Get the most out of your team.
Dentists who have a well-trained and motivated team will have the most successful practices. As leaders, doctors motivate in many different ways. Some use the power of their personality. Others educate their team with practice goals. Regardless of the technique, the leader figures out how to motivate each individual and the team. Let your team do what they were hired to do, and you’ll be on your way to achieving a more enjoyable and successful practice.
Schedule patients within seven to 10 days.
The sooner you can start a case, the more likely patients will follow through. When forced to wait four, five or six weeks, patients often lose their motivation to follow through with treatment. The best way to avoid this situation is to start the patient’s treatment as soon as possible while motivation is high and other life factors have not interfered.
Provide your staff members with clear job descriptions.
Knowing exactly what is required of staff members will make them less stressed, more confident in their jobs and friendlier to patients. Job descriptions guide team members on how to perform all of their duties and responsibilities.
Present cases with confidence—be the expert.
When you present treatment plans, patients should be confident that you are an undisputed expert on the subject. It’s a question of trust. If you have successfully built a strong relationship with your patients, they will be confident that you are the expert. When patients trust your opinion and understand that you have their best oral health interests in mind, case acceptance levels will increase.
Eliminate outdated systems.
Left unchecked, these inefficient processes will choke off productivity and ratchet up stress until you have a total systems breakdown. During a good economy, practices will often put up with outdated systems because the schedule is full with patients. However, a weak economy exposes vulnerabilities in older systems. To avoid bottlenecks and lost productivity, practices should update their systems every 3 to 5 years.