tragedy of dental practice ownership.
It’s a tragedy for the owners [as shareholders].
It’s a tragedy for the lost opportunities of employment advancement for the team members that work there.
And it’s a tragedy because the patients of these practices do not receive the opportunities of having complete comprehensive dental treatment presented to them as being in their best interests for their own health and well-being.
Is the system failing the profession?
Dental students are graduating with clinical skills, but not with any business skills sufficient to run and survive for forty years.
Dental school is not preparing their graduates with the necessary skills and a blueprint moving forwards for successful business ownership.
Have you noticed that leadership, people management, and front office phone training are not taught in dental school?
Successful dental practices have:
Great systems and protocols
Great leadership
Good people management
Their dental office phones are managed exceptionally
World Class Customer Service Systems
Great time management
These subjects are not taught at dental school.
Nor is a dental school graduate armed with a roadmap of the timeline and situations and need that they will encounter along their dental practice ownership journey.
Dental graduates leave university so underprepared for the different phases of their next forty years as dental practice owners.
It’s no wonder that 95% of them slip into the land of mediocrity when running their dental practices.
And that’s a tragedy.
It’s a tragedy for the dentists, as owners, and their families, who live a life unfulfilled because of opportunity lost.
It’s a tragedy for the staff employed in those underperforming practices, because these staff never get to experience the true emotional fulfilment that a fulfilling and satisfying career in dentistry can provide.
And it’s a tragedy for the people who become patients of those dental practices, because often those dentists who own and run those practices are not always providing best care and best treatment for their patients….
The good news is…
The good news is that the missing pieces of dental business ownership can be sourced after graduation, by engaging with qualified coaches and consultants who have “been there and done that” and owned and run successful dental practices, and have successfully taught others how to own and run their own successful dental practices.
Good help is around.
*****
Need your phones monitored?
Are you concerned about the number of calls that are not being answered as best they can be?
You need Call Tracking Excellence.
For the cost of a less than one cleaning per week, you could have your phones being answered much much better….
The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.
