Okay, are you ready? This is exciting stuff here. I often write on conceptual topics such as mindset, prosperity, positivity, success, wealth attraction, and lifestyle balance – to name a few – but there is nothing I like writing about more than this…
Actual tactical execution of very specific strategies because of this one line I heard early in my life (very fortunate to have just became a teenager) from my first Zig Ziglar audio cassette. He said, “Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.”
And I will tell you in that one line you will find just about every single reason why someone stays stuck where they are – most people are too wishy washy about their life.
For some others (who obviously are not here reading this), it could be for a lack of motivation, sense of complacency, or simply complete apathy.
However, let’s talk about the people who actually have ambition but yet they can’t seem to breakthrough to the next level of success is an area of their life. It’s likely because their target (and thus commitment to it) is too general and not specific.
There is no defined purposeful meaning to their actions, goals, or anything else. They simply wander nearby.
Let’s move from “practice success” as wandering generality to meaningful specifics and let me start by saying no matter how much you think you have down any of these items I can tell you for the sake of yourself, your team, and especially your patients, they most certainly can always be more meaningfully specific.
I know life is lived in the grey and it’s difficult to draw hard lines with no exceptions. In fact, that is why I don’t believe in one extreme or the other for practice type or style. It takes a custom blend to find the perfect fit for each person.
That said, you can’t be in the grey area when it comes to what you and your practice stand for. You can’t motivate patients in the grey area. You can’t lead a team in the grey area. You will fail every time you leave things up to the interpretation (or preference) of others.
Instead, you must execute with meaningful specifics.
We’ll start with patients first. Then, we’ll flip it around and talk about you and your team next week.
Here are my top ten meaningful specifics to execute for greater success with your Patient Experience (in no particular order because I see them all equally important)…
You must move beyond a theoretical diagnostic philosophy or patient goal of outcome and evolve into a very specific diagnostic approach down to a checklist of every single type of patient visit whether comprehensive, emergency, consult, pediatric, specialty, hygiene, periodontal, etc. Every team member must know it and it must not be optional.
This includes meaningfully specific photography and scans. These are not tasks, they are tools. They must not just be taken, they must be used to engage the patient.
When it comes to developing patients and building value from our foundation built last week, we must have a meaningful way we answer the phone and share with the patient about the first experience and involve the patient with questions about themselves.
One of the things I did more than 25 years ago in my Martial Arts Business was make sure that every team member could answer a new student phone call and be able to explain exactly what the first visit experience was in a ‘salesmanship’ way – not a clinical or administrative way.
Next there must be a meaningful way all patients (most certainly new patients) are greeted and introduced whether virtually or in person in your practice. This is not haphazard, not when you have time, not if you aren’t on the phone, and not only when it’s convenient. Every single time.
Every team member should be able to meaningfully and specifically explain to your patients why you do what you do and believe what you believe. I call it the Pillars of Health but you can have your own label.
Here are a few words that I recommend including: optimal, proactive, preventative, complete, and comprehensive. Then you qualify and describe this based on your clinical philosophy.
Far too many practices are incredibly general with their schedule approach even when they supposedly have a specific method they want to follow. It’s literally a wandering mess in the office with disorganized patient flow due to a lack of discipline on the schedule. The schedule must not only be engineered with intent but actually executed with patients with the time comes.
Next up are your visits. Where each should be laid out minute by minute, unit of time by unit of time. Everyone must know who does what and what happens when and so on and so forth. If there is a question, handle it in the Morning Huddle. If there are no questions, why would there ever be any discrepancy or inconsistency in the execution of a patient’s visit.
I always say that you can be more flexible with time when you are more organized with it. If you want to talk longer to someone or you have treatment plan opportunities or they have a lot of questions, adjustments can be made because you began with meaningful specific visit control from the start.
The deal is simple: professionals work to the clock while still having authentic patient relationships, creating meaningful moments, and executing effective experiences to achieve the most important goals of health and case acceptance.
Now, because this one could be a dozen by itself and a year’s worth of Weekly Reports, I will just say it is vital that you have an understanding in your practice about the meaningfully specific communication with patients and with each other.
This undermines every other effort in a practice even more so than weak links or personal problems brought in by team members or poor attitudes – it’s wandering, general communication.
It is the most significant destruction of time, opportunity, potential, treatment, and success.
Then you can get even more specific when I talked about Triangles of Trust just last week. Again, specifically what is the protocol, how are they to be executed, and between whom? Bringing all of these triangles together… what specifically must a patient have been through, ready for, notes made, discussions had – for the next team member(s) in the sequence?
On the back end, what is the reliably concrete and meaningfully specific way that “pathways to health” (treatment plans) are diagnosed, created, presented, collected, and scheduled?
Does everyone know it and does it happen every single time? Who is the culprit who is breaking apart the state of ideal? While it is different for every patient in terms of the treatment, it should not be different in principle of the process because the goal is the same every time: not just wandering generalities but meaningfully specific case acceptance that facilitates and makes possible the growth structure of the practice.
This results in a meaningfully specific method of collections and, if you must have them, whatever type of financial structure – always with a priority for full pre-payment and then some partial pre-payment with tight collections on the back end.
We finish with meaningfully specific follow-up protocols and tracking. Most of which is at best wandering around done once in a while and generally without any strategic plan to be used to move the practice forward to its potential. Everything relies on the back end for growth to even occur, given the real limitations of time, people, and capacity.
You get to decide whether you will just accept what wandering and general take-whatever-you-can-get practice will give you. Or, on the other hand, you can use this as a guide to create a battle plan not just for expectations but for actual tactical execution to create a whatever-you-want practice.
You will discover what a patient experience brought to life by you and your team through meaningful specifics can achieve and reach your fullest potential in purpose, passion, and profits.
To Be Continued…
