Dental Tribune U.S. Edition

By Sally McKenzie, CEO Feel like you’re swirling the drain? I shudder when dentists say to me, “I just don’t know what I would do without ‘so-and-so,’ she just makes this place run.” Dentists who allow this to happen are setting themselves up for economic, professional and personal catastrophe. That may sound like high drama, and it is. I’ve seen it happen in too many practices too many times. The last thing you want is a situation in which your professional success or failure is contingent upon the actions of one employee. Every practice must have systems in place to ensure that the business is not dependent on any one person. Specificity is essential to success in every dental practice. The old “everyone does everything” doesn’t work in today’s demanding work- place. Certainly, you need cross train- ing, backup systems and protocols so that other staff members can step in when necessary. However, individual employees need to know what is expected of them individually. For example, let’s look at patient retention. There is no industry stan- dard for patient retention, but the dentist can and should set his/her own goal for this. The practice should begin by measuring how many patients it’s losing each month. From there, you can evaluate the various systems that directly affect patient retention, such as recall, and estab- lish realistic goals to improve them. Collections are another example. The goal should be a 98 percent col- lection rate. Case acceptance should be at 85 percent; hygiene should produce 33 percent of practice pro- duction; 85 percent of emergency patients should be converted to com- prehensive exam; and the schedule should have fewer than 0.5 hygiene openings per day. Recall is commonly among the weakest systems in practices that are struggling, but unscheduled treat- ment typically doesn’t come any- where near passing the “effective- ness test” either. Take advantage of practice-man- agement system reports that are read- ily available, including the unsched- uled treatment reports. These allow you to see who has unscheduled treatment in the files. In actuality, the unscheduled treatment report is documentation of revenues waiting to be tapped. With this information in hand, the objective is to get patients back in the practice. This may require a para- digm shift of sorts for your schedul- ing coordinator because instead of being reactive, it requires that he/she be proactive. However, don’t send him/her out to line up production without a clear and specific plan of action and a well- developed script to guide him/her in talking to patients. Please remember: this isn’t the sole responsibility of the business staff. As patients return for hygiene appointments, it is essential that both the hygienist and the dentist remind them of the importance of pursuing treatment that has been diagnosed but not delivered. In addition, take a close look at the production by provider report each month. This shows the number of each type of procedure performed over a specified period of time. Your business assistant should run this year-to-date report every month for each dentist and hygienist, so they can determine how their production compares with the same period of time last year, as well as with produc- tion goals that have been established for this year. According to the industry stan- dard, 33 percent of hygiene produc- tion should be derived from peri- odontal therapy, specifically the 4,000 insurance codes, such as #4910 and #4341. Moreover, take a close look at your clinical efficiency. We find that many dentists get up from their chair numerous times during patient pro- cedures, or have their assistants leave the treatment room to retrieve items that should have been set up in the first place. Clinical time and motion studies reveal three more reasons for pro- duction shortfalls: 1) slow treatment room turnaround; 2) underutilization of chairside assistants; and 3) poor planning for armentaria and proce- dural protocols. In addition, consider new treat- ment services. Practices that are struggling are likely doing what they’ve always done, i.e., crowns, fillings and prophys year after year. Dentists who are doing interceptive perio, endodontics, veneers, bleach- ing and implants not only expand Practice Matters DENTAL TRIBUNE | January 20114A AD g DT page 6A