Data breaches are a very real threat to healthcare providers such as dentists. You have to ensure that your dental practice has the proper dental IT solutions and cybersecurity procedures in place to adhere to PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) principles and prevent data breaches.
The need for cybersecurity in the healthcare industry
More and more dental practices and other healthcare businesses are being targeted by cyber criminals:
Many hackers target small dental offices because they think small businesses don’t have the proper security software or firewalls in place.
Your dental practice is a wealth of patient data, which means you have to take the proper cybersecurity precautions to make sure that you are adhering to PIPEDA principles and your patient data doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
Digital dental practices
In the last few years, dental practices have taken a huge step towards digitizing their businesses and utilizing the internet to improve patient care and centralize dental data.
Storing patient information in the cloud has its benefits:
Automatic backup
Access is available anytime, anywhere
Patient data can be securely shared between practices
Dental practices are vulnerable to security threats and data breaches if proper precautions are not taken. Stolen patient data can be sold on the DarkWeb, resulting in identity theft, fraud, blackmail, and other criminal activities. Hackers may deny you access to the data they stole through ransomware and extort your practice for money.
The consequences to your dental practice include not only time and money spent on crisis management and data recovery, but also potential lawsuits from patients, brand and reputation damage, and loss of important patient information. In the end, you are on the line for any potential data breaches.
Adhering to PIPEDA principles in dental practices
PIPEDA was put into effect on January 1, 2004 and is comprised of ten PIPEDA principles:
This Canadian act ensures the safe collection and storage of personal data that all businesses, including dental practices, need to comply with. Personal data includes name, age, address, phone number, email, weight, height, health information, medical history, income, blood type, marital status, and much more. While PIPEDA is applicable to all Canadian businesses, there are also additional privacy acts to adhere to. Read more about the privacy and security requirements on data for each province.
Every dental practice needs to ensure that their patient data is securely stored. Below are two crucial tips in ensuring your dental practice adheres to PIPEDA principles.
Train employees to mitigate security risks
Data has shown that human error is commonly the cause of data breaches and that the actions of healthcare employees cause 3x as many breaches as external attacks. Without the proper training, employees could be putting your entire practice at risk.
Restrict access to personal email accounts and non-work-related websites
Discourage joining public or unsecured Wi-Fi networks
Require passwords for any device used for the dental practice in case it’s lost or stolen
Choose strong passwords
Set user permissions for different roles
Educate staff on the latest cyber threats
Outline a response plan so the team knows what to do in the event of an attack
Avoid disclosing private contact or treatment information over the phone or email – instead, use encrypted communication methods, such as encrypted email, to protect sensitive patient data
Implement security features
There are a few dental IT solutions that you should put in place to help ensure you have the proper foundation set up to prevent security breaches.
Install anti-virus and anti-malware software for all of your devices
Set up VPN (virtual private network)
Always update your web browser, software, and operating system
Encrypt data transmitted to insurance companies, labs, and other practices
Automate the encryption of your production and backup hard drives with appropriate security hardware
ClearDent helps you stay fully compliant with both provincial and federal regulations. Our dental software comes with automatic software updates, transfers data securely, and is both encrypted and password protected to meet industry data security guidelines. See how we can help you manage your cybersecurity. Sign up for a demo today.
85% of people consider online reviews just as trustworthy as a recommendation from someone they know. According to Zendesk, 90% of people are influenced by positive online reviews and 86% by negative reviews. Online research has become a major factor in people’s decision making, and online dental clinic reviews are no exception to this growing trend.
Positive dental clinic reviews are crucial
Patient reviews of dentists, in particular positive ones, will help grow your clinic. Good comments for dentists and clinics are what entice new patients and persuade others to switch dentists. It’s your best form of free advertising – people trust reviews because you can’t pay for them. They’re honest accounts of other people’s experiences.
Positive dental reviews also help your search engine rankings. Search engines like Google are constantly making changes to their algorithms to show the best results. Positive dental reviews tell Google that your clinic is highly recommended, and it will in turn rank you higher.
Considering how impactful they are, a strategy around online dental reviews is important as part of your overall dental marketing plan.
