The greatest dental marketing tool of your practice is to RUN ON TIME. Patients expect to be seen on time in order to stay loyal, accept treatment plans and refer their friends. If your practice runs behind consistently, see below what we have discovered from our experience as dental practice consultants, are the main obstacles that can be overcome to prevent RUNNING LATE:
- No morning huddle for the team to review the schedule
- Starting late at the beginning of the day or after lunch
- Administrative team not aware of when patients arrive
- Over waiting for Hygiene exams and DDS only doing one at a time
- Practice is on 15 minute units as oppose to 10 minutes
- Emergency patients being true emergencies.
- NO plan or system for lab work to be present on day of delivery
- Operatory and trays NOT set up when patient enters
- Doing full last minute treatment on emergency patients as opposed care with follow up
- Providers adding unexpected procedures to schedule at the last minute
- Doing the entire appointment procedure on late patients
- Dr. and Team: phones during work hours, personal phone calls, emails, sales people, etc.
- Lack of expanded duties delegation to dental assistants.
- Lack of communication at check out from the clinical team to the administrative office
- Dr. unable to move from room to room efficiently—overly focused on one patient
- Dr. not delegating to team to communicate and explain treatment
- LARGE TREATMENT PLANS being done chairside as opposed to inviting the patient back for consult
- No treatment coordinator to handle larger procedures (for acceptance and financials)
- Improper time scheduling–set up, doctor, assistant, decontamination
- Dr. scheduled opposite doctor—he/she can only be one place at a time!
- Improper delegation–doctor should be doing only what the doctor can do and the assistant should be doing everything she can that is allowed by law.
- proper training of business team on how to organize and pre block schedule
- No detail in the appointment book –name, detailed procedure, phone numbers, code.
- Improper staffing –one auxiliary for each treatment room scheduled.
Discover how our Capacity Training modules can help your practice run more efficiently. https://tgnapracticemanagement.com/training_categories/capacity-modules/
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