There is ONE catalyst above all others that will have the single greatest impact on your Practice’s profitability and ability to actualize the vision you ultimately have. Whatever that vision is…as long as it has something to do with making patients healthy, diagnosing more comprehensive real life-changing dentistry and achieving acceptance on the type of treatment you want to do; and therefore have a thriving, successful, win-for-everybody practice model that captures the essence of what burns inside of you and you have always dreamt possible.
One thing. Just do this…
Are you ready… I said it get’s crazy this week.
S S S L L L O O O O O O O W W W W
D D O O O O O O W W W W N N N
Slow. Down. Slow down…
With your Patient conversations on the phone.
With your Patient welcome, greetings, interviews pre-exam.
With your actual in-operatory Patient Experience and Exam.
With your Doctor Exam, diagnosis, fact finding, emotional engagement, dialogue.
With your Treatment Conference, Presentation, Financial discussions.
Think about it this way: Patients are already anxious, they are already waiting for an appointment, sitting in your reception area, waiting in the chair, and then every interaction with a human being in your practice is the SHORTEST amount of time they spend inside the four walls of your Practice.
We rush to get them in for an appointment.
We rush to get them through their paperwork.
We rush to get them back to a room.
We rush to go through their x-rays, pictures, exam.
We rush to go through their diagnosis.
We rush to go through their exit, treatment plan, money.
We rush to get them through Hygiene.
We rush to get them back in to get things done.
Everything matches the rest of their life, rush, rush, rush.
No trust can be built, no comfort can be hand, no rapport established, and no relationship created.
Don’t fool yourself. If you switched places you’d feel rushed. At the very least it can be better, improved, more deliberate.
Here’s the good news: while – YES – You should work to spend more time with your New Patients and BE part of the experience… YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO IT ALL.
In fact, if you slow down on other parts of the Patient Experience, it takes the pressure off the doctor and the patient won’t feel the haste in the process.
I’m always finding Dentists wanting to cut down on the time of their New Patient Appointments and condense everything, so by the time you do that there’s nothing productive, effective, important, or of any great significance that can ever be had.
YOU do not have to be in the room with them. YOUR schedule should not be blocked for New Patient appointments, only the time when you are in with the New Patient. You should have this down seamlessly. There are countless things you can place in your productive column that your assistants can be doing so you aren’t stressed, rushed, OR unproductive during the 60-90 minutes you have allocated in a separate column for your New Patient appointments.
While every patient matters, we all know that the greatest opportunity and the most important visits of the day are those who are arriving for the first time, because of everything I’ve said here today and all of the emails before this one.
Now, I prefer you practice a philosophy of EVERY patient is treated like a new patient… in terms of service, appreciation, WOWing them and really making them feel special and …SLOWING DOWN with all of them, to create a memorable experience.
I DID NOT say ‘SLOW DOWN your Dentistry’. The reality is this, when you slow down with Patients, you get more dentistry and then you can create a schedule that’s not insanity – not filled with lots of patients, but filled with profits. You just have to break the cycle you are in of constant desperation for production.
All you have to do is slow down with your Patient interaction, experience, dialogue (the human side), not clinical side of their relationship with you. This is why you have a team. And I get so tired of hearing about expenses. So many Dentists try to save their way poor in their practice because they are so cheap with their patient experience and their teams are destroying any opportunity to generate consistently larger cases, greater case acceptance, and sky rocket the profitability of your Practice.
Take me seriously on this. It will change your life, your teams perspective and above all else the patient outcomes you get. You will see, the more time taken to cultivate the relationship and the treatment with the patient, the larger your cases will be and the more acceptance you’ll expedite.
Your homework is very simple. Sit down with your team and talk through this. Where do we rush, cut corners, push the patient along…what, who, and how can we improve this and truly make a wowing experience for the patient by slowing down each step of the process to create a engaging, trusting, exciting new patient treatment acceptance and BUYING environment for them.
This is crazy stuff and it’s going to make an incredible difference for you. Yes I know some of the patients don’t have any money and won’t ever accept anything. Two things I’ll say to that – one, use common sense and my very specific screening protocols that I teach…and two, stop worrying about the ones you don’t want and start building a practice for the ones you do.
Here’s my advice…take responsibility.
I hear all the time “my patients don’t have any money, they only accept small treatment” blah blah blah and then when I look at their treatment plans and go over their presented options to patients they are pathetic. You’d think a kid interested in dentistry whose never practiced before made these treatment plans, instead of veteran dentist …90% of the time it’s you who isn’t giving the patient a chance to buy what they want, instead of thinking it’s the patient who has the problem.
Why… Because you are rushed. And that’s not good for anyone.
Slow Down and watch your profits, treatment acceptance, and large cases speed up! Now go get ‘em.
