Mrs. Jones just pulled you aside and let you know in no uncertain terms that she was none too pleased with the way your finance coordinator handled her account the last time she had some major work done.

In fact, she goes on to tell you, she considered taking her business elsewhere. Now you’re standing there, tail firmly planted between your legs, and you’re not sure if you would rather rough up the employee who set Mrs. Jones off or simply kill the messenger. Choose to do neither.

The best way to look at the complaint is to consider it a compliment and handle it. The complainers are concerned enough to clue you into a problem that may have sent 10 or more other patients packing already.

Even though it’s not easy, intellectually, you know you are supposed to stay calm and not react negatively. Here are a few other tips to keep in mind when managing an unhappy patient:

• You or someone in the practice should listen fully to the grievance. Take the complaint seriously.
  DO NOT blow it off with the attitude of “Oh, that’s just Mrs. Jones.”

• Handle the complaint in a professional and timely manner.

 

• Inform the patient as to how the issue is being handled and let them know about the outcome.

Do more than just manage complaints as they arise. Ask for feedback regularly from your patients. They feel valued and you will receive insights into any number of relatively minor adjustments your practice can make to further improve the experience for your patients. Anticipate potential problem areas.

Ask yourself if the practice is truly patient friendly. Are the staff welcoming and helpful? Are patients treated the way you would want to be? If not, take steps to address the problems.

Sally

The Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, had the right idea. Everybody deserves to be shown respect. In the perpetual quest to retain quality staff and motivate them to achieve peak performance, showing respect for your employees and appreciation for a job well done can yield more benefits than many doctors realize.

Of course, the employee has to have a healthy dose of self-respect and a sincere desire to achieve top performance. Given that, consider implementing these practical and effective staff motivators.

1. Tell the employee that they did a great job. Make it a point to recognize at least one employee every day for something they did that you considered excellent. This is so simple, not to mention cheap. But you would be surprised how few dentists actually practice this policy.

2. Treat your employees as people and recognize that they have responsibilities beyond your practice. In other words, doctor, remember they do have lives.

3. Create a climate of openness where staff can come to you to address issues that could affect performance. An open door policy fuels a feeling of teamwork and a commitment to addressing problems rather than just sweeping them under the autoclave.

4. Explain the rules of the game. Give staff a copy of the performance review that you use to evaluate and monitor their performance.

5. Accompany every raise with a letter explaining why the employee was deserving of the increase.

6. Challenge staff to work at their best by giving them rewarding responsibilities.

7. Provide opportunities for continuing education opportunities, and encourage them to participate in professional organizations. This will benefit both you and the employee.

8. Encourage employees to express their opinions and offer solutions to office challenges. Staff commit to those decisions they help reach.

If you use the above steps as a guideline for how you respect your employee’s performance, I’m sure you’ll find that none of your staff will ever be singing the blues!

Tasks aren’t getting done. Collections aren’t being made. Recalls aren’t happening. Scheduling is out of control. Your front office employee looks like she’s on the verge of a breakdown. You need more help, right? Not necessarily.

“Doctors are quick to look at the obvious and determine that if employees appear frazzled or things aren’t getting done the office must need more staff. After all, throwing more people at the situation is quicker and easier than pursuing alternatives such as streamlining duties and evaluating the time spent on tasks.”

But before you place that ad in the classified section or hire the office manager’s daughter in-law, first check a couple things out.

1. Wages. Examine wages paid in your practice excluding the doctor’s. They should be no more than 19% to 22% of gross income, before payroll taxes and benefits. If the gross salaries are hovering around 22%, adding another person will boost that to 27%. Open your wallet, doctor. You’ll be bankrolling the additional 5%. But if the new hire is a patient coordinator who will increase revenue by ensuring appointments aren’t lost or if the individual is a hygienist who will enable you to meet the demands of a growing hygiene schedule, the negative financial impact should only last for about 60 days.

