 | | Cathy Jameson |
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Power Thought: Jameson Management
The fulcrum of your practice is your comprehensive diagnosis, excellent treatment plans, and case presentations-or consultations. If you are truly interested in elevating your practice to the next level, I recommend that you carefully and honestly analyze this critical area of your practice. I don't think there will ever be a day in any practice when this area can't be improved. Perfection is a misnomer. You set the tone for a person's relationship at the beginning. The better the relationship you establish with a person, the more likely they will be to proceed. The first contact most people have with a practice is on the telephone. Here is an opportunity to encourage that person to come to your practice to evaluate their own situation and to determine if they are going to choose you for their dental home-or for a particular treatment. There are, actually, several systems activated here: (1) telephone etiquette and telephone sales; (2) the new patient experience and the gathering of personal and clinical data; (3) designing a specific treatment plan for the person; and (4) preparation, planning and presenting your treatment recommendations. All of these systems are intricately connected and imperative if treatment acceptance is to be obtained. There is so much to be said about these four areas of your practice. For now, let me focus on the concept of designating the time and attention to each of the areas so that your case acceptance elevates. NEW PATIENTS VERSUS INCREASING CASE ACCEPTANCE I am not as interested in how many new patients you have as I am interested in how much dentistry is being diagnosed and how much dentistry is being accepted. It doesn't make any sense to have people coming in the front door only to walk out the back door. You may feel good about the number of people who have chosen you, but the fact is that if people are not accepting treatment, you are spinning your wheels. In fact, if you feel that your practice is "flat", then you are probably losing more patients per month than you are gaining. The only way to know if this is, indeed, true is to track this. Track the amount of dentistry that you are diagnosing each month and see how much of that dentistry is being accepted. If you are below the 85% mark, then you have some room to grow and opportunity is boundless for you. Most practices can double from within by nurturing that which they already have-their own patient family. But the question must be asked, "Could you have gained a higher level of case acceptance in the first place? If you had focused more intently on the new patient experience and the case presentation, would more people have proceeded?" If your case acceptance is not as high as you would like, don't think that you have done anything wrong. Don't blame yourself or anyone else on your team for the situation and/or for the statistics. Rather, go over each of the four above-mentioned systems and ask yourself the ultimate question, "How can we do this better?" Then, JUST DO IT!!!! Don't do yourself a disservice and think there is no room for development here. There isn't a practice in the world that cannot get better. Be continuous students and make a commitment to improving the practice right here-THE FULCRUM.
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