Dear Doctors and Team,
We have some very exciting news that has transpired since our SPRING issue of DYNAMIC DATA. In April, Dr. Rhonda Savage, one of our most successful clients from 1993-94, called to say she has just had her third shoulder surgery and can’t practice clinical dentistry. She is already a sought-after speaker so it made sense to her to offer to buy our company versus spending four years in law school which was another option. Our closing was last Friday, and we are very excited about our new growth with Rhonda at the helm of LLM&A as the new CEO.
I will still be lecturing until 2010 and helping Rhonda move our small company to a whole new level. Lee Tarvin who has been with our company for 24 years will remain as Seminar Coordinator and Executive Director of the east and west coast divisions. Rhonda’s husband, Jim will be handling the products division. Rhonda and I will team up to do four two-day workshops beginning in late 2007. We will all be lecturing at major meetings and for local associations. When you have a happy seller and happy buyer, the sky’s the limit as to how far a company can go.
One of the best experiences of my 29 years in business was working with Roger Hill on the LLM&A transition. Over the years, I sent Roger many clients who always called to thank me for their very positive experience. A few even sent me thank you gifts! He immediately came to my mind when I knew something of this magnitude needed professional and expert advice. Dr. Jonathan Bregman of Durham, NC, a 25 year LLM&A and Roger Hill client and I were talking one day when he encouraged me to contact Roger that day due to his own recent successful transition. Roger and his entire staff along with Blake Hassan, attorney with John McGill and Associates (all in Roger’s building), did an awesome job in a very short period of time. We continue to highly recommend them for your transition needs.
If you are a LLM&A client of the past, be expecting a call from Rhonda within the next five to six months. If you are in need of a follow up consultation, please call our toll-free number (800-922-0866) soon to reserve a day or two in the remaining five months of 2007. Our team of consultants, Rhonda Savage, Char Sweeney of MI and Susan Kulakowski of FL will be consulting with ten clients each during the next five months. In order for us to be 100% dedicated to our active clients, we limit the number of clients we work with. To be one of these lucky practices, please respond sooner than later for follow up as their schedules are filling for this year. I will be working with my active clients until their twelve-month agreement expires. After that, I will limit my own consulting to four days per year.
The most disturbing obstacles we have seen the past few years in our consulting assignments have been:
- 1) The shortage of well-trained clinical assistants to hit the ground running in a very well run practice.
2) The hidden hygiene department production losses and the task of making each practice know that when hygiene grows, the entire practice grows. 21st century hygiene is nothing like the “prophy palaces” of the 80’s.
3) The lack of leadership skills by the dentists and upper management (the practice administrator). Leading by example means the dentist lives in a glass house. They lead by example! All team members will be as loyal to the practice as the dentist. And… the team learns to be a great role model by watching the dentist.
4) The 3rd grade pettiness and whining of some team members working against one another. Dentists are too busy taking care of patients and running a business to have to also deal with inner-office conflicts. Our greatest reward is having a client say, “after the consultant left, our work environment was the difference in night and day. Now everyone is spotlighting the others’ strengths rather than putting a microscope on their co-workers weaknesses.”
5) Scheduling and patient flow that isn’t smooth. Practices that run behind all day are stressed to the max. Knowing how to engineer the day versus throwing names on the computer screen and hoping to go to lunch at some point is not the productive or sane way to schedule. Most of these frustrations are a result of everyone at the desk doing everything…so no one is fully accountable for the schedule. It’s easy to pass the buck regarding inefficiencies without defined duties and accountability in both the scheduling and the financial/insurance positions. Ironically, when the front office becomes smooth, the clinical division flows like silk.
6) Patients who are walking out without scheduling their recommended treatment plan. This is a very serious problem some dentists don’t want to admit they have. Most of these problems result in weak presentation skills of dentists and team members. About 70% of these treatment plans fall apart in the financial discussions.
