Manage Your Practice at the Same High Level as You Perform Dentistry As a progressive cosmetic dentist, you apply proven dental principles to your patient care for consistent, high-quality results. The same applies to how you manage your practice: you need to apply sound business principles to achieve sustained success. This is particularly important as a cosmetic practice, since you are competing in a highly competitive marketplace-the one for discretionary spending. In the discretionary spending marketplace, you have different competitors than the average general practice, and your patients/guests have different buying criteria. To compete in this environment, your standards of practice operations need to be higher. You are now competing with other businesses-and they have years of marketing experience, in which they have tuned their message and honed their guest services. In this marketplace, your buyers have more sophisticated needs and demands. Fortunately, there is good news: because discretionary spending deals with wants rather than needs, you can price to the value-not to the cost. What does a laminate veneer, including chair time, actually cost? What is the value of a healthy, beautiful smile to a highly motivated patient/guest?
Understanding Value
All businesses exhibit two components to quality: conformance quality and perceived quality. Conformance quality is the technical aspect of the business. In the computer field, it would be chip speed, screen resolution, etc. In dentistry, conformance quality includes the margins, occlusion, etc. Perceived quality involves the perceptions of your customer, client, or patient/guest. In the restaurant business, the ambience of the facility, how the servers treat the guest, etc. all affect the patrons' perceptions. In your practice, what is the ambience of the reception area? How are your patients/guests greeted-if at all?
Why is this important to understand? In the dental office, the dentist and dental team are the experts on conformance quality. But the experts on perceived quality are your patients/guests. If the dental team is the expert on conformance quality and the patient/guest is the expert on perceived quality, how do you think the patient/guest determines if they are in the right practice? You got it: by the perceived quality. You build your practice on conformance quality-clinical excellence-but you market perceived quality.
The combination of conformance quality and perceived quality determines overall quality. Once your patient/guest looks at your qualities and your fees, he or she can now make a determination as to the value you provide. Quality relative to price determines value. If your price is too high relative to your quality, you will have a low value. Understand that your fees and pricing are part of your marketing: if your price is too low, you may actually detract from your value and be perceived as poor quality.
So how can you increase the value perceived by your patient/guest? This very term, patient/guest, is a perfect example of creating more value. Imagine an individual walks into your practice and you refer to them as your next "patient". What is their response? Probably there's no response-you're no different than any other dentist he or she has visited. Now imagine if instead, you referred to that patient as your next "guest". What is the difference in reaction?
Think of the difference in these terms: what do you think when I say the word "patient"? At most, it's an indifferent term, though in many cases it can be pretty negative, particularly in the medical field. But what do you think about the word "guest"-doesn't this person suddenly sound important? When you invite a guest to your home, typically (unless an in-law) a guest is someone special, someone you are looking forward to seeing and welcoming. The same applies to your patients: start thinking of them as guests, and a subtle change in both your and your team's behavior will send a completely different message to your guests-and your guests will perceive the difference. Yes, you are in the health care business, and yes, they are still patients, but that doesn';t mean you can't treat them as your guests. But just changing a word means nothing if you haven't set up systems that reinforce the intended meaning.
Quality: A Series of Events
Assuming you already have a commitment to clinical excellence, or conformance quality, how do you raise the perceived value of your practice? There are systems that can easily be set into your practice so patients/guests have the ride of their life-or at least their best ever in a dental office.
Have you ever been on the jungle cruise in a Disney park? You step onto a boat that slowly takes you into the jungle. The cruise is rehearsed-planned, not canned; perfectly scripted and timed. Every time the boat goes around this one corner, a mechanical hippo raises its head and the Disney guide shoots the gun to scare it off-every time, all the time. Your practice needs to be structured the same way. In the Dental Concierge® program we call the concept of the jungle cruise a "cycle of care." You want to "jungle cruise"your practice. Your practice can have several cycles of care; cosmetic cycle of care, dental implants cycle of care, etc. As the guests move through the practice-as on the boat-everything happens exactly on cue, every time, at each step of the way, in each cycle of care. How is the telephone answered? Who greets the guest, with what words, the moment they walk in? What happens during the first appointment? All of these issues and more must be planned and choreographed.