Getting dental clinic reviews
Before you even think about online reviews, you have to make sure you’re providing excellent dental service that would encourage patients to leave a positive review. This includes friendly service, a convenient omnichannel experience, and a well-managed dental schedule.
[Find out how ClearDent helps you provide excellent customer service – book a demo today]
Make sure your dental clinic is listed on the main review sites so that patients can leave dentist reviews if they feel like:
But it’s important to keep in mind that most patients won’t leave dentist reviews unless it requires minimal effort. Below are some ways you can make it easy for patients to leave a review:
Add a link to one of the review sites on your website
Include a link in your email signature
Send an email campaign asking for feedback and reviews
Send a snail-mail request with the link
Send patients a follow-up text two days after the appointment
Always respond to reviews
Getting reviews is only one part of it; you have to actively monitor and respond as well. How you respond to reviews affects your clinic reputation.
If it was a positive dental review, thank your patients. When you respond to reviews it tells both current and prospective patients that by taking the time to craft a response, you care about them. If your team has the bandwidth, you should be responding to all dental clinic reviews.
Yes, even negative reviews
Unfortunately, negative dental clinic reviews are unavoidable. The good news is that if you only had 5-star reviews, it tends to come across as unrealistic and patients may think that you purchased reviews.
No one is perfect 100% of the time. The important thing is to respond to patients and try to turn the experience into a positive one. Negative dental clinic reviews provide you with invaluable feedback about your clinic; every negative review is a learning experience and an opportunity to improve clinic processes.
When responding to dental clinic reviews, especially negative ones, it’s extremely important to keep all federal and provincial privacy laws in mind. These laws are in place to ensure that you do not violate patient privacy. Dentists are not allowed to respond in a way that exposes patient information or even acknowledge the individual was at their clinic without the patient’s written consent. So while a patient can share details about their appointment and the dentist or clinic, you cannot respond with any information specific to that patient.
While you have to take extra precautions to make sure you’re adhering to privacy laws, it’s crucial to respond. Sometimes you may not be able to change the mind of the patient who wrote the review, but its public nature means that many current and potential patients are watching how you respond. Your responses can influence their decision on whether or not to do, or continue doing, business with you.
You can mitigate negative reviews with these tips:
Exercise empathy: Patients who wrote a negative review are not happy. When you express empathy by showing you understand where they’re coming from, it goes a long way to assuage their frustration.
Show a willingness to address their problem: If and where possible, let them know that you’ll be looking into the issue they brought up.
Don’t take it personally: It can be hard not to feel attacked when reading negative reviews but it’s important to take these as chances to improve your clinic. Wait at least a day before responding to the negative review so that you have a chance to cool down.
Own up to the mistake: If it is a legitimate complaint, avoid acting defensive or pointing fingers. It doesn’t resolve anything and casts your clinic in a bad light. Apologize that they didn’t have a great experience and offer to reach out to the patient personally to address the problem.
Use the right tone: When responding to reviews, avoid using a lecturing or patronizing tone and don’t use technical jargon that your patients may not understand.
Keep it short: Avoid going back and forth in an online argument with the patient. It doesn’t reflect well to have that type of discussion in such a public forum and will likely violate privacy laws. If the response requires further follow up, take it offline and offer to contact the patient directly.
Using online reviews to grow your clinic include asking for and responding to them. Responding to reviews—whether good or bad—could win you new patients and increase patient retention.
See how ClearDent can help you gather reviews through automation – Book a demo today
No matter how well you plan your dental schedule, dental emergencies are inevitable. At some point or another, every dental clinic has to deal with last-minute requests for emergency appointments. To help keep your dental clinic running smoothly, you need to implement dental triage protocols for emergency situations.
There are two important things to consider when dealing with dental emergency triage: questions and scheduling.
1. Dental Emergency Triage Questions
While you should try your best to accommodate patients, it’s simply not possible to fit in every patient that calls in requesting a last-minute appointment. Gathering information by asking dental emergency triage questions when patients call is an important step when handling these situations.
You have to be able to weed out an urgent dental emergency from those that are not quite as critical by asking some key questions. Focus on gathering as much information as possible to pass along to the dentist.
