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A recent survey conducted at one of my client’s Dental Offices identified two areas of the process of running a business that we need to keep front of mind.

The thing is, that as dentists, and as dentists owning a business, we tend to get caught up in our own little world of doing the dentistry rather than the processes required of keeping the business running smoothly.

As such, we tend to “bury our heads in the sand” sometimes and concentrate on the doing of the dentistry rather than think about the business of dentistry.

Now this choice may be by default.

Or it may be made by definite decision.

And the reason for the making the choice of doing the dentistry may be only because as business owners we sometimes don’t know the best way to go about teaching our team what they need to do and what needs to be done.

Fortunately, in the case of my client, that’s not the reason.

The other reason that we choose “the doing” of the dentistry is because there fortunately is so much dentistry to do, that we just choose that first and foremost.

And so the “business” of dentistry is often put aside.

In the world of business, the dental model is not your typical business.

In typical business, people working in the business have a supervisor or manager overseeing their processes, so that procedures, protocols and systems are covered and carried through.

This manager is usually “on the floor”, with them, helping them.

This manager then reports to other supervisors, and so on, in a structured, layered sort of way.

In dentistry, the dentist is often the manager of the small group of employees.

But unlike traditional business, he has to cease managing many times a day, and for much of the day, and start drilling, because it’s the drilling, or the “doing” of the dentistry that needs to be done, because that’s what is required to pay the bills of the Dental Practice.

And so, while he’s drilling away and meant to be focusing one hundred percent on the task at hand, he often has a multitude of business thoughts passing through his poor little head.

How the heck do you run a business optimally with that sort of infrastructure?

It has to make things difficult right from the get-go…

The answer is, and my client’s office worked this one out for themselves, the answer is that you need good communications in place and you need good systems in place.

Systems are paramount.

A well run dental office needs to have documented, clear and specific ways of doing things.

Each and every time.

So that if there is a question or query, the document can be referred to for clarification.

Everything that can be done in the Office needs to be written as a system into that document.

The second requirement, for running a great Dental Practice, is that there also needs to be a relevant and workable process of communication between all members of the Office team.

How do we approach each other about questions and concerns?

When is the best time to speak to those we need advice from?

And what’s the best way of organizing that?

It’s interesting…. as humans, we tend to want to find out the answers to our questions the moment those questions arise.

Doing it this way may not always be the best way possible in a Dental Office.

I saw an office where the Dentist one time, while treating a patient, was interrupted unnecessarily by an Office Staff Member only to ask the Dentist his uniform size!!

And another time, I saw a Front Office member enter a treatment room and ask the dental assistant if she knew the birthday of one of the other Office employees, right while the dentist was working on the patient!

Clearly in both these cases, the questions were not urgent life and death matters and the requirement for immediate answers could have been put on hold until a better, more appropriate time became available.

Communication in the Dental Office between team members needs to be structured.

And times for those communications needs to be allocated, so that the business always functions at its best.

Allow times for verbal communications.

Have a book for questions and answers that can be checked during the day, for when written answers will suffice.

Sometimes if the question is written in the book, sometimes the solution to the question may become apparent before the question ever gets read?

The key here is that Dentistry is different…as a business.

Different from other businesses.

However, the processes of good business must be adhered to if the Dental Office is to become a *GREAT* Business.

The Ultimate Patient Experience is a simple to build complete Customer Service system in itself that I developed that allowed me to create an extraordinary dental office in an ordinary Sydney suburb. If you’d like to know more, ask me about my free special report.

Email me at david@theupe.com

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