You cannot be one of those dentists who enjoy doing a simple procedure for 1 solid hour, undisturbed, and then go back to your private office and surf the internet until you next patient is ready.
There are 3 secret truths to follow if you want to pull this off. I say secret. Actually they are not all that secret, but it is imperative that you seriously follow them to the letter if you want to be successful.
1. MOTIVATED STAFF. There are lots of ways to motivate, but the easiest is to pay good people a lot of money. BONUS. Paying a lot is a good thing if your employees are smart and you don’t break the bank (get your staff salary percentage out of line.) Of course, you can’t pay a bad worker enough to make them a good worker.
2. EFFECTIVE DENTIST. Notice I didn’t say efficient. Yes, efficiency is demanded, but it is only a small piece of the puzzle. An effective dentist accomplishes his purpose no matter what obstacles are thrown in his way.
3. CUW. This stands for Completely Utilized Workday. This can be broken down in to 5 parts that are necessary to function together. They can be remembered by the acronym S.P.O.T.S. These 5 parts are Schedule, Procedure, Organization, Teamwork, and Systems.
Either the 3 Truths or the 5 SPOTS can be broken down into infinity of minor details. All of which are important by the way. For example under the heading of CUW, the Schedule Spot can only be complete if you have enough patients to fill it. The way I solved this problem was to hire Jay Geier. When I Hired Jay’s company, I was averaging 69 new patients per month. After 1 year in his program, we were averaging over 100 new patients per month. Now this increased new patient flow creates new challenges in the other 4 spots. And as you solve these problems, new ones will invariable arise in other Spots so that constant recalibration is necessary.
Now probably the biggest challenge of all when trying to magically turn 4 clinical days into 3 is that the staff is so busy seeding patients that they will get behind more than usual. This is when your perfect schemes will become very imperfect. No one wants a sloppy office or piles of lab cases thrown around the lab? No way! I could just yell or browbeat the staff and nitpick their every move until they were so miserable they quit. OR I COULD COME UP WITH A RADICAL SOLUTION.
AND ON THE 4TH DAY THE STAFF MADE IT PERFECT… AGAIN.
In our case we work EXTREMELY hard, efficiently, and effectively for 3 days, then on the 4th day the staff works a half day without the interruptions of seeing patients. That way each Monday when we start again things are as close to perfect as we can make them. This improves the appearance and the spirit of the office. One warning. Staff members must be excellent and disciplined to accomplish all their specific goals and tasks on this special day. Otherwise, some might not fully pull their weight.
THE 3 DAY OFFICE MUST HAVE GOOD TEAMWORK AND CAMARADERIE.
This is just a very basic outline of things to consider if you want to buy back some of your life and get a FREE DAY OFF. Of course you could also use these principles and ideas to work the same or more and just make a TON OF MONEY.
I myself am happy with the extra day off.
Once you discover the secrets that your staff members are hiding, you can break down the barriers that have sapped productivity and caused squabbling in your practice for so long. One of the greatest findings of Dr. Griffin during his consultation with dental practices has been that once everyone is aware of the few little things that have been nagging at them, they can resolve longstanding issues and enjoy fun, profitable growth to superstar levels. You can get your free CD explaining the 5 most common Staff Secrets at http://www.dentalstaffsecrets.com.