Dental Tribune U.S. Edition

Practice Matters DENTAL TRIBUNE | January 20116A • There are no established training protocols when business staff is hired. • No production goals, collections goals or scheduling goals have been established, or they are unclear at best. • The practice does not use system performance measurements or it measures some systems but not all. • The team does not know how to measure specific systems or how to evaluate the success or failure of each one. • Job descriptions, if they exist, are unclear. Multiple staff members are “responsible” for multiple sys- tems, so instead of accountabil- ity, there is finger pointing when things go wrong. • Holes in the schedule and no- their patient base and improve their production, but they also renew their professional enthusiasm for dentistry. While we are all well aware of the current economic conditions, that doesn’t mean that you disregard your fees and the time you spend on pro- cedures. It’s essential to calculate your production per hour (PPH) along with a PPH analysis of every proce- dure you offer. This is much easier to determine than many realize. Take the amount of your fee for a specific procedure; divide that by the amount of time it takes to perform the procedure. That number is your production per minute. Now multiply the production per minute number by 60 minutes. That number is your production per hour. Each year you should analyze comparable fees in your area and evaluate if yours are in line. Remem- ber: you don’t want to be the cheapest or the most expensive dentist in the neighborhood. Review practice numbers every month. This allows you to spot trends — patterns that continue for three months or longer — and make adjust- ments. The key is to pay attention, and when you see the signs that the financial tide is turning, take action. When production, profits and/or progress seem to have stopped or slowed, there are likely more than a few issues causing the situation, such as: • Business staff turnover is common in the practice. shows are common. • No one follows up with patients who have unscheduled treatment. • Unscheduled treatment is not tracked. • The clinical team has never evalu- ated its clinical efficiency and does not know how to do so. • Fees are seldom reviewed or com- pared to similar practices in the area. • Services have not been expanded in some time. • The practice has no established vision or goals. • Practice profits are suffering and the dentist is stressed. Each of the points above is inter- dependent on the next. For example, staff turnover may be a major prob- lem because there are no clear job descriptions. Perhaps the employee is trying desperately to figure things out as he/she goes along because there are no training protocols in place. Practice profits are suffering because there are no clear goals established for production, collec- tions or scheduling, merely vague directives from the dentist. If you do not have specific expecta- tions of a particular system, you can- not communicate those expectations to your employees. It should come as no surprise then that the employee doesn’t quite know what to deliver. Once an employee has been given the necessary training and tools and understands how the expectation for a particular system fits into the prac- tice goals, he/she can be expected to deliver accordingly on your expecta- tions. Most importantly, your systems will be consistently working for you, not against you. DT AD f DT page 4A About the author Sally McKenzie is CEO of McKenzie Management, which provides success-proven man- agement solutions to dental prac- titioners nationwide. She is also editor of The Dentist’s Network Newsletter at www.the dentist- snetwork.net; the e-Management Newsletter from www.mcken- ziemgmt.com; and The New Den- tist™ magazine, www.thenewd- entist.net. She can be reached at (877) 777-6151 or sallymck @mckenziemgmt.com.