Don't throw people at a problem. Do this instead.

When writing pieces, I generally do not find anything more useful than taking a real life situation and relaying the results of examination of that problem into the wild for public consumption.  Our latest example comes from a dental practice on the gulf coast of Mississippi.  

Here, a dentist has a practice in a startup phase.  It is in that limbo phase of being larger and more mature than a startup practice, but not quite to the point of constant busyness.  There are some heavy activity periods and still others where there are no patients in the office.  This office is in a shopping mall so it tends to get more walk-in traffic than a practice that might be seen at an office that is located in a medical complex or out of the way location.  A potential patient might be moving from the Apple Store to the Disney Store, see the office sign or remember that they need a cleaning and stop in at the front desk.  For this reason, the practice will occasionally have some pretty busy times if a few folks come in at once without an appointment.

The doctor in the practice worries, and properly so, that patients will come in, see a line or find they are waiting too long.  They will decide to delay the appointment and maybe make that appointment with another doctor closer to home.   To deal with this, the doctor suggested that we place extra staff at the front desk at all times.  So, if things got busy, all patients could be handled and no one would be lost. 

Of course, if things did not get busy AND front desk staff wasn’t using that time to do things like market to potential new patients, that would result in cost just running higher. 

A much better solution would be to give the tools to the existing staff to enable them to handle more patients.  We’ll get into more detail on each of these, but specifically:

Alternative paths to practice ownership

In a recent survey by a major supplier, over 2/3 of dentists coming out of school had a strong interest in owning his or her own dental practice.  That certainly makes sense.  If a doctor wants to develop his or her own craft and/or achieve the best possible financial return on the investment in dental school, ownership is the way to go.

That path from graduation to ownership is fraught with pitfalls.  Among the top issues, getting financing has become an extraordinarily challenging process.  Especially since the financial crisis of 2008, finding loans requires outstanding credit, material down payments and liquid collateral.  

On top of that, if you are opening a brand new office, choosing a location is an uncertain proposition.  Even the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, has not perfected site selection.  They regularly go through store closings.  Given that, imagine the challenges faced by a single-office dentist in finding the right location that will continue to be the right location 5 to 10 years in the future.

If purchasing a practice, there’s the uncertain nature of the existing patient base.  Maybe the previous doctor had some treatment headaches that will pass to the new owner or the receivables are a mess and essentially hidden from the purchaser until that purchaser tries to collect (this, sadly, is not terribly uncommon).

Those are simply the top ones. There are a number of other things that arise when employing the traditional build or purchase methodology.  While the traditional method works quite well for some, others seek alternative methodologies that may alleviate some of these headaches.  Here are 3 of those alternatives:

Marketing: It's everyone's job

We recently had a situation with one of our new clients that just begged for a more in-depth discussion.  Results in the practice had been particularly weak and a number of metrics had deteriorated noticeably.  Fewer new patients were making appointments, fewer showing up and a smaller percentage of those that did show up were signing contracts. 

While discussing the issues with the doctor, he said something along the lines of “the problem is clearly Person x (Note, this person’s real name is not person x.  The name has been changed to protect his/her identity).  He is in charge of marketing.”

And it is this quote that gives me pause because everyone in a dental or orthodontic practice needs to be involved in marketing in one way or the other.  Yes, you may have one person or an agency assigned to help you develop ideas and make sure those ideas move forward and become reality.  But that doesn’t mean that everyone can sit back and wait for new patients to roll in the door.  Rather, that marketing person is merely one part of the process.  Everyone can and has to participate meaningfully in the process.  

Specifically, keep the following in mind:

Are my patient receivables a problem?

A question from one of our intrepid readers: 

“How do you tell if your practice receivables are out of control?”

Outstanding question.  Of course, the answer is in the data and there are quite a number of ways to determine whether or not your receivables are under control or require some additional work. 

Considering a change of strategy? Read this first.

In quite a number of practices with which we work, we get suggestions for changes based on comments from patients.  Examples of these suggestions include adding whitening products, change of operating hours or changes to patient flow.

Usually, the suggestions are prefaced with a comment along the lines of “Everyone wants us to…” followed by the specific suggestion.  

Before lurching into major changes and the marketing campaigns that support them, please make sure you keep the following things in mind: