Chance Favors the Prepared Mind
The right training can take your practice to new levels of success

Sally McKenzie, a proponent of advanced education for dental professionals, recently launched The Center for Dental Career Development, located in La Jolla, CA, and is pleased to announce the Center's allied partnership with Softdent Dental Software and Care Credit Patient Financing. The facility will feature some of dentistry's most prominent authorities who will provide advanced education for dental professionals. A Certified Management Consultant, nationally known lecturer, and author with more than three decades in the dental profession, Sally is a consultant to the Council on Dental Practice of the ADA. McKenzie Management and Associates, Inc. provides in-office analysis of the business, clinical, and hygiene department; conducts on-site staff training; and offers a full line of educational management books, audiotapes, and videos. Call Sally toll-free at 877-777-6151, or e-mail sallymck@mckenziemgmt.com. Visit her Web site at www.mckenziemgmt.com. For more information on The Center for Dental Career Development, go to www.dentalcareerdevelop.com or e-mail info@dentalcareerdevelop.com.

Does this scenario resemble your office?

Lori, the new girl at the front desk, has been trying hard but struggling to answer the phones, collect at dismissal, schedule patients, handle insurance filings on some days and billing on others. In the two months she's been there, collections are off twelve percent, a whole week of insurance claims were mishandled, and her co-workers are annoyed because she keeps asking questions. Lori got her computer and job training (if you want to call it that) from Misty, who was too distracted by her love life to pay attention to her job. In Misty's defense, she got her computer and job training from Erin, who was pregnant and getting crazy with false labor pains.

You get the picture. It's like making a copy of a copy of a copy... when the original isn't all that distinct, you can only imagine how illegible the reproductions will be. It never ceases to amaze me how dentists—who can be so meticulous and exacting with regard to clinical procedures—can be so lax when it comes to everything else that goes on in the office. Case in point: at any given moment, do you know what your production is per day/week/month, or how many active patients you have? Please don't take offense, Doctor, I just know how it is. Duties you assume your staff could and would handle are being tossed around like hot potatoes. No definitive job descriptions combined with inadequate training equals a chaotic mass of practice frailties and system breakdowns.

Prosper Within a New Standard of Excellence
Bearing in mind that your time, energy, and funds are finite resources, the solution is for you and your staff to work smarter and prosper within a new standard of excellence. But how? You can avoid the pitfalls by investing in a training program that can help your staff, as well as yourself, perform more successfully and efficiently. Whether you're looking to handle money more efficiently, sharpen a staff member's marketing skills, or become more customer service-oriented, there are solutions available to meet your practice's needs. The bottom line is that those practices that take training seriously are inevitably the most productive and profitable. It's a rather basic axiom, but it's true: chance favors the prepared mind. If the right practice systems are in place, and the right people are trained in using those systems, success happens! Here then, is my recommendation of a training protocol that could bring you and your staff to a higher level of success.

Starting with you, Doctor, look at programs that concentrate on dental business management, staff management, and clinical enhancement.

Business management courses:
• understanding the numbers
• hygiene department and associateships
• profit and loss
• cash flow management
• business management overview

Staff management courses:
• hiring
• job descriptions
• accountability
• team motivation
• performance reviews
• salary/raise negotiations
• employee policy manual
• team planning meetings

Clinical enhancement:
• treatment plan presentation
• new patient experience
• maintaining excellence while reducing procedure time
• ergonomics
• clinical systems
• tools for productivity and profitability

Next, let' s look at the training requisites for clinical assistants.

Four-handed efficiency:
• passing instruments
• aspirating
• materials preparation
• sterilization
• instrumentation set-ups

Expanded duties:
• temporary crowns
• impressions
• x-rays

Expanding the clinical assistant role:
• treatment presentation
• post-op instructions
• verbal skills/patient communications
• community presentations.

Now, on to the training for dental hygienists.

Building an interceptive perio program:
• verbal skills
• assessment
• insurance utilization
• treatment planning
• product sales
• instrumentation
• antimicrobials
• establishing an effective recall system
• scheduling to production goals

Time & motion efficiency:
• working with an assistant
• the business side of hygiene
• analyzing the hygiene department
• reducing procedure time while maintaining excellence

Finally, training for the business assistant (hardly last in importance).

Cash flow management:
• insurance
• billing
• delinquent accounts
• collecting at dismissal
• financial arrangements
• understanding overhead

Patient/customer service:
• verbal skills for ultimate patient communications
• telephone effectiveness
• treatment plan presentation for increased production
• scheduling to production goals

Systems management:
• watching the numbers
• building hygiene production through effective recall
• marketing/promotions to enhance practice image
• facilitating staff meetings

Conclusion
The right training is all it takes to create a harmonious, efficient, and productive office. I believe that only with comprehensive training, as I've outlined above, can you fully integrate personnel with practice systems. And only with such synergy, will long term practice success be achieved. Here's to the prepared mind, and to success.