HELPING YOUR TEAM FEEL CONFIDENT WHEN OVERCOMING SCHEDULING BARRIERS AND LIMITATIONS.
Building the perfect schedule is the dream of every dentist and their team. An optimal schedule is an assurance of practice growth and profitability, right? Yes!
However, if your schedule isn’t humming the perfect tune, it may be a sign of specific barriers that have not been identified or addressed. Nothing deters a patient quicker than an unaccommodated schedule. Here we will address how to identify capacity issues and specific barriers that prevent patients from making and keeping, their appointments.
WHAT IS CAPACITY?
Capacity can be defined as the amount of treatment completed within the current set of circumstances in a practice on any given day, week, or month. In a busy dental office, utilizing best practices to control your schedule and maximize your ability to help patients within your given set of circumstances is critical to success.
If you don’t have the room to schedule the appointment, you just don’t have it! Or do you? Having a capacity issue in the practice can show up in many ways, but what do you do about it?
When new patient appointments are booked out further than expected, it’s more important than ever that we take the time to build rapport and establish strong relationships. It is also crucial to begin breaking down the barriers that inhibit you from scheduling your patient within the desired timeframe.
IDENTIFYING A CAPACITY ISSUE
There are only so many hours in a day, but that doesn’t have to limit your practice’s production capacity as much as you may think. Does your schedule frequently look and feel chaotic? Do you or your team members find themselves working through lunch regularly, or worse, staying past closing time frequently? Are you turning away new patients because your next opening is in three weeks? These are all examples of problems that can occur due to a capacity issue. Here are a few more examples:
- New patients are being scheduled out for 72 business hours or more.
- Trying to schedule an SRP, but looking 2+ weeks out.
- New procedures have been introduced, such as sedation, requiring more time and space (maybe even a dedicated op).
- Team members constantly ask where to schedule specific appointments and lack the confidence to do it independently.
- The new patient show rate does not align with the practice’s growth goals.
Communicating Effectively
When communicating with prospective new patients, it’s really important, as a representative of the organization, that you make a positive and friendly first impression of the practice. What does that look like for your practice? Does the prospective patient have your full, undivided attention?
When a patient calls your dental practice to schedule an appointment, they typically hope to schedule that appointment within 3 business days. Personally speaking to the patient and engaging with them to build rapport will allow you to capture their trust and win them as a patient.
If you cannot schedule within 72 hours, it is key to cover the “negative” with a “positive”. Here’s an example of what this might sound like:
All-Star Greeting
By utilizing an All-Star Greeting, your team can consistently welcome new patients to the practice in a warm and friendly way. Most team members know how to answer the phone – they can probably do it in their sleep. – however, by utilizing an upbeat, consistent all-star greeting, team members can set themselves up to build rapport with prospective new patients while controlling the conversation to lead them to an appointment.
For more information on All-Star Greetings, be sure to visit this All-Star Greeting and Phone Reference Sheet.
THE SCHEDULE
Nearly 70% of the time, practices have enough patients but aren’t managing their schedules well.
When there are capacity problems, it’s very common for practices to feel busy even when they aren’t growing. Staffing, scheduling procedures (such as a lack of block scheduling), no-shows, a practice’s specialty, a shortage of operatories, and improperly stocked ops are all factors that might affect capacity.
Scheduling Preferences
Does the team that schedules appointments understand the provider’s scheduling preferences? Are the provider’s scheduling preferences conducive to the practice’s growth goals? Being transparent with this information can drastically improve scheduling opportunities.
We recommend conducting Stopwatch Studies per procedure to help ensure provider preferences are accurate.
Basic Block Scheduling
We want you to stay mindful of scheduling emergency patients within a 48-72 hour time frame when you are not able to see them the same day. This helps prevent ‘no-shows’ and helps patients get out of pain promptly. We should not be relying on cancellations to “free” up our schedule.
Identifying ideal times, each day, you can dedicate to certain procedures, particularly Emergency appointments, Place blocks on the schedule once you have identified these ideal times, and RESPECT these blocks. You can follow the same concept for other procedures as well.
Creating an “ideal scheduling template” per provider will give the scheduling team more confidence to make the right decisions while building your ideal schedule. Be sure to identify and prepare for barriers that may disrupt your “ideal” schedule.
Efficiency
Tips on how to run your office efficiently:
- Schedule all appointments in 10-minute increments, compared to 15-minute increments. This helps to trim the unproductive downtime out of the schedule and gives your scheduling coordinator the ability to allocate time more efficiently for clinical procedures.
- Utilize an ASAP or VIP list consistently. Be specific about the patient’s availability and preferred method of communication.
- When a patient falls out of your schedule, put priority on filling it ASAP.
- Rotate between chairs. Stagger your appointment in such a way that you can move smoothly from one treatment room to the next.
- Communicate, communicate, communicate! Who’s here and ready? Which room should the provider go to next? Who is running late, who needs to be checked in or out, who’s ready to have a treatment plan presented, and who needs help flipping rooms? Think of your dental office as an air traffic control center; you must direct communication in order to avoid chaos and collisions.
- Organization and property stocked operatories.
- Does your office have a space that could be modified to add a new operatory to your practice, such as a storage room? Or, does your office have an operatory that is being used as a storage space that might need some TLC before it can accommodate patients? If so, how much would it cost to get that room back up and running, and how quickly could the production rendered in that op recuperate any costs of renovating or restoring?
- Having an all-hands-on-deck mentality includes the clinical and front office teams. An ideal setup would include a team member who can assist in flipping rooms (set up and break down) as well as assist the Hygienist during NP exams.
- Improve patient compliance. The ideal schedule can be undermined by patients who show up late or not at all. To ensure you get the most out of your expanded capacity, use scripts to build value for appointments in the minds of the patients, upgrade your confirmation techniques, and “re-train” your patients to be more compliant to reduce the number of no-shows and late arrivals. However, if you implement a “grace period,” it’s critical that your office is running on time and respecting your patient’s time as well.
- (Pre)Huddle Prep is done by the front desk and clinical staff at least 48 hours in advance. If you see the potential for congestion and/or hold in the schedule, this allows for plenty of time to have the necessary discussion with your team to find a solution.
- Morning Huddle. The entire team should gather for a morning huddle away from your front desk. Always start with a WIN from yesterday. It is then imperative to address any need for additional assistance throughout the day, where bottlenecks may happen, any potential barriers to running on time, any schedule shifts that need to happen, the potential for same-day starts, any unscheduled treatment that should be addressed and scheduled, monies that need to be collected upon check in/check out, patients that should be followed up on that fell out of yesterday’s schedule, openings that you have today and tomorrow to fill, and most importantly, establishing an emergency time for this morning and this afternoon. Finally, end with a win you’d like to see happen today.
- Same-day starts: To optimize open chair time, be sure to offer same-day starts. This should be built into your phone call conversation to ask the patient If time allows, would you like to get started with the proposed treatment upon your first visit? Note the response in the appointment note to extend communication and preparedness to the clinical team. Same-day starts to save you and your patient time in the chair, open more schedule availability to future patients, decrease no-show and cancellation rates, and build value for your patient.
IN CONCLUSION
Having a proactive mindset is key. Don’t wait until you have a capacity issue, be consistent with evaluating your schedule and take the necessary steps to remedy potential issues. The schedule should be owned by all team members, not just at the front desk.
