Introduction and Patient Experience Design

Ownership Suite: Concepts and Tools

The Ownership Suite

We are doctors. We care for people. The more we can do that, the more meaningful our work is. In order to focus on that meaningful work, our businesses have to run smoothly and profitably.

Each of us have some notion–or a specific detailed vision–of the manner in which we wish to accomplish that. In order to do that, we have to consider many, many details.

It’s supremely satisfying to lead a practice in bringing your vision into reality. But–and we live 99% of our lives in this “but”–that process requires a lot. A lot of thought,planning, energy, and dedication. We wanted to share the benefits of our learning to help this process be as enjoyable as possible, and to tip the scales in the direction of any dentist with the interest in improving the way they serve the public.

Doctors Who Must Own A Business

In a perfect world, doctors can focus on their specialty.  Cardiologists can focus on the heart, neurologists can focus on the nervous system, and dentists can focus on the oral cavity and craniomaxillofacial complex.

But the world is not so simple, and dentists often have to be both doctors and business owners. As owners and “the name on the building,” we are always personally invested in providing great patient care,maintaining a happy, high-performing team, and ensuring the ongoing growth and financial health of the practice. To this end we are often active in daily practice management. Most dentists find that things run best when they have a trusted manager or management team to help formulate,execute, and administer the Team’s execution of their vision. This material is meant to help make this process complete,transparent, and effective.

The Patient-Centered Practice

Patient Experience Design

The patient experience starts as soon as they see your marketing or call your office and ends, hopefully, when one of you dies. In seriousness, this phrase indicates the mindful cultivation of all patient impressions of your office and staff. This doesn’t mean lavish waiting rooms as much as seamless and considerate processes and interactions. When we consider every aspect of their routine contact with us, we do 80% of the legwork in demonstrating that we care about them and value them asa patient. The rest is in making good on the promise of that well-designed experience.

It’s not worthwhile for us to presume too much about an individual practice, so we only go into certain aspects and concepts that would inform and enrich any practice at any size or level of organization or success. In general, we wanted to introduce the term Patient Experience Design, along with an overview of what that means to help contain, inventory, and communicate all of your work on this front.

Patient Experience Design Essentials

In general, you will want all items the list in this section mapped out and communicated to the team.

Every practice does all of these things every day in order to be in business, so we’re not expecting you to be amazed at the list itself.

However, when you’re trying to grow your practice and take the patient experience to the next level, it isn’t very useful for someone to tell you “do your best, everywhere you can.”

So this “list of everything” is an inventory for you to go over and break down where each opportunity to improve the patient experience is, leaving no assumptions unchallenged.

For each of these items, ask yourself if the way you’re handling it now produces any friction or hassles for your patients. Ask yourself: are we doing this because it’s easy for us, good for the patient, or just because we’ve always done it this way.

On the other hand, because an efficient team has more energy to focus on patients, it also pays to inspect each item for areas where team can be deployed more efficiently, with no negative impact on the patient.

Patient Experience and The Four Fears

Part of handling the Four Fears (which gets its own section below) is in removing all triggers of those fears in each step of the patient experience, so for each item also ask yourself:

Are we doing anything here that creates bad situations for payment?
Are we bringing pain to mind?
Are we making the patient comfortable, emotionally and physically?
Are we doing something to actively improve on their baseline lack of trust?

An hour spent on auditing your Patient Experience from time to time is a great place to start. A group audit of the Patient Experience as described is a very good agenda item for biannual management meetings, and helps reinforce management and team awareness of the importance of handling these details deliberately and considerately.

The Patient Experience Design: Breakdown

• Marketing Messages and Offers
• Facility and Personnel Appearance and Cleanliness
• Hours and Appointment Inventory
• Scheduling Policies
• Staffing Benchmarks
• Marketing Communications
• Phone Procedure and Scripting
• Reception Procedure
• Scripting for Patient Transfer
• Policies for Payment (Full Team)
• Policies for Clinical Documentation
• Entering Treatment
• Noting Payment Arrangements
• Personal Patient Notes
• New Patient Onboarding
• First Visit Process
• Recall Visit Process
• Treatment Visit Process
• Policy and Scripting for Complaints
• Policy and Scripting for Collections