As part of your dental triage protocols, ask the below questions when a patient calls with a dental emergency to best plan and allocate resources for their appointment.
Dental Triage: Questions To Ask
Ask if they are a new or existing patient. If they are a new patient, you’ll have to create a new file for them so you can record the notes. If they’re an existing patient, ask for their name so you can look up their file.
Ask these questions to get to the root of what the problem is as quickly as possible and to determine the severity of the pain:
Where is the issue? Which side? Which tooth?
Is the patient currently in pain? If so, how long have they been in pain and what’s the severity of the pain?
Is the pain getting better or worse?
Is there pain to hot or cold temperatures?
Is swelling occurring?
Is the patient currently taking any medication for the pain? If so, what type of medication and what dosage?
Has there been previous dental treatment in the area?
Additional Questions for Dentures, Fractures, Crowns
It’s often helpful to ask additional questions once you’ve identified the type of dental problem. Some examples of questions to ask depending on the type of problem:
Dentures: Find out what type of denture it is, how old the denture is, and whether the patient has a spare denture
Fractures: It is on a tooth that has a crown? If it’s a crown, does it feel loose? Find out how much the tooth fractured – is there tooth left? Ask them how the fracture happened
Crowns: Ask if it’s a permanent or temporary one as well as how old it is.
Why Are Dental Triage Protocols Important?
Setting up dental triage protocols to gather the necessary information at the onset will help you assess the situation and plan accordingly. For example, asking if the patient is in pain will help you determine whether to try to get the patient in as soon as possible or when there is a better opening in the schedule.
While you’re not diagnosing the patient, these dental emergency triage questions will help give you an indication of how much time you need to allocate for the appointment. A chipped tooth, a new crown, and a tooth extraction all require different appointment lengths and preparation.
Document the information you gather during the phone call in the patient’s file so that your team has complete access to all the information they need when the patient comes in.
2. Scheduling Emergency Appointments
Once you’ve gathered the information, you’ll need to prioritize and find time to schedule an appointment for the patient.
Many clinics allocate time in their dental schedule for high-production appointments, such as root canals. In a similar fashion, consider also allocating time slots in your calendar for patient’s dental emergencies. Understanding the best way to maximize your schedule and react to emergency situations will not only help you give the appropriate care to your patients that need emergency help but also help ensure it’s done at minimal disruption to your regular patients.
After-Hours Support
In addition to responding to dental emergencies during clinic hours, make sure you have dental triage protocols in place to respond after-hours too. Many dentists are a part of a group of dentists that rotate being on-call after hours.
What To Do When Patients Call After Hours
When patients call after hours, you can craft an answering message that gives them options for after-hours care. Some dentists include their personal numbers so patients have a way to contact them or provide a number to a provincial resource such as HealthLink BC which helps both patients and dentists in BC find appropriate healthcare resources near them.
Never turn a patient away
Dentists are legally and professionally obligated to respond in the event of a dental emergency. You should never turn away a patient in pain for any reason.
It results in a bad patient experience and, these days, when patients are unhappy, they have no reservation about sharing their negative experiences on social media, hurting your dental marketing efforts.
When you try your best to treat patients with dental emergencies, it goes a long way in terms of patient retention and loyalty.
Following the footsteps of the retail and finance industries, omnichannel healthcare is gaining traction. An omnichannel dental practice results in improved patient retention, increased revenue, and streamlined processes.
What is omnichannel?
Before we delve into what an omnichannel dental practice looks like, let’s talk about what omnichannel is. In Latin, “Omni” means “all.” Essentially, an omnichannel experience is seamless and consistent across all channels. This means whether through a brick and mortar location, by phone, online, or via social media, the quality of service is always the same.
An omnichannel dental practice helps create deeper relationships at all points of the experience, improving patient retention for your dental practice.
Patients expect an omnichannel experience
Patients may not recognize that they want an omnichannel experience, but the experience they’ve come to expect is an omnichannel one.
