If you are a in the job market, do yourself a favor and condense your resume to one page. Many employers don’t have time or patience to read a 2+ page resume. We look for key words, statements, and your experience. Key words include your ability to use relevant technology, statements include your ability to work through duress, and experience that makes you a competent employee. Keep it relevant, keep it concise, and more potential employers will call you.
Bathroom Closed! Please use facility in the back… I want to put this in context. Last Friday afternoon the main bathroom for patients was stuffed with toilet paper. Instead of reporting this to management this is the sign that went up. This is very frustrating because this comes of as employees who don’t care. But the employees do care, why didn’t they report this to management for management to follow-through, and either unclog the bathroom or call the plumber. Maybe the answer is that employees just do what easy… they put up a sign and feel like their obligation is over. Unfortunately this behavior spills over into all other matter at work: patient care, labs, etc… What is the right way to handle this? How do we break the culture of laziness and not following through? I don’t have the answer. Their are two approaches: positive reinforcement or negative. We chose to take the positive route and let everyone know that management is always their for them even for things such as this. Hopefully, this will never happen again…
In the last 3 years I have done very little work in the private dental field. I have been mostly working in a Primary Care Medical Practice: Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. With this said, I still consider human resources and many managerial aspects to be the same. Certainly, both are considered small businesses.
I think its crucial for Dentist to observe the private medical practice sector. Typically it is a precursor to what will happen to the dental field. For instance, private dental offices are becoming less and less.
Corporations are now assuming control and running their chains and/or franchises. They have an easier time because of their negotiating power do to patient size, and utilization of resources. There cost is less because as just stated vendors are willing to offer better rates for larger volume. Second, it is all about how many active patients you have on your roster, not necessarily how much each patient brings into your practice. The value is in the patient not in how much you are getting paid. Why is this a fact? Because, to different entities your patient is valued differently based on how they operate.
Example:
Lets say you are a Medicaid dental practice and for each preventive visit, which includes: cleaning, exam and x-rays you are getting paid ~$70.00. For a Federally Qualified Health Clinic (FQHC) the reimbursement will be roughly 2.5x as much. This means that if your practice is worth $1 million dollars to a prospective FQHC you may be worth closer to $2 million. The value is in the patient and your active roster not your reimbursement rate.
Ofcourse if you are selling your practice to another dentist than it is what it is. Unless, he/she has the ability to negotiate better rates with the Managed Medicaids.
In conclusion, grow your patient base as much as possible and as long as you are solvable keep on growing. Dont focus as much on dollar per patient.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” ~ Albert Einstein
I wanted to quote Albert Einstein to support the title of this post. Every person you work with regardless if they are your superior, inferior or equal has the potential to be great if they understand who they are. Every person is good at something and it is our job as managers to bring it out of them!
When you come into your dental practice every morning:”do you want to be right, or do you want to have a business?”
If you want to have a business, keep reading…
You made the right choice. In this case customer/patient service must be second to none. It is essential that every patient feels like a “million bucks”. Treat every individual special, people are not numbers and they are not just dollar signs.
Being a good dentist and having high standards will make it easy for you to keep clientele happy. Don’t cut corners… don’t try to save pennies at a cost of losing dollars…
So, what happens when that particular patient is dissatisfied? You have to disarm the situation. As the cliché quote goes: “customer is always right!” If you start proving that your right than the patient will hate you. If you agree that the patient is right and you are wrong than Pandoras box is opened. No one is right, no one is wrong. A solution must be found where you as the dentist preemptively create a scenario where everyone is happy.
You are a referral business, don’t let your ego get in the way.
To build a dental practice you need two components: Internal and External strategies in this post I will only focus on the internal. From professional experience it take four main internal component strategies to build a successful dental practice and they are: amazing dentist, out of this world customer service, fair price point, and motivated employees.
You need to have an amazing dentist. What does that mean? A dentist that can do it ALL! I am talking about a General Dentist who can pretty much do all-phases of dentistry from root canals, to dental implants plus restoration, to simple fillings and much more. The provider/office has to be all-in-one shop because patients don’t generally like going to several locations to do procedures. People get attached to one person and they want to stick with him/her and they become loyal. Every time a provider refers a patient to another location their is a risk of losing that person to someone else. The reasons are limitless however some could be: inconvenience in location, found someone with a better price point, etc. The dentist also has to be charming, fair and likable by the patients. I know of a situation where a dentist is an amazing surgeon but he has a hard time connecting with his patients during the treatment planning phase. This is not good for business.
Next. Out of this world customer service, today we use the word patients when they are treated by doctors. This word “patient” is outdated in my opinion and is becoming less applicable with each day. Most people today have become Healthcare Consumers. There are many articles written about the shift in the psychology of this behavior. This is happening for many reasons, one is powerful search engines like google play a big part. People choose where they want their services rendered and they shop around for the lower price. Two, the heavy advertisement done by dental practices. Twenty years ago it was looked down upon, to advertise your practice so in turn the community didn’t really have options who to go to unless it was a direct referral from a friend/family member. Every person has to be treated like they are the King or Queen or else they will go somewhere else.
Fair price point is important. With the power of google and other search engines a novice computer user can find 50+ dental practices with a click of a button. It is hard to over charge your clients today. If you are above the average rate in your neighborhood your clients will go somewhere else. I am not suggesting that the services should be dirt cheap, I am only suggesting that you have to charge appropriately for your neighborhood. One of the ways to keep cost down is to have as mentioned before a provider or a group of providers that can offer services all under one roof.
Motivated Employees that go the extra mile will make you successful! They will work extra hours, they will put more effort in connecting with your patients, and they will be warm and polite. This is a huge topic of its own. In short, I think every business should focus on the needs of their employees which will result in happier customers. Generally you and I don’t like to go to places where the morale is low and people look miserable especially a dental practice where you already have nerves and butterflies in your stomach.
In conclusion having the four factors above will lead to a better and healthier dental practice. Happy customers means they will refer their family and friends to you. What can be better then free advertisement? I wish ALL the dental practices the best of luck with what they are doing and if you would like to chat further please contact me using this blog. I will get back to you as soon as possible. Have a Great Day!
Furman Dental Consulting 