Your team must also know what cycle of care/jungle cruise your guest is on. Why is this important? Because the jungle cruise is so well choreographed, a Disney executive can stand on the pier as a boat lands, and as the guests disembark, he knows exactly what they have experienced. He can ask them how they liked the spray of water from the bathing elephant, or the scary alligators-he can talk to any of the guests with total confidence about what they've just experienced. It should work the same in your practice. Your entire team should know what has happened to your guest on the cruise/cycle of care he or she has just experienced in your practice. The administrative team knows exactly what took place in the clinical area; the clinical team knows what the guest can expect from the administrative part of the team. The ability of your team to talk with confidence to any of your guests has a huge impact. You must create a seamless chain of positive events to raise their perception of quality, thereby increasing your value in the eyes of your guests.
People vs. Process
Once established, how do you maintain consistent high value? First and foremost, it has to do with people-the right people. When it comes to long-term success, the practice with the best people wins. And the best people, the right people for your practice, are individuals who know how to play on a team. The stellar practices have long ago outgrown the concept of one or even two people as all-stars, with the rest of the team as supporting cast. If you are to create a seamless chain of events, each critical step needs to be handled with expertise and skill. So how do we get a team of all-stars to work at an optimum level day in, day out? The second step is putting those people in the right working environment.
There are two types of companies: process companies and people companies. Process companies are like McDonald's, where every step is set up as a simple process to ensure consistent quality. All of McDonald's processes provide service just above the customer's expectations. When you buy a medium cup of soda, the server picks up a medium cup, fills it with ice, and hits the medium button on the machine. The cup is filled with the appropriate amount of soda so the guest gets his or her money's worth, but the soda doesn't run over and make a mess. The buzzer for fries goes off so they are always cooked consistently. As you may have figured out, it doesn't take a lot of brain power from the server to assure consistent quality-the process assures the quality.
In direct contrast are people companies, like real estate companies. In real estate, 20 percent of the agents sell 80 percent of the properties. They are all-stars, and as all-stars they become very busy. Many times these agents get so busy they become overwhelmed, and thus they burn out and the quality of service is lost.
Best of Both Worlds
In your practice you want to combine the two concepts-people and process. Work with a team of all-stars, but put in processes/systems that stop the quality of care from ever going below the expectations of your guests. This will ensure your guest always experiences consistent high quality, while saving you and your team from suffering burnout. During the jungle cruise, not every passenger knows the boat is being pulled by a chain through the river, or that the guide is pretending to steer the boat. In this case, steering the boat can be reduced to a process. It is a given route through a timed sequence of events. This allows the guides, who know the script by heart, to focus their attention on entertaining the guests. By combining process and people skills, they consistently get the best result.
To apply this winning combination to cosmetic practices, consider financial arrangements. Many historical practices are typically people companies, with the all-star treatment coordinator working far too hard to get a signed financial arrangement. They think obtaining a financial arrangement is stressful, or even requires a special skill or magic. In most cases, it should be as easy as checking out at the supermarket. The mechanics of financial arrangements prior to care can be reduced to a few simple steps, so it becomes a process. When a financial arrangement is incorporated correctly into a cycle of care, it should allow your treatment coordinator to focus his or her people skills on the guest, not the process-just like the jungle cruise. Save those all-star skills for better things-don't waste them on simple redundant processes that will lead to burnout.
You compete in a tough market for discretionary spending: it's hard now, and it's going to become even more competitive. To ensure long-term success, you need to build a strong team and set up systems in your practice to maximize everyone's performance. This way, you create exceptional value for your guests without wasting anyone's time or skills. You need to manage your practice at the same high level you perform dentistry.
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