The dental experience is no longer as straightforward as it once was. Patient touchpoints start even before they step into your practice. Patients start researching their healthcare providers online; 90% of patients will choose another provider entirely if they don’t like what they see through online research. This is why dental marketing for your practice is critical.
Reminders to patients before their appointments are a given to reduce no-shows and late cancellations. However, these days, more and more dental practices are catering to their patients and contacting them through their preferred contact method such as text message or email.
The dental experience doesn’t end when the patient leaves the practice – follow-up calls, social media posts, and email marketing are all ways to keep top-of-mind and create lasting relationships with your patients across multiple channels.
The rise of the omnichannel experience was in response to how people interact with businesses these days. Patients want their dental experience to travel across devices and channels with them. And that’s the heart of omnichannel – a great patient experience that occurs across channels but ultimately feels seamless.
In an overall omnichannel healthcare experience, mobile is becoming increasingly important. Consider this information that was found in regards to hospitals:
In a related field, like dentistry, we can expect that similar figures would be found. What this means is that a mobile-optimized website or a mobile app for your dental practice takes higher priority than ever before.
In the age of instant gratification, convenience and speed will be rewarded. Patients want their healthcare interactions to be fast and easy.
Answer the phone within three rings or returning a patient’s missed call immediately
Accommodate patients’ busy schedules by opening earlier or staying open later or on weekends
Value of an omnichannel dental practice
With an integrated dental software, you can significantly improve patient experiences at your practice and by extension, increase your revenue.
Consider this new patient experience at an omnichannel dental practice:
Booking: A patient books their appointment online
Pre-appointment: Patient receives a text message reminding them of their appointment
Check-in: They get to the office and fill out their patient information on a kiosk tablet at the front desk
X-rays: The dental assistant takes the patient’s x-rays with digital imaging technology, and the images are immediately transferred and appear on the dentist’s screen
Treatment plan: Using the x-rays, the dentist explains to the patient the proposed treatment plan
Payment: Up at the front, the office manager pulls up the treatment plan the dentist entered and lets the patient know how much the treatment will cost and how much their insurance will cover
Follow-up: Post-appointment, the patient receives an email, thanking them for their business
The experience occurs across multiple devices and involves the integration of imaging and dental practice management softwares – but all the patient experiences is a smooth appointment.
Integrated dental software can enable omnichannel experiences
To be able to offer your patients an omnichannel experience, you need an integrated dental system that has all of your patient information and dental technology in the same place.
ClearDent has everything you need working together in one convenient place:
Patient notes: Clinical notes are easily created and stored securely after signing on patient files
Documentation: Kiosks allow you to conveniently gather important patient documentation. Documents such as consent forms are generated in just a few clicks and stored securely
Insurance: Accurate statement of coverage is received from the patient’s insurance company and updated in ClearDent in seconds
Patient communication: ClearConnect is a patient communication system built directly into ClearDent for appointment confirmation, recall reminders, new patient welcome packages, real-time conversations with patients via 2-way text messaging, and more
Payments: Recurring payments for large or ongoing procedures can be set up easily
An omnichannel dental practice provides a connected experience across the entire patient journey. An integrated dental software can help you provide exceptional, omnichannel patient care, setting you apart from the competition.
ClearDent can help you offer an omnichannel patient experience
Traditional marketing is no longer cutting it and more and more clinics are turning to online dental marketing to attract new patients.
By 2020, there will be just shy of 220,000 dentists in the U.S. alone. This means patients have plenty of options when it comes to dentists so it will be that much more important for you to stand out among the crowd.
The way people conduct research these days has changed dramatically. Gone are newspaper ads and billboards. Now, patients research online before even stepping foot in a dental clinic. With 3.5 billion searches on Google a day, you can no longer afford to slack on your dental online marketing.
There are many different tactics when it comes to digital dental marketing. You can pay for online ads. You can boost your search engine rankings. You can share valuable content on social media. You can set up targeted email campaigns.
There are three main benefits when it comes to dental online marketing over traditional marketing:
Target prospective patients: With traditional marketing, you’re marketing to the masses, but with online marketing, you can customize relevant messages and deliver them at the right time to the right people.
Measure success accurately: Whether it’s click-through rates or impressions, you can track tangible and actionable results.
