Hulk Hogan always said, “Say your prayers and take your vitamins.”
The obvious one you are used to, “Brush and floss after every meal.”
The question is…what should be happening every day in your Practice?
What are your daily success habits that drive your team’s performance?
Today’s huddle is far more profound than what you may realize. It’s not hard to have protocols that say, ‘turn on the lights, power up the computers and equipment, set up the rooms…check the mail, post the payments, make the confirmation calls’.
All of these are routine, common sense even.
Yet it’s so often that the actions required to make real impact in your days and with your patients are overlooked, end up being the last thing to get done. Ultimately it results in missing opportunities and making things harder than they should be.
And worse, we can fall into the trap of being too busy and we miss our responsibility of creating dentistry and putting more production in the schedule every day than what we have just taken out.
For the team, they get caught up in the visit and the busyness of the schedule; for the leader, manager, doctor we get caught up in the details or admin or what everyone should be doing and we miss the gaps where we are losing opportunity.
For example, just last week one of my smartest Practice Operators said during a Team Training Call I was conducting that she questioned how many Treatment Plans were coming out of hygiene.
She said they were averaging 3…yep…only 3 per day coming out of Hygiene. That would be a very lazy performance for 1 hygienist…they have 3 hygienist and the point of her bringing it up is because she knew it was pathetic.
You can’t possibly do any dentistry, build a productive schedule, or otherwise create any momentum, progress, value out of a day without 3 treatments plans per hygienist per day.
At the very least it should be one per every two patients, though, there is reason to argue every patient should leave with some type of treatment plan.
Next week I will give you the solution to this, which if you embrace it and take it as seriously as you should, you could very well double your daily scheduled treatment simply by fixing this problem.
It is a problem because the entire point of the hygiene visit is to make patients healthy and move them forward with their overall oral health.
Back to the point of this week’s message: what should happen every day…
Here’s the big three:
#1 – Prepare for tomorrow, screen and assess existing treatment plans, call all new patients, ensure the day is organized.
#2 – Check, verify, create strategy for the schedule at least one week (if not two weeks, three weeks, even four weeks) out – always reviewing and ensuring the value driven ‘magic number’ goal is being pieced together effectively.
#3 – Every day ends with every patient accounted for, every column in the schedule added up, treatment plans assessed, and team members’ performance checked.
Each department should have a team leader, whether you have one person or 5 people in this department. They are responsible for the way these 3 things impact their days. You must leave time in the schedule to prepare it’s the only way you can expect professional results and accountability.
Think of your schedule like a bank account; at the end of every day you are balancing the check book, matching up your goals, patients, treatment plans, closed and scheduled treatment, and then getting ready for tomorrow.
As the Practice Champion and person in a leadership position who is reading this (or as the Doctor) it’s essential your daily expectations include these 3 critical factors of success.
1 – Patient Preparation
2 – Proactive Schedule Control
3 – Performance Review and Statistics
This is the only way to manage and ensure you achieve your goals. You have to break them down daily and course correct accordingly.
Treatment plans out of Hygiene daily.
New Patient phone calls and confirmed scheduled appointments daily.
Consults, expanded treatment plans, condition specific treatment cultivated daily.
Reactivation of treatment daily.
If you really look at the key leverage points of your daily success, you will undoubtedly see specific areas of opportunity and improvement but you have to be willing to break them down and really look at them.
The more often you look at, write down, think about, focus on and act upon your goals – the more likely you are to achieve them, surpass them, and be ready for the next ones. If you are really serious about this – I would not let a day go by without checking in on these and making sure you are setting yourself, your team, and your patients up for success by following these 3 critical daily habits and team performance factors.
This ought to give you something to think about. Next week: step-by-step, airtight systems you can implement for your daily success.
