Setting the Table
Docs: Prep for Your Day
It only takes ten minutes each morning for Dr. MacInnis to prepare a day of high-level dentistry production. Is everything scheduled correctly? Where are the pinch points? Where are the openings? Will you be able to squeeze a same-day procedure in? If you don’t know these things ahead of time, you’re limited in your production potential. If you do, you’re doing the groundwork for your highest level of production. When you have 7+ hygiene checks an hour to do in an office that takes walk-ins, you’ll want to have your game plan down before you start. Watch Bob break his prep procedure down using a real schedule and see how he does it. Between the scheduling tips and the asides about the rest of the practice, there’s plenty here to give you some ideas for shaving minutes off your mile and producing more than ever.
Your patients need their treatment performed to the highest possible standard, as promptly as possible. Each patient in hygiene needs to be checked. In a large office such as the one Bob spent his career running, he regularly had 7 patients an hour to check, in addition to performing treatment. Being able to reliably, comfortably make this happen, day after day, is the the secret to success as a dentist.
It takes a commitment to using your time, space, and people as efficiently as possible. In order to do that, you need to look at your schedule each day first thing and visualize the way you will perform. This is no different from how an athlete or performer mentally rehearses. By engaging your mind in actively strategizing and mapping the day, you allow yourself to iron out many of the wrinkles that, if you encountered them unprepared, would guarantee suboptimal performance.
Suboptimal performance means that patients wait longer than they need to. It means that you see fewer patients in a day. It means that you perform less treatment per day than you had the opportunity to.
The doc must coordinate the flow for themselves. The rest of the team has their own prep to do, and their individual preparation efforts do their part to make the doctor’s efficiency possible as much as their own. But the doctor can’t leave the job of understanding and mentally rehearsing the flow of their day up to someone else.
Once you get good at it, it will take no more than 10 minutes.
Look at the screen. Look at the hygiene appointments, the schedule of any associates, and your own.
Begin to visualize your day. Mentally walk through the appointments for the day. Consider the treatment you’re scheduled for and the benchmarks for each treatment. Breaking the hour into ten-minute segments, further consider “where you will be” during each hour.
Adjust these times as required—making sure to inform the team of the change and the reason.
Where are there moments in your schedule to do hygiene checks? When will restorative patients be occupied with letting their anesthetic work?
Go over each patient’s records, looking for outstanding treatment that the patient is likely to be want done today in addition to what they are scheduled for. Look at the records of each hygiene patient, looking for outstanding treatment or likely maintenance that could be performed while they’re already here for their cleaning.
Look for openings in your schedule that will allow you to perform these unscheduled treatments.
Make two lists, and make a copy for each room you will work in:
your openings
your pinch points
Pinch points are times when you are heavily booked with treatment and checks. You will need your team to know for sure that your time is spoken for here, and that your hygiene checks need to be well-timed.
Your openings are the intervals where you could do more than is scheduled. Emergencies are a prime use for these slots, as is same-day treatment from hygiene or finishing a scheduled patient's unscheduled outstanding treatment.
Build extra time into your benchmarks for heavy periods. 20 minutes per hour is enough. This will allow you the time you need to do everything that has to be done in addition to treatment.
It’s important to remain considerate of the patient at all times, and you will want to be careful about how you speak to the patient as you disengage to leave the room to do hygiene checks. You don’t need to mention why you’re leaving, but you do need to inform the patient in treatment that you need to let the anesthetic work, let an impression set, etc.