1. Have a 30-minute window where you can excuse yourself so you’re not stressed and your patient is not overly inconvenienced. 2. Develop a plan with your hygienist to be followed with each patient when you enter the room. 3. Your hygienist needs to efficiently bring you up to speed so that you can proceed quickly. 4. Don't to be hurried otherwise you will miss opportunities.   Kevin Tighe, Cambridge Dental Consultants, Senior Consultant, got bitten hard by the business and marketing bug during long summer days working at his dad's Madison Avenue ad agency. After joining Cambridge as a speaker in...

Most people find change hard. Dental employees are no exception. A common curve ball employees can sometimes throw at you when making changes is that they're usually not able to be specific. So try this. It usually works quite well:   Employee: Why are you changing everything? Dentist: What specifically are you referring to? Employee: Everything! Dentist: I understand, but let's talk one specific thing you feel I am changing. Once you get the staff member to give you a specific, discuss it with them. Quite often you will see the objection crumble before your eyes and you can get on with the...

1. Time is money It is the small things that add up to consuming vast amounts of time, and as we all know: Time is money. Too often, staff members look busy but are in fact simply handling unnecessary work they needlessly generate caused by inefficiencies, lack of training, and so on. Some examples that generate unnecessary work are listed below: Lab case is not in the office when the patient arrives.A message is taken but not given to the correct person.A patient leaves the office without an appointment.   The patient's phone number is incorrect.There is incomplete information in charts.Incomplete...

Many dental practices can appear very busy, but over the years, when I have drilled down into my client's numbers (pardon the pun), I have found many were underproducing by as much as 40% or more based on their production capacity. For a practice to produce at the highest level it is capable of, the key has everything to do with your staff and your skills in leading and managing them. The practice owner From a management viewpoint, the biggest problem in most dental offices is the practice owner. Why? Because most dentists want to be Dr. Nice with their staff....