A frequently heard lament from Principals is: I’m drowning in routine maintenance and don’t have the time to focus on higher value treatments. In any event, there is no way that the patients will agree to see another dentist – they have been seeing me for years and will kick up a fuss if I
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I had already decided to create a blog post about the changing relationship between clinicians and patients, when I returned to my Cotswold B&B last night and read the following extract from Colin Campbell’s excellent blog: The difficulty we have in our practice is that we continue to treat patients as though they were patients
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Numbers don’t get emotional about people. People get emotional about numbers. Associates get emotional when faced with a percentage pay-cut (perfectly understandable – who wants a pay cut?). An unemotional demonstration that a 5% drop in percentage can be recouped by an 11% increase in productivity often falls on deaf ears. The “loser” in this
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When a practice is bought by a micro-corporate and the owner agrees to stay around for a period of years (with or without an earn-out) it can go one of two ways. The former owner, now turned associate: becomes an enthusiastic ambassador, encouraging the team and the patients to remain loyal and themselves eagerly participating
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I’m reminded, here in Ireland, that there are some people (patients) from Hale and Hampstead who choose to wear their money on the outside and others, perhaps from Cork and Kendal, who prefer to wear their money on the inside. A detailed conversation with a Jewish client last week educated me that “religious Jews” (his phrase)
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I’ve previously explained that the world record for the length of time it took a dentist to make up his mind to hire me was 17 years (impulsive eh?). That memorable phrase “I first heard you speak on Paul Tipton’s restorative course in 1996 and have been following your stuff for years. I have now
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It’s not uncommon for me to listen to owners complain about the motivation levels of their managers and clinical team. It’s not uncommon for me to listen to managers and clinicians complain about the motivation levels of the owner. Hmmmm…. What’s the difference? The owners tell me that there are certain managers or clinicians who
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Over the years, pundits have compared opinions to just about every part and function of the human body, with the metaphoric punchline that “everyone has one and most are useless”. Melvyn Bragg has delighted us for years with his “in our time” podcast series – a superb source of informed historical and scientific opinion. Wired magazine
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In any business – yours, mine, your suppliers – we all need protocols and conversations. The protocols are the way we do things – systems. The conversations are the ways in which we communicate – with each other, with our clients and with our suppliers. Most days I meet with dental businesses that are working
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I want you to suspend your disbelief for the next few minutes and take part in a mental exercise with me. think of your top 5 patients from last year with reference to their level of investment – which were your 5 biggest treatment plan sales their level of affluence – which were the most
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