Gain invaluable analytics: You get important information such as audience demographics and cost per conversion that you can use to refine your marketing efforts.
The dental industry is projected to be worth around $36.8 billion by 2021 so in order for your clinic to stay competitive, you need to establish a dental marketing strategy that involves a mix of paid advertising, search engine optimization, social media, and email marketing.
Dental marketing ddvertisements
There are three different types of paid advertising: search, social, and display.
Search ads are also known as paid search, search engine marketing (SEM), or pay-per-click (PPC). They allow you to use advertising platforms, such as Google AdWords or Bing Ads, to get your content in front of people who are searching for relevant keywords. Search ads operate on a pay-per-click basis, which means that you only pay when your ad is clicked on.
Although PPC ads come at a cost, this type of online advertising is beneficial because you can control the messaging of your ads, track your campaign results, and set a maximum daily limit so you don’t go over budget.
Social advertising, also known as paid social ads, are ads on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. With social ads, you pay the social media platform to boost your posts, offers, or promotions to a targeted list, ensuring your content is seen by potential patients. By 2019, Facebook ad revenue is expected to exceed print ads.
Display ads appear in sections specifically reserved for paid advertising such as at the top or on the side of the web page.
Through Google Display Networks, display ads have a far reach across millions of websites and as a result, your ads can be seen by many potential patients.
Dental SEO
SEO stands for search engine optimization and is crucial to attracting new patients.
Dental SEO helps those looking for a dentist find your website. Good dental SEO ensures your website ranks higher in search results, ensuring people discover it. This is important because while 51% of people search Google to find a dentist, few will click past the first page of results.
To help ensure your website appears on the first page, there are a few technical SEO foundations to have in place, such as a mobile-optimized website and fast page speeds.
After you set up a foundation, you’ll have to put effort into creating keyword-rich content to increase traffic and keep visitors on your website.
Below are some tips on optimizing your content to improve your dental SEO:
Research relevant keywords that a potential patient would search
Write relevant, high-quality, and keyword-focused content on a consistent cadence
Place keywords in the right places:
Page title
Meta description
URLs
Headlines
Body copy
Image alt tags
Another tactic to improve your search rankings is to enhance your local SEO. This is particularly valuable for dental clinics as patients will typically look for a dentist near them. 85% of searchers use the internet to find local businesses.
You can improve your local SEO by claiming your Google My Business profile and ensuring you have good reviews. There is nothing more powerful and persuasive than social proof to convince a prospect to become a patient.
Social media marketing
Social media opens a dialogue for you to talk directly to both current and potential patients. The healthcare industry is realizing that social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are a goldmine for discovering new patients, interacting with current patients, and gaining brand loyalty.
Social media is also an effective platform to share the content that you create, such as blog posts and videos. When you share relevant and useful content, you build trust and stay top of mind.
Instead of trying to use every social media platform under the sun and spreading yourself too thin, choose one or two to focus on. Facebook and Twitter are the most commonly used for dental clinics.
Email marketing
Email marketing involves sending targeted emails to a house list. Emails can include newsletters, promotions, birthday wishes, holiday greetings, and special announcements. Email marketing also includes sending appointment reminders to avoid late cancellations or no-shows. Reminders are very effective tactics to get patients who are due for a checkup to book appointments, keeping your dental schedule populated.
In today’s day and age, dental marketing strategies are far more effective than traditional marketing tactics and can lead to substantial growth and increased revenue for your dental clinic.
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When it comes to growing dental clinics, new patient acquisition is often what comes to mind but improving patient retention rates is just as important and crucial to the success of any dental clinic. Returning patients provide a greater return on investment. It costs 5 times more to obtain a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. Happy patients also improve your bottom line as they are your best advocates, bringing you more business by referring family and friends.
On average, dental clinics have an attrition rate of 10-20%. While some factors like people relocating may be out of your control, there are certain patient retention strategies to help ensure they’re happy and continue to come back to your clinic – because at its core, improving patient retention is about keeping them happy.