These are just a few of the areas of concern our consultants can help with. Having revisits in consulting is like having a continuation of hygiene visits to stay orally healthy. You can’t have a consultation in 1995 and expect continued growth or smoothness ten to fifteen years later. If your practice misses the overall excitement when great results are happening month after month, contact us to schedule a time for a follow-up visit.
SOLUTIONS
- # 1-Dentists ask: What’s out there to provide updated skills for my clinical assistants? Believe it or not, there are many hands-on courses and also clinical assisting consultants who can come to you. One in my own area is Shannon Pace, who teaches at the Dawson Center and gives courses across the country and locally in Chesapeake, VA. Her telephone number is 757-757-647-4114. Her email address is: shannonpace@aol.com.
The ADAA also has online courses, as does Sullivan Schein for purposes of training assistants. If your dental assistants do not belong to the ADAA, encourage them to join by offering to pay their nominal (less than $200 per year) membership dues. The turning point in many dental assistants’ careers, (including mine), was belonging to their local state and national dental assisting associations. Networking with other professionals allows one to know they have a career, not just a job. This also reduces staff turnover in the assisting department.
Pennwell Publishers has a new annual meeting held for moving the role of clinical assisting to a whole new level. See Dental Economics or RDH magazine for the dates and times of these annual dental assistant conventions. School in NEVER out for the pro! “When we stop learning, we stop growing”.
#2-On our monthly practice monitors the graph of success is obvious when the hygiene department becomes the true passive income center it is supposed to be. Eliminating broken appointments through improved communication of everyone in the practice is about a 20% increase in most hygiene departments. Having a hygiene consultant come into the practice to bring the department to the 21st century has doubled many hygiene departments of our clients over the past four years. We refer to those hygiene consultants in our Speaking Consulting Network www.speakingconsultingnetwork.com. Call these hygienists directly or call our toll-free number if this is something your practice needs.
#3-There are very few courses in dentistry that apply to the leadership role of doctors, spouses and practice administrators. So many times dentists have said to me, “I know I lost many great employees over the years due to my lack of knowledge in how to hire, train, trust and praise my team. They received little (if any) feedback from me and eventually left. If only someone taught me how to be a boss!”
Dental spouses were often asked to come into the practice temporarily to get the practice started. No one really trained them how to run a dental practice, much less how to one day train their successor in the key management role of practice administrator. In 2004, we started our annual two-day PAW (Practice Administrator Workshop) for dentists who need to know how to be an effective leader, for dental spouses to bring their successors so they can finally be trained along with the practice administrator, and for the PA who has the title but no real tools to know how to do the job effectively. The PA may also not have the respect and support from the rest of the team because no one taught them leadership skills for this very important role. Our next course is going to be February 8-9 in sunny FL, hotel and city being selected this month. Since this course has limited attendance of 100 people for better group interaction, please call Lee at 800-922-0866 to pre-register now with the confirmations going in the mail in early September. It would be great to see all of you there….
#4-Third grade pettiness. Any dental management consultant can fix systems problems but we are of the mind-set that if that consulting company does not also “fix” the attitudes of the people within the practice, it is not long before the systems collapse and fall into the same mediocrity as before. We too are referred to practices because we normally have 25-40% increase in productivity with better systems such as scheduling and reduction of broken appointments through effective communication to name a couple areas we fix. What our firm is MOST referred to is the fact that we have the ability to see the good in all team members. We give them the tools, but more importantly empower them to become the best of the best. We teach them the importance of becoming their doctor’s head cheerleader to patients. Over the course of our year of consulting follow-up calls each month, we become their head cheerleader when we see results in their department. Just like a weight loss program that one has to keep track of what they eat and how often they exercise…with someone else monitoring that success, it works! Having someone (other than the boss) nudge gently when things aren’t going as planned and praising the team when they reach their goals, makes all the difference in month-by-month success.
As I look at retirement from the consulting end of my business one day, I know the part I will miss most is the monthly monitors to see immediately how that client is doing. I’ll also miss talking with them once per month and emailing them at midnight after a day on the phone….but Rhonda, Char and Susan are filling that void as they too keep me abreast of their clients and how our model continues to make a huge difference in the lives of dentists, their teams and most of all their patients.