2. Front-end Backlog. Check-in and check-out takes approximately 10 minutes per patient. There are 480 minutes in an eight-hour workday. If your practice is seeing 15- 22 patients per day, which would total 150-220 minutes of patient contact, one person should be able to handle the front desk duties effectively. If the front office employee is spending more than 240 minutes handling patients, the practice should consider hiring an additional staff member.

Just checking out the numbers in a couple of areas is going to give you a much better idea if this perceived need for staff is real or imaginary.

The golden opportunities of hygiene production are, at best, unrealized income potential for many practices. At worst, they are a well-kept secret stymieing your practice profitability and keeping you at the mercy of a mediocre employee and antiquated systems. But how do you get the most out of your hygiene department? By measuring outcomes and insisting on accountability.

If the hygienist receives a guaranteed salary regardless of his/her production, the expectation must be that they produces three times their salary. In addition to a base salary, consider paying hygienists a commission for achieving additional production over the daily goal. Schedule the hygienist to produce at 3x her/his daily wage. Evaluate fees and determine if they are too low. Look at the procedures conducted in an hour to determine the production per hour costs. If, for example, the hygienist is paid $45 per hour and the cost for the prophy, not including the dentist’s exam, is $75, the hygienist is making 60 cents on the dollar.

The hygiene salary should be equal to or less than 33% of production, not including the doctor’s exam fee. Insist on periodontal assessment. One-third of hygiene production should be in interceptive periodontal therapy. Require the hygienist measure the total number of dollars produced in the ADA perio codes and divide it by their total production. Report that once per month at the monthly meeting. Customize the time per patient based on patient need not on a standard one-hour allocation for each patient. Provide hygiene hours in the evening if patients are requesting late appointments. Evaluate the effectiveness of pre-scheduling. Practices using six month scheduling achieve only 76% patient retention and have a nearly 50% higher loss of patients than similar-sized practices that do not pre-appoint.

Close the lid on poor hygiene production, doctor, and you’ll see financial improvements you never thought possible.

Sally

PS. I invite you to take advantage of the Free Hygiene Assessment on my website HERE. As always, I look forward to hearing from you.

Sharing with you today a response I received from a Dentist regarding my weekly E-Management Newsletters suggesting a change in the terminology we regularly use. See my response below to Dr. Gary regarding the “professional recall system” vs. calling this a “recare” system.

_________________
Hi Gary,

Thanks for you kind compliments and taking the time to write and your suggestion. I have to tell you that I do not like the term “recare”. In fact, I’m not sure it’s even in the dictionary.
The recall system has always been the recall system since I’ve been in dentistry and that’s around 40 years.

Don’t misinterpret what I am saying. I do NOT advocate that you refer to the system of bringing patients back TO THE PATIENT as recall nor would I suggest that you call it the “recare system” to the patient. Neither term is a term to be used directly with patients but it is used when teaching dental business management or from dental professional to professional.

To the patient, it should be referred to as “professional dental cleaning and dental examination.” If you say, “Mrs. Jones, you are due or will be due for your “recall” or “recare” appointment next February.” , those terms trivialize and hold no importance to what it is that the dental office does for the patients. On the other hand, “Mrs. Jones, we will want to see you back in February for your professional dental cleaning and examination.” , that raises the value of what you do.

Of course, this is all in my humble opinion. You will never see me write or refer to the recall system as recare system.

Thanks for reading my newsletter and I hope you continue to.
Here to help,

Sally

________________________

Dear Ms Sally McKenzie:

I look foward to reading your articles often. You present great informative information and procedures in your newsletters. I would like to suggest that you substitute the word of RECARE for the word of recall. Recall has negative connotations and Dentistry has enough negatives associated with it!

All the best and continue to do the Best that you do!

Yours truly,

Dr. Gary

___________________________

** To learn more about scripting in the Dental Practice, check out my new book on “Dentistry” or my Dental Practice Scripts which are both available from my website at www.mckenziemgmt.com

***Have your own opinion? I’m interested to hear them! Feel free to write your own comments below.