Make it easy
Patients these days lead fast-paced lives and are used to ease and speed in everything they do. This means you have to ensure their dental experience is as convenient as possible for them. You can do this by:
1) Extending your office hours
It can be difficult for patients to make appointments during normal working hours. Consider opening your clinic earlier in the mornings or keeping it open later in the evenings to better accommodate their busy schedules.
2) Sending appointment reminders
Appointment reminders are often expected and appreciated by patients. It also helps you reduce late cancellations and no-shows. Many dental software systems allow you to send appointment reminders automatically.
[Set your clinic up with ClearDent to take advantage of ClearConnect, our patient messaging system. Book a ClearDent demo today]
3) Scheduling enough time
Research shows that longer wait times are negatively correlated with patient satisfaction, perception of the provider, and confidence in the quality of care. Be sure to properly optimize your dental schedule to allow sufficient time for each patient.
Build trust and create value
Part of improving patient retention is ensuring that they understand the value of your dental services and to do that, you need to build trust. Trust and value are gained when you take the time to explain everything very thoroughly and clearly, whether it’s the next steps in their treatment, why they need the treatment, or even explaining the procedure itself.
Some patients may think that they don’t need dental services because their teeth feel fine, it’s too expensive, or they’re scared. You can combat this by talking them through the x-rays and explaining why they need certain procedures, the proposed treatment plan, and the dangers if they don’t take action.
Or, if the patient is known to be uneasy about dental procedures, take extra care to reassure them, let them know what to expect, and guide them through the process to help settle their concerns.
Whether patients are feeling weary about the cost, process, or need, they’ll appreciate you addressing their concerns directly.
Ensure patients feel at ease
How patients feel while they’re at your clinic contributes a great deal to improving patient retention. When they feel at ease and comfortable, they’re less likely to go to another dental clinic.
1) Create a welcoming waiting room
While you should try to reduce the time patients spend waiting, you can at least ensure they’re comfortable. Some things to consider having in your waiting room include:
A TV
Comfy seating
Magazines
Water
Kids play area
2) Be friendly
Patients often don’t jump at the chance to go to the dentist; procedures like root canals or wisdom teeth extractions are not appointments that they look forward to. To cancel out potential negative connotations, make sure every patient feels welcome and that they’re more than just a number to you. Below are some tips to create a friendly environment:
Greet patients
Smile
Build rapport and make light conversation
Use the patient’s name in emails, by phone, or in person
Ask if they need to use the washroom before getting started
Introduce new team members they haven’t met yet
Ensure there is privacy if patients need to discuss sensitive or financial items
Say thanks and tell patients you look forward to seeing them next time
3) Empower them
Help empower patients to take responsibility for their dental health:
Give patients useful information such as proposed treatment plans and post-procedure instructions
Discuss the importance of getting regular checkups
Give patients a goodie bag of a toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and other tools so they can continue their oral care at home
Stay in touch
Of course, you always want to ensure that patients leave feeling happy and tended to but the patient experience doesn’t just end when they leave. Staying in touch and engaging with patients is another patient retention strategy.
1) Follow up
A quick phone call to check how a patient is feeling after a procedure can go a long way in improving patients’ perception of your clinic. This also gives you the chance to turn any bad experiences around, reducing the chance your patients will take their business elsewhere.
2) Monitor reviews
These days, if patients are not happy, there’s a high possibility they’ll write a review online. When you monitor reviews on your clinic, you have the opportunity to address negative comments and make it right. And since the communication is public, it also shows potential patients that you care about providing great service.
3) Send a newsletter
The healthcare industry has an average email open rate of 33%. This means it’s a prime opportunity to send patients useful content such as promos, clinic updates, or educational information about oral health.
4) Send seasonal greetings
Birthdays and holidays provide a chance to stay top of your patients’ mind. Send patients a birthday email or remind them to use their remaining insurance before the end of the year.
5) Patient surveys
Sending patient satisfaction surveys is a great way to gain valuable feedback that can improve your clinic. The results will uncover what’s working and what’s not, which you can then use to take action.