#5-Defining the check in and the check out positions of the administrative area is one of the most difficult to do when the team “likes doing it all”. We estimate that the front desk team loses about two hours of their production time each day talking back and forth to fill the other person in when BOTH do everything. In a multi dentist office, there can be four or five doing everything, which is like a three ring circus to watch. Until the left hand knows what the right hand has done, is doing, or plans to do, chaos prevails. With defined duties, one person (the Scheduling Coordinator) concentrates on greeting patients warmly, answering the incoming calls (lines one and two) and engineering the day. This person has about 97 other duties but these are their three main and most important duties. The Scheduling Coordinator’s main duty is to keep a warm body in each chair each hour of the day. They also know how to fill openings in the schedule the minute after one occurs using their pending file, not moving already scheduled patients!
The check out person (Financial Coordinator), presents the fees, goes over the insurance and financial options, collects money at the time of service and posts treatment (unless it is done chairside), posts the payments, balances the day sheet and follows up on all past due accounts. With both overlapping these duties, there is constant talking and the clinical team can only guess who to take their patients to for checkout procedures….it is normally to the one who looks the least stressed at that moment! This is NOT how to run the administrative side of a dental practice.
There are four types of flextime that must be left in a very busy schedule. Otherwise the practice is going to always run behind and lose patients who can’t get in for hygiene, emergencies, as a new patient or for their half-day dental procedure. These and other systems are clearly outlined in our two-day DBC (Dental Business Conference). These exciting conferences are held in three locations in late 2007 and 2008. It is highly recommended that the doctor not SEND the team, but BRING the entire team to one of these DBCs. Management today is a total team effort. Call Lee at 800-922-0866 to pre-register for the LasVegas, NV DBC November 30-December 1. 2007; Myrtle Beach, SC June 13-14, 2008 or Branson, MO October 17-18, 2008. The two-day DBC is also available to meeting planners. The Holiday Dental Conference in Charlotte, NC is our first meeting-sponsored DBC. This is November 9-10 this year (2007). Limited attendance means all these courses will fill up quickly, so plan now for the one you and your team can attend to make 2008 your BEST YEAR ever. I will personally be giving these courses along with Rhonda Savage in our personally sponsored ones for 2007 and 2008. The DBC is available in 12 DVDs or CD version for in-office training. The two-day PAW is available in CD form. These can be ordered online at www.DentalManagementU.com or by calling 800-922-0866.
#6-Improving the new patient experience has been one of our most sought after parts of our seminars and consulting. Congruency among everyone’s communication is key. Also strong patient education on the benefit to the patient, and sound financial arrangements presented by a competent Financial Coordinator is the difference in night and day results. I am truly amazed at how many dentists tell me that they only offer CareCredit on SOME cases not ALL. What they really mean is that they are willing to lose 100% of the case versus 4.9% to have this wonderful service presented on ALL cases to ALL patients. If the practice already offers a 5% cash courtesy, in reality if the CareCredit amount is 9.9, it is only costing the dentist 4.9% to use the best thing that has happened in dentistry in my 45 years (patient financing).
Here’s hoping you and yours will have a very wonderful rest of summer. Enjoy your children and grandchildren….they grow up very FAST. It seems that only yesterday our two granddaughters were born. Taylor is going to be 17 in December and Jordan is soon to be 13. Don and I leave today for the Internet Dental Forum 12 day European Cruise and four days in Rome. The best part of our vacation is we are taking our granddaughters with us for a once in a lifetime experience.
Please email us with questions or just to say hello. We love hearing from our Dynamic Data readers and clients. Dr. Rhonda Savage’s email is rsavage@harbornet.com, Char Sweeney’s email is csweeneyph@aol.com, Susan Kulakowski’s email is sueziqk@msn.com, Lee Tarvin’s email is leetarvin@cox.net and mine is lindamiles@cox.net.
Sincerely,
Linda Miles and Team