Breaking The Time Constraint In The Game Of Dentistry – Part 2

As we continue our theme about breaking through the limitations of time, we are going to into very specific tactics and details today.

It’s an interesting saying “time is of the essence,” isn’t it?  Maybe it’s the most accurate phrase there is.  Essence implies an indispensable quality, which there is nothing more so than time.

When we take more deliberate and purposeful control over how time is executed within your practice, we not only build greater value for everyone involved but also give you more value for your time outside of your practice as well.

Most people are just very lazy and wasteful with their time.  They choose to lack the discipline to execute with precision for themselves nor to demand it from others around them.  

I could stop right here and simply ask you to make a list of everything you’d like to see tightened up inside of your practice from an execution standpoint.  You would be amazed at the impact it would have on time, stress, and results day in and day out.

Of course, it’s easy to see where minutes are lost in having redo’s, in fixing mistakes, in missed tasks, in moving slowly, and in unpreparedness.  This means from every single position within the team it’s not just mistakes in the schedule, it’s mistakes in the back, it’s mistakes with insurance, it’s mistakes with labs, with treatment plans, with screening of patients properly, and the list goes on.

Tightening up execution increases effectiveness of time and it breaks you through the barrier of what you can accomplish in any given day.

  
Take every team member and look at this carefully.  Then take every procedure and think through a clinical day.  Then consider all of your non-clinical tasks that take up your time personally; see what else could be delegated and who else could be contributing more (but don’t miss where you could be more prepared and more decisive also).

Here’s the thing, like I was saying, we aren’t just doing this for the minutes, that’s the byproduct, the added benefit we are doing it for is the outcome.

While we will have reduced stress, eliminated waste, and improved execution, the real advantage here is that it will dramatically increase results!  You will increase case acceptance, you will have more face time with patients, you will turn over more production dollars, you will see collections go up-up-up.  While time is of the essence, it is the execution within the time that makes all the difference.

With better utilization of time, you will get more time on the field, as they say, to play offense and run up the score.  That is the sign of a great team: how much time is invested in high level priorities, on creation and on achieving goals, versus just going through the motions and doing all of the low-value, time-wasting tasks.

We’ve talked about this for weeks now and I say to you again, if every single person (including you) doesn’t have crystal clarity on what their highest value, creation items are that are worthy of their time, then the low-level activities will creep in.  You will be fighting the limitations that time has but only because you created the barriers you now have to breakthrough.

This is why some many people claim, “I don’t have enough time.”  Wrong – you have the same amount of time as everyone else, it’s that you aren’t able or willing to put higher value functions in that time.  

You must set yourself up for success by having a structure in place with defined parameters and a system to make your time more valuable.  Otherwise, you like everyone else, will fall victim to urgent (yet not important) tasks filling up your day.  

There is no place where this is more obvious and apparent then your actual schedule.  Of course, we think about the Doctor’s Clinical Schedule and the flow of the day but we must also think about every Team Member’s schedule and the flow of their day too.  The more time is laid out and planned for success, the greater the control over the outcome – for everyone’s schedule.

Time is organized by knowing the outcome we want.  In hygiene, as example, there has to be an ideal visit flow and the process of executing the perfect visit so nothing is left out, conversations aren’t cut off, pictures aren’t missed, triangles aren’t rushed, and building a great patient relationship isn’t compromised.

Specific to the Doctor’s schedule, the more advanced and successful you become the more control you will place on your schedule and keep low value tasks from getting in your way of doing high value dentistry and especially doing high value diagnosis.

We know to build the Primary Production Column, but when is the last time you assess the hourly run rate and what you need it to be (when you increased your daily goal and when you laid out a clear plan of how to out diagnose the goal), to ensure there was enough scheduled treatment to match the goal, not just how to produce it.  If you were to “produce more” what does that look like?

As I said last week, there should not be surprises in the schedule, it should be reviewed and someone must own it in real time all the time.  The Doctor’s day must be sacred in terms of making sure that when the day starts it is already set up for success and it can’t be managed by 24 hours it has to be looked at as far into the future as the days are full.

Big picture, you can have checks and balances by simply checking if days are scheduled to goal or not.  If the number is less than it should be, something must be done, a deep dive look at the day and what will bring it up to the base level you must achieve for your goals to be on track and your practice to win.

There is way too much complacency and toleration over “the numbers are the numbers” and leaving things the way they are when the future has not yet happened.

Any type of day can be built if there is the dentistry to put in there and that’s a topic for another time because the flow of treatment (how it’s diagnosed, how it’s presented, how’s paid for, and how it’s scheduled), is the ultimate limiting factor of all of dentistry to the value of your days.

The big shift from our topics in this Weekly Report Series is that days don’t just happen they get built and the more structure – not inflexibility but structure – for success you put in place the greater the probability of you having the days you want and achieving the goals you are capable of.

This month I happened to be doing a very advanced and sophisticated review of the Time and Schedule Dynamic inside of our high level Practice Focus Lessons.

There are 12 giant leverage points to busting through the capacity limitations of a schedule and it’s not just about scheduling bigger dentistry and getting treatment plans completed in fewer visits, but that’s an important part of it.

Today, for you, right here I want you to think about where you can get back some minutes, how you can avoid running behind or playing catch up which results in missing the important things that can’t be left out if you want to win.

Too many doctors and teams fall into the habit of rushing the relationship (the conversations, the engagement, the diagnosing, the treatment planning, the presenting, and the closing), thus miss the point and wonder why they are stuck at a certain threshold of dentistry per day.

These tactics, not concepts, are to put a structure in place that allows less time for the things you don’t want to do and more time for the actions that create results.

Than can mean less C patients, emergencies, same-day appointments throw into your schedule, fillings, small value appointments, interruptions, and other people’s lack of preparation.

That can mean more time with A patients, foresight on the schedule, stricter adherence to Hourly Value benchmarks, not collapsing anchor appointments too far in advance, closing the back door and completing case acceptance while the Patient is there, education of your team for more opportunities, and moving to possibility-based dentistry.

  
There are a ton of high value work for you and your team right here inside of this one single Weekly Report.  Focus on tightening up processes, gaining back minutes every single day, and making room for the priorities that deliver results.  Then go into the tactics and solutions that add structured success to your schedule and really dial it up, push the limits, elevate your expectations, and build it to suit.  

As our theme of time continues, remember you get to create what you want; you do not have to just accept what you get.  That couldn’t be more true than with your daily schedule serving as the catalyst to bringing all of your goals to life!