There isn’t one thing that you can do to improve patient retention overnight; it’s a combination of several patient retention strategies that everyone in your clinic can contribute towards
This article uses information from the insightful book by the long-time dental consultant, Bianca Dornan at Practices Made Perfect about setting your course in a dental office. If you would like access to the entire eBook, click here to download it for free.
Staff at your practice (or any company) can be sorted into 3 basic categories; drivers, survivors, and hiders.
Drivers are employees who do things for the good of the company, even if that means they have to do things the hard way. They look for ways to improve the company and are engaged and invested in the successes or failures of your practice.
Survivors are those who want to do what’s best for your practice, but may not go out of their way to seek out ways to do things better. Survivors can be very helpful employees but likely need a little more motivation and coaching from their management.
Hiders are the underachievers of the bunch. These are people who are doing the bare minimum to complete their job, resist change and are unaffected by successes and failures of the practice.
Fortunately, these labels are not for the people themselves, but rather for the level of engagement that those people are feeling. That means that if you feel like you have an office full of Hiders, there is still hope. There are changes you can make to convert those same people into Survivors or even Drivers. Likewise, if you are working with some Drivers, it’s not guaranteed that they will continue to be Drivers forever. In both circumstances, work needs to be done to maximize your employees.
The best way to push your employees away from being hiders, and towards being drivers is to make sure that they are invested in the direction that your practice is heading. The best way to do that is to be clear and concise with where the company is headed, and exactly what each person/team/role needs to accomplish.
Setting your practice’s direction
When setting the direction of your practice, do not focus on what you want to do. Instead, focus on WHY your business is operating. Your employees and customers alike will be drawn to a ‘why’ much more than a ‘what’, making it easier for each group to engage with your company. When setting your ‘why’ don’t rush it. Think long and hard about a ‘why’ that truly and genuinely represents the reason your company is operating. This ‘why’ if used properly will emanate throughout your company from top to bottom.
Once you have your ‘why’ get support by giving your staff goals that support your ‘why’. When they can see how their set of goals fits into the much larger direction of the company, they will feel like they are making meaningful contributions.
Set your goals
The often repeated, and still the best way is setting your goals using the S.M.A.R.T. acronym.
S – Specific. Ambiguity creates confusion.
M – Measurable. Success should be pass/fail with no grey area.
A – Attainable. Keep goals grounded in what’s possible.
R – Relevant. How does your goal relate to your ‘why’?
T – Timely. By what date/time should this goal be completed?
Creating a ‘why’ and setting SMART goals are certainly not the only ways to push all your employees toward becoming Drivers, but they will definitely help. Try implementing this at your practice and see what profound effects it could have on the way you operate.
This article uses information from the insightful book by the long-time dental consultant, Bianca Dornan at Practices Made Perfect about delegating tasks in a dental practice.
In your dental practice, there are hundreds of tasks that can be done at any given time to improve the business. Knowing how to use concentration tricks to uncover these tasks is the first step. Having the capacity to accomplish them is the next one.
Unfortunately, not one person can hope to have enough capacity to accomplish every business-boosting tactic on a regular basis. You’re going to need help! Delegating these activities to the people within your practice accomplishes a number of things on top of the actual jobs. Things like;
Uncovering the hidden talents of your employees
Increasing buy-in from your team around business growth
Adding accountability for task completion
Opportunity to learn and expand abilities
For many practice owners or office managers, the problem isn’t with the concept of delegating tasks, but rather the execution of it. Especially in cases where your practice has been operating in a certain way for a long while, people in the practice can often be, or appear to be, resistant when asked to take on more duties. To tackle this, Bianca Dornan has developed a 4 part strategy for asking for help.
Step 1: Begin the ask with an action statement and an objective. Make sure your action statement is specific enough that the direction of the task is clear.
“Can you please help me with marketing? I would like to use social media [action] in order to get our name out to the community [objective].”
Step 2: Include key factors in order to further specify exactly what you’re looking for with this task, and make the results measurable.
“I would like to make sure that our personality shows through in every post [key factor]. I can commit to a budget of $100 per month from now until September [key factor]. My end goal is to have 150 new followers by September 30th [measurable goal].”
Step 3: Ask for their opinion on this new task. Perhaps they will need further clarification, or training, or will have an objection. In any case, it’s important to get their feedback so that they feel included in the decision and buy-in to the results.
“What are your thoughts on this project?”
Step 4: Find out what they need in order to get started, and make a plan to provide them with it.
“What do you need from me in order to get going with this project?”
Every employee is different, and there may still be pushback. By using this guide to delegation, the stars in your office will become more obvious, and the weaker members that may require more management/training will too. In either case, this exercise provides you with an opportunity to get your whole team moving towards better business outcomes.
This article uses information from the insightful book by the long-time dental consultant, Bianca Dornan at Practices Made Perfect about identifying opportunities in your practice.
When in the daily grind of running your practice, figuring out all the possible ways to improve your practice can feel overwhelming or even unproductive. You have enough on your plate, how can you be expected to set aside time to think about ways to add more work? If, however, you aspire to make the most out of your practice and possibly even expand it, brainstorming about what the issues are and how to address them is a necessary investment for you to make.
Steps to find opportunities
Identifying opportunities in your practice is so difficult because you are concentrating on something that you spend all day working on, your dental practice. If there are glaring issues and inconveniences, you have probably made an effort to address them already. Here are four tried and true ways to unlock the type of thinking that you need to uncover hidden potential. (Hint: none of them involve concentrating harder)
Do something unrelated to your industry: You are consumed by the dental industry. And, within that industry, there may be people doing great things that you can apply to your practice as well. But, if you want to become truly inspired, it is useful to take a step outside dentistry and see the ways that other industries are dealing with issues and creating more possibilities; they may apply to you. Attend a lecture for an industry you’re not familiar with, visit and read about businesses in different industries, and talk to people who have had success in their careers! You never know what will spark an idea that you can use.
Find inspiration online: Inspiration doesn’t need to take a lot of your time. Identifying opportunities can be done by finding unlimited inspiration for any topic online. Create a repository of interesting or inspiring articles, websites, images, and videos that you find online. When you have that, you can revisit these things to get your mind out of its routine and see things from a different perspective.
Be creative: Working to find inspiration online, being creative on your own can also open up your thinking to new possibilities. It is said that problems often get solved only when you stop thinking about them. Doing something creative that is out of the ordinary will force your mind to concentrate on something new. Try something new, or revisit a hobby that you haven’t done in a while; anything that breaks the cycle that you may have fallen into.
Map out your thoughts: Sometimes what is stopping you from figuring out the solution is the sheer amount of information that the problem has. To combat that, there is a process called mind mapping. The idea is that you take a large issue and break it down into smaller, more manageable, chunks. Then, you take those chunks and break them down even further. With that completed, all the action items or individual issues can be identified and addressed easily. Give it a try. Canva has a really useful, free mind map creator.
Which of these ideas appeals most to you? Give it a try and see what kinds of amazing things you could be opening yourself up to.
Trainers spend their days navigating systems for different practices and advising them on how to best use their practice management software. Not an easy job. Every practice has its way of doing things for its own specific reasons, and it’s the trainer’s job to implement, teach, and sometimes create best practices that will fit with each specific set of needs. Because of this, when you ask a trainer for a great power tip, they often can’t give you a simple answer. Frustrating. However, our amazing senior trainers pinpointed a tip that they like to give to every single office: “Change your treatment plan status”
By that, she means that it’s not good enough to simply label your treatment plans as planned or pending. You can do your practice a world of good by adopting AFRX method.
A – Accepted: Schedule the patient immediately.
F – Future: The patient wants the treatment, but something is preventing them from being able to move forward immediately, so put a task in your to-do list to follow up with them on a specific date.
X – Rejected by patient: The patient doesn’t want the proposed treatment. If the treatment is important, gently follow up with them to encourage them to approve it before the issue gets worse.
R – Rejected by insurance: Follow up with the patient only if their insurance status changes.
Label your treatment plan status with these and you can save your treatment coordinator a huge amount of time since they will now automatically know which patients to follow up with first (accepted), and how to approach patients that fall into one of the other categories.
This small change can make a big difference, and those are the best changes to make! Try implementing this at your practice and let us know what you think!
